A Seventeenth-century Burial and Medieval to Post-medieval Tenement Plots at St Cross College

Excavation was carried out in advance of completion of the West Quad at St Cross College, Oxford. The area of the excavation was formerly the rear part of three adjacent tenements fronting onto St Giles that were probably in continuous use from the twelfth century. Only limited evidence was found for activity earlier than the seventeenth century, by which time historic maps depict this part of the tenements as cultivated gardens. The most unusual feature was a burial of a young woman, dated by coin and radiocarbon evidence to AD 1640-70, representing a rare instance of extra-cemetery interment during a period when burial within the parish graveyard was virtually universal. It is possible that the woman was a religious dissenter. Part of a wall that was believed to be the precinct wall of the medieval Beaumont Palace was also investigated and was found to be a later construction, probably no earlier than the seventeenth century, albeit perpetuating the line of the medieval boundary. The report will be published in Dodd, A, Mileson, S, and Webley, L, forthcoming The archaeology of Oxford in the twenty-first century. Investigations in the city centre by Oxford Archaeology, 2006–16, Oxford Archaeol Historical Society Occasional Paper 1, Oxford
Attached specialist reports Animal bone by L Broderick.
Glass by I Scott & Burial Report by A Rose