Archaeological Investigations of Land Adjacent to Honey Farm, Chatteris

The Archaeological Field Unit of Cambridgeshire County Council was commissioned to investigate the archaeological potential of land adjacent to the west of the Sixteen Foot Drain (TL431/891) which was proposed for the location of a new irrigation reservoir. Five trenches totalling 160m in length within a 12 ha area were machine excavated. Archaeological remains were sparse and the main features are either recent in date or the result of natural phenomena, and indicate the absence of historic or prehistoric occupation. The results of the archaeological trenching programme show that the area was beyond the area of prehistoric, Roman and medieval settlement as indicated by the desk-based research. Although the cropmarks suggest that later prehistoric settlement may have occurred very close to the fen edge the evaluation shows that at no point did the settlement extend to what in medieval times was an area of wet fen. The evaluation did however locate areas of pre-barroway Drove Bed peats in which numerous bog oaks still survive. These were once part of an ancient forest which covered much of the Fenland during the early Flandrian. During the Bronze Age sea levels rose and the forest became too west to support tree growth, however an ideal environment for the preservation of organic remains replaced the forest. Further archaeological work is unlikely to be appropriate.