Wheathill Test Pits March 2009 written by Mick James, edited by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews The Romano-British Settlement in the Hawthorn Hill area The following note is intended to inform the reader of what is known about a Romano-British settlement that existed in this area nineteen hundred years ago and state how the recent test pit excavations have contributed to our knowledge. What did we already know about the site? 1908 Percival Westell, the owner of 117 Wilbury Road and, after 1915, curator of Letchworth Museum, found Roman pottery in his garden. 1928 Miss June Stone found a Roman cameo depicting the head of Medusa in the field just to the rear of 117 Wilbury Road. 1930 These discoveries prompted Percival Westell to conduct an investigation of the field behind his house (now Wheathill). He discovered seven pits or ditches with a considerable number of Roman artefacts. These features seem to occur in the plots later occupied by 22, 26, 31, 33 and 41 Wheathill, with another under the pathway alongside the road. The artefacts recovered included 2210 pieces of pottery of many types, a bronze brooch, a bone pin, parts of quernstones for grinding corn, oyster shells, 2 tesserae (mosaic tiles), an iron knife blade, part of a glass vessel, a lead disc, animal bone and teeth, a ram’s horn, building tiles and some fragments of locally made bricks all dating from the Roman period. They clearly demonstrated that a settlement existed here around AD 100. Percival Westell published a brief account of his findings in the Transactions of the East Herts Archaeological Society. Because the discoveries were made in a field called Hawthorn Hill, this is the name given to the settlement, even if the modern road names are in slightly different places. 1940s on Chance finds of pottery were still being made in the field by the local children. 1955 The bungalows in Wheathill were built. Roman features are found whilst digging the house foundations and service trenches in nos 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 35 and 41, extending the known area of the settlement. Again lots of Roman pottery was found. Some Early Iron Age (750-400 BC) pottery was also found. This is strange because no Middle or Late Iron Age pottery was found, possibly indicating that the site was abandoned for some time until the Roman period. Roman coins were found in nos 31, 33, 41, 43, a bone-handled knife at 35 and a burial at 28. Roman law forbade the burial of adults inside settlements, so this suggests that 28 lay just outside the settlement. There may well be further burials in the area to the south and east of no 28. 1986 Mr Judd of no 35 Wheathill took animal bone and Roman pottery to Letchworth Museum. This probably came from a rubbish pit. Testpits of 2009 – Objectives and findings The Norton Community Archaeology Project wanted to excavate at Wheathill for a number of reasons : ·It constitutes a major part of our research into the pattern of settlement throughout the whole of the Norton parish. It looks as if farmstead (or bigger) settlements were located on each hilltop in the Letchworth area during the Roman period (AD 43-411). Others are known to have existed at Caslon Way, Archers Way and a number of other places in the Garden City. ·We wanted to find out how far the settlement spread as this would give us a better idea of its status (was it just a single farm or a whole village?). ·We hoped to find an undisturbed feature and structural remains which would enable us to identify the types of activity and buildings on the site. ·Finally, we wished to add further to the information which would help us to date the site. We particularly hoped to find more Iron Age pottery either to confirm that there was a gap in occupation of several centuries or to provide evidence that it continued after 400 BC for a thousand years until the end of the Roman period.
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