Excavation and Watching Brief. Land at Crays Hall Farm, Billericay, Essex. Final Report

Archaeological mitigation and watching brief work was carried out in advance of the construction of a solar farm development. The mitigation work comprised the excavation of two areas totalling 1,600sq m targeted on locations of archaeological features found by the evaluation that were to be impacted by transverter station construction. The watching brief was undertaken on contractors' groundworks for a cable trench and associated easement excavated along the c.1km access route to the solar farm site. Excavation Area 1 (900sq m) contained four ditches or gullies. Two ditches on ENE/WSW orientations were of Late Iron Age/Early Roman date. A third, Late Roman, ditch was evidently a recut of one of these earlier ditches, with a NW/SE gully possibly contemporary with it. These likely constituted further parts of the enclosure or field system identified here by the evaluation. Area 2 (700sq m) exposed a scatter of four small pit-like features; some were of apparent Late Iron Age/Early Roman date, others undated and perhaps the product of later ground disturbance. No archaeological remains were found during the watching brief on the cable trench route groundworks, apart from some fragmentary gravestones incorporated into the rubble bedding layers for the farm track that it ran along.