Middlewich Eastern Bypass, Cheshire Archaeological Evaluation

In July and August 2003 Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) undertook an archaeological evaluation on behalf of Sinclair Knight Merz Ltd (SKM) as part of a Stage 3 DMRB Environmental Assessment of the impact of the proposed Middlewich Eastern Bypass. The area of the proposed route under archaeological investigation starts at SJ 713656 and ends at SJ 723638 to the south-east of Middlewich.

The evaluation comprised a programme of trial trenching and was informed by earlier investigations. In March 2003 a magnetometer survey was undertaken along the route corridor (GSB 2003) wherein dense concentrations of potentially archaeologically significant anomalies were located in Areas 6 and 9. Other features of possible interest were also seen in Areas 1, 3 and 4. Features or areas of archaeological potential have also been identified from a desk-based assessment carried out by Oxford Archaeology (OAU 2001). These features within the proposed route corridor were earmarked for trial trenching together with those from the geophysical survey in order to provide a maximum coverage of 5% of the total area to be impacted by the proposed route. The evaluation originally comprised a series of 54 evaluation trenches measuring 20m in length and 2m wide, designed to determine the nature and extent of the surviving archaeological resource. These were located on features of possible significance identified from previous investigations.