Ramsey Abbey School, 3G Pitch

Between the 8th and 18th of June 2020 Oxford Archaeology East (OA East) carried out a trenched evaluation in the grounds of Ramsey Abbey School in part of a field that will encompass a new c.0.75ha sports pitch and facilities. The evaluation comprised the excavation of seven trenches across this proposed development area. The trenches revealed two large boundary ditch alignments extending across the northern and eastern sides of the site which correspond with linear anomalies shown on a previous geophysical survey of the sports field. Considering the size of their profiles (which extended below the water-table) each of these alignments produced only small assemblages of ceramic building material (CBM), broadly datable to the late medieval/post-medieval period, and a few scraps of animal bone and iron. Their upper profiles had suffered a high degree of truncation from later post-medieval drainage ditches, with ceramic drains laid into them. A further ditch in the central part of the site that also extended into the water-table produced a richer assemblage of artefacts, which along with similarly dated CBM, included early medieval pottery and a small assemblage of charred cereal grain and legumes. The remaining lower density of shallow ditches and pits uncovered in the western and southern parts of the site did not produce any artefacts. These potentially significant archaeological remains probably relate to the abbey, either as it was approaching the end of its use or when the abbey
grounds were remodelled after its dissolution in 1539.