Land at Jacks, Warish Hall Farm, Smith's Green, Takeley, Essex: An Archaeological Evaluation

The evaluation consisted of the excavation of 16no. 30m trial trenches at 1.8m wide (a total of 480 linear metres). A geophysical survey of the site had shown few features of archaeological interest. However, trial trenching revealed the remains of a medieval ditch system, dating to the 11th to 12th centuries AD. The remains are probably associated with a small farmstead, comprising a series of agricultural enclosures, such as paddocks and in-fields, with evidence for domestic occupation revealed in the southern corner of the site, where a series of closely spaced small ditches may be beam slots for a plank-built building. Further evidence for medieval domestic occupation within the site derives from the relatively sizeable assemblage of 11th to 12th-century pottery recovered from most of the features investigated by the evaluation, along with a fragment of Mayen lava quern, a medieval padlock, iron nails and fragments of bone from a range of domestic animals. A linear anomaly shown on the geophysical survey in the centre of the site was investigated and identified as a former post-medieval boundary; a parallel ditch c. 16m north of this feature may be of a similar date, the two ditches perhaps lying either side of a track. A broad, relatively shallow, linear hollow, interpreted as a palaeochannel, was identified in the centre of the southern half of the field, extending from south to north; archaeological features of medieval date were cut into the surface of this naturally formed feature and pottery of a comparable date was collected from or near its surface.