Land at Cherry Tree Yard, Colesden, Bedfordshire: A Programme of Archaeological Trial Trench Evaluation and Monitoring

Four trial trenches positioned to provide a representative sample of the site area. Trench 5 could not be excavated due to a badger sett so ground reduction in the new northern building footprint was monitored instead. The evaluation and monitoring of the site at Cherry Tree Yard, Colesden, Bedfordshire, recorded two ditches in the north of the site, which adjoin with a previously un-investigated cropmark enclosure complex located in the fields directly to the north and east (BBHER MBB22193). The ditches appear to have formed part of one such enclosure, with pottery from one of them indicating a Late Iron Age/ Early Roman (mid- to late-1st-century AD) date. The quantity and condition of the pottery, and the presence of butchered/ burnt animal bones, indicate that there was occupation of this period nearby, and that the ditched enclosures were not purely agricultural in nature. The remainder of the site had been heavily truncated by past landscaping associated with construction of a timber yard in the mid-1980s.