Enfield Grammar Upper School, Market Place, London Borough of Enfield: Post-Excavation Assessment Report

Wessex Archaeology was commissioned by HSSP Architects on behalf of Enfield Grammar School to carry out an archaeological excavation on land at Enfield Grammar Upper School, Market Place, London Borough of Enfield centred on National Grid Reference (NGR) 532774, 196860. The proposed work is being undertaken in support of a planning application (P13-03803PLA) The redevelopment of the Site involves the erection of a single storey sports pavilion (changing facility) and installation of a 3G Artificial Turf Pitch (ATP) with perimeter ball stop fencing, floodlights and associated works. The archaeological works comprised the mechanical excavation of three areas: Area A the smallest totalling 203 m², Area B the largest totalling 3950 m² and Area C totalling 1630 m². The areas were separated due to the presence of existing buried services. The only prehistoric feature identified was a small pit, the very limited pottery assemblage from this and as residual finds in later contexts hinting at a MiddleLate Bronze Age date for this phase of activity. A few sherds of Roman pottery were recovered, but there were no features of this date A small number of early medieval features, assigned a 10th12th century date, included parts of what may have been a rectilinear enclosure defined by a shallow ditch, though little more can be deduced about the nature and use of this possible enclosure which lay a short distance to the north of the focus of medieval settlement in Enfield. The excavation revealed the foundations of possibly two, small, 18th-century buildings with brick foundations at the western end of the site, to the east of which was a rectilinear arrangement of ditches, drains and later hedges. One of the drains incorporated cattle horn cores which local parallels suggest is of 17th/18th century date. The dating of this phase of activity is confirmed by cartographic evidence, the two buildings within the site being shown on an estate map of c. 1750 and the enclosure map of 1804, but not on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1868. The map of c. 1750 shows a group of six buildings or structures, the westernmost corresponding with the location of Portcullis Lodge, a house belonging to Sir Alfred Somerset (18291915) who resided at nearby Enfield Court, a late 17th/early 18thcentury house and now the lower school of Enfield Grammar School. Portcullis Lodge, of probable early/mid-18th-century date, was demolished in 1968, and it is likely that the excavated structures represent out-buildings that belonged to two associated cottages, the ditches and other features reflecting a midlate 18th to mid-19th-century formal (or less formal) garden layout, or alternatively an orchard or horticultural arrangements of some form.