Rymes Reedbed, Holme, Huntingdonshire Wetland Creation Project (Great Fen Project)

The evaluation aimed to locate and sample the original course of the Medieval Yaxley Lode (Jackslada) in the north of the site and to evaluate the potential for archaeological remains to be present along the western edge of Whittlesey Mere. This comprised the machine-digging of five test-pits, the cleaning and recording of a section of a modern dyke, a borehole survey and the excavation of a trial trench. The presence of alluvial deposits in BH4 and BH5 confirmed the course of the Medieval Yaxley Lode as indicated from the desk study. However, these deposits were heavily truncated and found to be completely truncated in the dyke and trench sections making an exact plot of the former course impossible. The test pits excavated on the western margins of the pre-existing Whittlesey Mere recorded the significant thickness of Upper Peat in this part of the site, overlying and protecting Barroway Drove Beds and a Lower Peat sequence which retains the potential to yield buried surfaces and archaeology from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and early Bronze Age periods. The borehole survey has resulted in a detailed picture of how the environment across area has changed over the past 6000 years and provides a valuable addition to the body of work on the environmental history of this site. No archaeological features were identified.