Fibre Optic Cable, Dunham Massey, Greater Manchester.

The National Trust requested British Telecom to install a new fibre-optic cable running from an existing junction box on Smithy Lane (SJ 73794 87492) to Dunham Hall, on the Dunham Massey Estate, Greater Manchester (SJ 73523 87395). The installation of the fibre-optic cable required the excavation of a narrow trench over a distance of approximately 380m, within the boundaries of the Old Park. In order to secure archaeological interests, the National Trust’s Archaeologist recommended that the ground works required for the installation of this cable should be monitored by an archaeological watching brief.
During the watching brief the excavated cable trench was generally devoid of archaeological remains. The only exceptions to this were fragments of late nineteenth century
pottery recovered from the topsoil and subsoil, and a possible eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century brick-built drain. This drain lay adjacent to Smithy Drive, 60m south-west of the Old Park boundary wall. The position of the drain suggest that it may have linked to several eighteenth-century water features known to exist immediately south of Smithy Drive, and/or drained into an early nineteenth-century pond, which formed in this area following the neglect of these water features