TEST PITS
ARCHAEOLOGICAL TEST PITS IN BINGHAM
List of Test Pits
LMCB03
63, ST MARY’S ROAD
SUMMARY
- In 1586 the site on which LMCB03 was dug was farmed by Brian Richmond. His cottage was likely to be close to Church Street (or Church Gate as it was then). The area around the pit may have been pasture or arable.
- In 1776 the land had become freehold and was part of a large area for which no record is given in the 1776 estate survey.
- In 1841 the land was orchard owned by William Pilgrim, but from 1844 until 2002 the land was owned by the occupants of No 7 Church Street, who have always been doctors. Until the 1950s they were general practitioners whose surgery was in the house. Part of the garden was sold off for building in 1998 and became the garden of No 63 St Mary’s Road.
- The test pit was sited a couple of metres from the new garage. The top 45 cm consists of topsoil with a downward increasing amount of building material most of which was debris that had been generated during the building of the adjacent bungalow. However, there was a wide range of artefacts included with the building materials. Pottery from the early 18th C, 19th C gas light fittings, broken medicine bottles, plant labels, plastic bags, oyster shells and plastic-coated copper wire were all found together.
- The topsoil was laid on what is likely to be a wide area used for depositing domestic rubbish generated in properties sited where No 7 Church Street now is. The topsoil is most likely to have included part of this rubbish deposit, dug out when the garage was being built and then re-deposited.
- The rubbish deposit is about 70 cm thick and was dug to a depth of 120 cm where it lay on brown clay thought to be the original lake deposit. A thin, disturbed layer above the brown clay is thought to have been the weathered top. There was no sign of a layer of topsoil on this weathered top, which might indicate that the rubbish here was deposited in a pit dug through the topsoil. The rubbish was mixed with good topsoil throughout.
- The rubbish included layers of coal and ash and some burnt objects, but it seems that this was not the site of a fire. The pottery artefacts fell within the date range early 18th to mid 20th centuries, though there was a single sherd of medieval pottery. Among the closely dated objects were whole medicine bottles used by W. Seaton, a chemist in Bingham from 1926 to 1953. Several rusted metal objects and blue poison bottles were thought to be medical. Some of the 20th C pottery and the ceramic objects from a doll’s house give an indication that this was well-off middle class household. It appears that the use of the rubbish dump may have ceased in the mid 20th C.
- There was nothing from the pit to reflect on any activity here in the 16th and 17th centuries. The 18th C pottery may have been heirlooms broken much later, so it cannot be said with any assurance that the record in this pit goes back much further than mid to late 18th C.
Click here for a detailed account of the pit