Land at Newfound Farm, Cringleford, Norfolk: Post-Excavation Assessment and Updated Project Design

Between 29th October 2018 and 4th February 2019, Oxford Archaeology East (OA East) undertook an excavation on land at Newfound Farm, Cringleford, Norfolk ahead of a proposed residential development. The locations of the excavation areas (Areas 1 and 2) were based on the results of previous stages of evaluation including geophysical survey, fieldwalking and trial trenching.
The earliest evidence of activity comprised a scatter of pits (including numerous natural sinkholes) containing small quantities of Early Neolithic, Late Neolithic and Early Iron Age pottery alongside worked and burnt flint. This adds to the growing body of evidence for utilisation of the Yare valley during the prehistoric period.
However, the main phase of activity related to the production of brick/tile and pottery. The former is represented by the remains of at least four early post-medieval brick kilns which had survived to varying degrees, alongside numerous extraction pits and several ditched boundaries. Fragments of tile, brick and pottery had been backfilled into the extraction pits, with the pottery predominantly dating to the 16th-18th centuries. A notable cluster of six intercutting pits located in the far north-eastern corner of Area 1 (close to Newfound Farm and the road) produced large quantities of mid-17th to 18th-century pottery wasters, kiln furniture and tile wasters, in addition to fragments of clay tobacco-pipe (many datable to 1660-1680) and glass bottles.
The greater part of the pottery assemblage from the site comprises material from a pottery manufacturing waste dump (nearly 200kg) and has been classed as highly significant since few pottery production sites of this period have been identified in East Anglia so far. The pottery itself is largely glazed red earthenware with some iron-glazed blackware, slipware and speckle glazed ware – with a small but notable element of tin glazed earthenware. This important assemblage complements the documentary evidence that potters were working in this area from at least the mid-17th century onwards but had seemingly ceased production here by the early 19th century at the latest.