St. Matthew's Primary School, Norfolk Street, Cambridge.

On the 28th and 29th or October 2008, Oxford Archaeology East carried out an archaeological evaluation on the site of St. Matthew's Primary School, Cambridge. 31.50m of trenching was opened at the south end of the site on the only piece of ground not occupied by buildings or tarmac. The site was found to have been heavily disturbed by probable 19th Century 'coprolite mining' which was a practice of comprehensively digging over fields to quarry phosphates. Large, parallel straight edged features were visible across the whole excavated area, having removed or 'up-ended' the natural geological sands and gravels. The remainder of the soil sequence above the quarry strips consisted entirely of made ground. Archaeological features which truncated the quarries were encountered and contained diagnostic 19th Century pottery. A half-metre thick 19th Century deposit sealed the quarrying activity, on top of which was a further layer of hard make-up material associated with the building of the school in the latter half of the 20th Century. Above this was a reinstated subsoil and topsoil.