Archaeological Evaluation at 'The Spikes', High Street, Sawston

In February 1995 an archaeological evaluation was carried out, in advance of residential development, by the Archaeological Filed Unit of Cambridgeshire County Council, on an area of land to the east of 'The Spike', High Street, Sawston, Cambridgeshire (TL 489/487). Seven tranches were excavated in a small area set aside for the first stage of the housing development, after which, a Fluxgate magnetometer survey was carried out across the remainder of the large field. Several linear features were recorded in the trenches, which appear to be the remains of boundary or drainage ditches. No dating evidence was retrieved from any of the features on the site, which is significant as the surface of the field was littered with an abundance of late nineteenth and early twentieth century pottery and glass. These artefact remains are therefore very well sorted within, but restricted to, the plough soil. The geophysical survey located a large linear anomaly, which runs along the same alignment as a track marked on the 1885 OS map, and a series of anomalies which have been interpreted as pits and small linear features, in the east of the site. A further stage of evaluations was carried out over several of these latter anomalies. These were found to be comparable to those features discovered in the initial phases, in that their fills were very similar and they contained no datable evidence. At least one substantial ditch was discovered which did not show up on the geophysical survey. This infers that its fill contains relatively little magnetically enhanced material, which correlates well with the complete lack of datable artefacts from any negative feature. These points generally emphasise the past rural nature of the site.