Fieldwalking and Metal Detecting at Oxburgh Hall, Oxborough, Norfolk Phase 1: Thornhams and Golts fields (9409 and 2111)

During September and October 2021, Oxford Archaeology East supported volunteers in carrying out a fieldwalking and metal detecting survey on the Golts and Thornhams fields, to the south of Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, as part of a community archaeology project commissioned by the National Trust.
The fieldwork was carried out over a c. 17ha area that previously formed part of Oxburgh Hall Park. The surveyed fields came under arable cultivation during the Second World War, but are now becoming reintegrated into the Oxburgh
Hall Estate under the custodianship of the National Trust.
The systematic survey recovered a finds assemblage consisting of metalwork, pottery, worked and burnt flint, glass, clay tobacco pipe, ceramic building material, stone, animal bone and oyster shell, with artefacts ranging in date
from Early Neolithic to modern. The most notable finds include a La Tène Type 1C brooch dated c. 400‐300 BC and a Colchester one‐piece brooch dated c. AD 25‐75.
Two concentrations of Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age struck and burnt flint were identified across the surveyed fields, which may relate to the location of sub‐surface archaeological features. The remaining component of the finds assemblage suggests that human activity at the site was likely small‐scale and of a transient nature between the Iron Age and Anglo‐Saxon periods, and that the area comprised exclusively agricultural land or parkland from the medieval period to the modern day.