Trevithick Manor, Newquay, Cornwall. Treveth HDP Mitigation, Post-excavation Assessment and Updated Project Design

The mitigation comprised a strip map sample excavation over all of field 1 and parts of field 2 with a watching brief over access roads in fields 4, 5, and 6. In addition, a coring survey was undertaken across fields 7 and 8 and trenching was undertaken in fields 3 and 7 to investigate the survival of palaeoenvironmental information in the flood plain of the Gannel. The investigations revealed a wealth of archaeological features including site of regional significance. These included Early Neolithic pits, two potentially Middle to Late Neolithic ring-ditches, Beaker pits and artefact scatters, Bronze Age cremation burials and pits, and three Middle Bronze Age hollow-set roundhouses and two other sunken structures. These join an increasing number of structures of the same period that have been identified in the Newquay area, and the valley of the Gannel in particular, in recent years. Some of the structures appear to have had a specialised function and further analyses should elucidate the nature of these specialisms. They include a rectangular building similar to one excavated at Trethellan in the 1980s but otherwise extremely rare for the Bronze Age. The Iron Age was marked by the establishment of a co-axial field system, followed by the construction of two Romano-British buildings in the Roman period. These comprised an oval house set within a ditched enclosure and a rectangular building likely to have served an agricultural function. An extensive area of crafting and/or light industry was situated between the two in a series of intercutting hollows. Domestic settlements of this nature are poorly understood although more and more of these unenclosed settlements have come to light in recent years. The abandonment of these structures appears to be represented by a small number of early medieval potsherds and extensive remains of iron smelting and smithing slags that seem to have collected over the Romano-British and Bronze Age structures.