Bottling Wood,Wigan, Greater Manchester. Archaeological Investigation.

In March 2010, Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) was commissioned by Axis,
acting on behalf of The Environment Agency, to carry out a programme of
archaeological investigation in Bottling Wood, Wigan (centred on NGR SD 58820
06650). The archaeological investigation was required as part of a scheme of flood
defence works that are being carried out by The Environment Agency along the
course of the River Douglas. An element of this scheme allows for the construction of
a dam and associated infrastructure on the site of a former settlement in Bottling
Wood, which developed as an industrial hamlet during the nineteenth century.
However, the hamlet formed part of a designated Unhealthy Area that was outlined
for clearance in the late 1920s by the Insanitary Houses and Conversions Committee
of Wigan Borough Council, and was ultimately demolished in 1927-8.
In 2009, several trial pits were excavated in Bottling Wood for geo-technical purposes
associated with the flood alleviation scheme. These excavations were monitored by an
archaeological watching brief, which recorded some shallow foundations and the
buried remains of floors of several workers’ cottages. Following consultation with the
County Archaeologist for Greater Manchester, who provides advice to Wigan Council
on archaeological matters, it was concluded that these remains were of sufficient
archaeological significance to merit a further programme of investigation to mitigate
their ultimate loss as part of the proposed construction of the dam. It was
recommended that, in the first instance, an informal access track that lay along a
terrace cut into the slope of the valley in Bottling Wood should be subject to
archaeological ‘strip and record’ excavation to expose and record any buried remains
of the workers’ housing in the area.
The excavation was carried out by OA North in March 2010, and an area measuring