Stortford Road, Great Dunmow, Essex

Between the 27th and 30th June 2022, Oxford Archaeology East carried out archaeological trial trenching on the site of a proposed development off Stortford Road, Great Dunmow, Essex on behalf of Vistry East. A total of 16 trenches measuring 30m long by 2m wide were investigated in advance of the submission of a planning application.
Despite the evaluation area being immediately to the south of Roman Stane Street, as well as Iron Age and medieval settlement activity previously identified by Pre-Construct Archaeology in 2020, a low density of archaeological remains was uncovered during the works. A small number of features (five in total) were found in three of the sixteen trenches, all located within the northern half of the field. All the features were undated with the exception of a ditch terminus in Trench 11, which contained a varied assemblage of early medieval pottery, animal bone, oyster shell and metalworking waste. The remaining thirteen trenches produced no archaeological remains.