Land to the rear of 126-127 King Street, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk: Monitoring of Works under Archaeological Supervision and Control

An archaeological watching brief carried out by Pre-Construct Archaeology at 126-127 King Street, Great Yarmouth. A single site visit was undertaken on the 28th of April 2023 during groundworks for the creation of a new man-hole on site as part of the infrastructure for the proposed development. Following this initial visit, the methodology of piling at the site had to be amended due to the confines of the site and a new method utilising a bottom driven cased pile system did not allow for further deposits to be observed. The groundworks consisted of a 1m x 1m trench excavated to a maximum depth of 2m and revealed a modern ground surface 0.3m thick, overlying a thick layer of sandy buried soil 1.1m thick, overlying further buried soil 0.2m thick, overlying a made ground of imported sand 0.3m thick, overlying a made ground of dumped mortar at least 0.1m thick. The upper buried soil layers contained post-medieval finds of 16th-19th century while the sandy made ground contained finds of 13th-16th century. The dating of these layers is broadly consistent with soil layers encountered 4m to the north-west during trial-trenching of the site. The southern edge of the excavated trench was bounded by the foundations of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century brick and flint wall foundation - one of the walls of former houses present on the site until the later twentieth century.