Site Event/Activity record ESF22657 - Watching Brief - Ropers House, High Street, Lavenham

The site was visited on the 15th October 2004 in order to inspect the footings for the extension, which had been excavated by a building contractor. The extension was to the rear of the house (see figure 2). There was no easy access for a machine and the footings had been excavated by hand. A small area of patio, comprising a series of paving slabs, had been lifted. The paving slabs were laid onto a thin layer of sand and mortar, which was directly laid onto the surface of the underlying natural subsoil. The footing was excavated a depth of c.0.4m but did not reveal any buried archaeological deposits or features (see Plate I). The natural subsoil consisted of a dirty orange sand with a high silt content giving it stiff almost clay like properties. The land gently sloped up to the west with the patio, and possibly part of the house, being located in what appeared to be a terrace cutting into the slope and truncating the natural subsoil surface.