Land South of Admiral's Drive, Sandringham, Norfolk: Informative Trenching as Part of a Programme of Archaeological Mitigatory Works

The first stage of this programme, the informative trial trenching, consisted of the excavation and investigation of 17no. 30m trenches at 1.8m wide (a total of 510m of trial trench) within the c. 2.6ha site for the proposed solar array, which equated to a 3.5% sample evaluation of the area impacted by the scheme. The trial trenching confirmed the presence of a large chalk extraction pit, medieval or post-medieval in date, in Trench 10. This feature correlated with a large discrete anomaly shown on the results of the geophysical survey in the south-east corner of the site. Very little datable artefactual material was recovered from the feature, the assemblage being limited to abraded sherds of Iron Age, Roman and medieval pottery, a fragment of Roman tile and two fragments of marine shell. The pit may have been a source of chalk for burning in a nearby lime kiln, the site of which is located along Admiral's Drive, c. 80m to the north-west. The evaluation also identified undated features in Trenches 1, 6 and 14, none of which corresponded with geophysical anomalies. These features, probably agricultural in nature and of limited archaeological significance, consisted of the following: a pit in Trench 1; a ditch and a pit with two associated postholes in Trench 6; and a ditch in Trench 14.