House

Located on the steep W-facing slope of High Hill. Archaeological testing (19E0256) in May 2019 by C. McLoughlin revealed part of a medieval building that was partly excavated in October 2020 by the same archaeologist under the same licence when a medieval pit was sampled in another adjacent area (McLoughlin 2021). The E part of a medieval building (ext. dims 15.5m N-S; 4.4m plus E-W) that probably had a gable fronting onto High Hill at S was defined by stone walls and had been excavated into the shale bedrock. The wall at N (Wth 1-1.5m; H 0.4m) was damaged where there may have been a doorway. The N end of the E wall (surviving L 6m; Wth 0.85m; H 1m) had been removed by a rubble-filled pit, and the S wall was represented only by a robber trench. The walls retained a number of floor surfaces that were sampled (T 0.2m). A hard grey soil with charcoal flecks and flat stones formed the earliest floor overlaid by a grey/brown silty clay habitation layer. An area (max. dims 2m x 2m) of charcoal-rich silty clay could be a hearth. These were overlain by four layers of yellow-brown clays with charcoal from the demolition of the house, whose occupation layers have thirteenth century ceramics. The pit (max. dims 5m N-S; 3.5m E-W; D 1.2m) was truncated on all sides by eighteenth and nineteenth century features. The topmost of two layers was garden soil but the lower was medieval fill of the pit. (McLoughlin 2021) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 3 August 2021