Land off Station Road / North End, Higham Ferrers, Northants.

In December 1995 an evaluation was carried out on land owned by Charles Wells Ltd. situated in the south-east corner of the field already investigated as part of an archaeolgical project jointly funded by The Duchy of Lancaster and English Heritage (OAU forthcoming), to the east of Kings Meadow Lane, Higham Ferrers. The evaluation was centered on an area already stripped as part of the previous excavation and included the stripping of three evaluation trenches and selective excavation of late features in order to gain some undersatnding of the extent and character of the deposits within the stripped area. A probabale medieaval building, possibly a squatter dwelling on a part of the common waste, was investigated along with asscoated drains, a stone-lined pit and an oven. From the scacity of evidence near the A6 (Station Road/North End), to the east of the site, there do not appear to be any other medieval or post-medieval houses fronting the road. The line of the original Kings Manor Lane was discovered to the south of the site. The medieval features were cut into a series of deposits comprising pits, ditches, a possible 'sunken featured building' and amorphous layers, which from the amount of St Neots Ware within these features, appear to date from the late Saxon / early medieval period. The earliest feature on the site is the Anglo-Saxon enclosure ditch, the line of which appears to have been used as an open field boundary durng the medieval period, until the fields were enclosed in 1839.