The OA East Excavations at Whittington Way, Bishop’s Stortford Education Zone, Hertfordshire

Between 10th October 2019 and 13th March 2020 Oxford Archaeology East (OA East) carried out six areas of excavation (Areas 1-6, totalling c.3.8ha) at Whittington Way, Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. The c.10ha OA East investigation area lay within the c.30ha Bishop Stortford Education Zone development. L-P Archaeology was commissioned to undertake mitigation work within the remaining portion of the development.
The OA East excavations targeted the results of previous evaluation work (in conjunction with geophysical survey) conducted by John Moore Heritage Services, L-P Archaeology and OA East between 2008 and 2019. Areas 1-3 encompassed identified areas of Bronze Age and Late Iron Age/Early Romano-British settlement remains and cultivation furrows which appeared to be centred on a palimpsest of enclosures. Areas 4-6 encompassed less extensive areas of possible later prehistoric and Anglo-Saxon remains identified on the periphery of the OA East investigation area.
These excavations defined distinct areas of Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age habitation which probably represent individual dwellings that were probably related to a group of burnt pits and a group of storage pit like features; one of which contained articulated human remains. After a break in the archaeological record spanning the Middle and Late Iron Age periods, two small enclosed burial grounds were established on this site around the time of the Roman Conquest which contained a single inhumation burial and a number of cremations interred with and without pottery grave goods.
These cemeteries were supplanted by fields of cultivation furrows of a type widely known from the region and usually associated with viticultural or horticultural practice introduced in the Early Roman period. These fields were separated by trackways from an extensive area given over to post-built structures. With a layout suggestive of formal design, these fields and buildings were centred upon a set of ditched enclosures which may have initially incorporated the earlier funerary site into its layout. However, it was soon remodelled into a more extensive complex of ditched enclosures which extended eastwards from Area 2 into that part of the Education Zone investigated by L-P Archaeology. This latter complex produced some evidence for cereal processing and corn drying activity and much of the Romano-British pottery and faunal assemblages recovered from the site. The ceramic evidence determined this site was abandoned around the end of the 1st century AD. The site appears to have lain dormant across the remainder of the Roman period until the establishment of an Anglo-Saxon hall-type structure on its western fringe which produced a quantity of charred cereal grain.
The uncovering of this extensive group of multi-period remains is a significant addition to the local archaeological record which will be more fully explored during the analysis stage of this project.