Archaeological Recording at Hinxton Hall: The New Lake Site, Phase II

In June 1995, the Archaeological Field Unit of Cambridgeshire County Council carried out an unfunded recording brief at Hinxton Hall (TL 4968/4457) during the second phase of excavation of a lake. This work is part of the development of the Hinxton Hall site by Fuller Peiser on behalf of The Wellcome Trust. Part of a rectilinear enclosure was revealed, dated to the third to fourth centuries AD, very similar to an enclosure recorded during the first phase of lake development. The paucity and abrasion of finds in these features suggests an agricultural function during the Roman period, rather than settlement in this precise location. A timber building of probable early to mid Saxon date was excavated and recorded, most likely part of the settlement of that period revealed during the main excavation in 1993-94. A series of ditches on the same line, date from the Roman and post-medieval periods. This suggests, as in the first phase of lake development, a continuity of land boundaries from the Roman period through to the nineteenth century.