Monument record EWL 013 - Roman Ditches and Medieval ditches on Land off Gardeners Walk

November 1999: Trenched evaluation revealed ditches containing Roman pottery. It appears that these ditches were part of a medieval open field system (S1).
2001: Excavation of three ditches of Rom date, one of which is likely to represent part of an enclosure. Finds were sparse but well distributed and mainly date from the first to the mid third centuries with a few prehistoric sherds and flints present as residual finds. A significant depth of subsoil had accumulated since the Rom period despite the flat local topography. Med finds were restricted to three metal objects recovered from the subsoil spoil heap duirng metal detecting and two pottery sherds, also from the subsoil. There were no indications of the medieval field system suggested by documentary sources (S2).


An evaluation was carried out on a proposed residential development site close to the village centre and some 120 to 150m to the east of the recorded site of a Roman kiln and other settlement evidence. The trial trenches revealed a series of ditches containing Roman pottery and some unstratified Roman pottery and tile fragments. Most of the ditches were in the southern part of the area and four of them were parallel to each other and very close together. This suggests that that they are connected with the narrow open-field strips that are shown on a 16th-century map of the area. The Roman artefacts may therefore be residual in later ditches that were excavated to demarcate the open field strips. However these finds do confirm that there was a substantial Roman site on the western side of Elmswell.
Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 1999 (S3)