Excavation at Helston Urban Expansion - Spine Road, Land off Rowes Lane, Helston, Cornwall

The area of the proposed spine road was stripped by a 20 tonne tracked excavator using a toothless grading bucket under archaeological supervision in July 2021, a subsequent area was stripped in August 2022 to the north-east of the Phase 3 development prior to the creation of a site compound for this development phase. The southern end of the road corridor was located within the Phase 3 development area, and had been subject to archaeological evaluation trenching (SWARCH 2021a), but had been much disturbed by machinery movement and material storage prior to works commencing for the road. This interim report summarises the results of archaeological excavations carried out for the Eastern Spine Road of the Helston Urban Expansion on land off Rowes Lane, Helston, Cornwall. This work was carried out following a geophysical survey and ahead of the commencement of the Phase 3 housing development to the immediate south of this site. The site strip was undertaken in two phases, with a road corridor of c. 240m x 25m stripped and then, following construction, a subsequent area of c.60m x 14m was stripped to the south-west end of the new road corridor in advance of the moving of the site compound to enable the Phase 3 housing construction. The excavation broadly validated the results of the geophysical survey and confirmed the presence of a series of ditches which relate to an earlier field-system, this was not dated but is likely of late prehistoric or Romano-British origin. A small group of Middle Bronze Age pits were identified within the compound area. Given the results from the area excavated it is anticipate that the remaining parts of the care home development (PA24/06846) will need to be subject to archaeological area excavation as further Bronze Age features are likely to exist.