Monument record MNL 502 - Smoke House Inn, Beck Row, Bronze Age (Mesolithic-Bronze Age)

Multi-period site with evidence of Bronze Age occupation and finds, as well as extensive Iron Age and Roman areas, Also some residual Mesolithic flintwork, (S1-S3)

See also Iron Age, Roman and Post Medieval Records.

An excavation was carried out in advance of a housing development on land to the north of the Smoke House Inn, west of Skeltons Drove.
The earliest phase of activity on the site was represented by an occupation or buried soil layer which contained Beaker pottery of the Early Bronze Age. A series of ditch systems are largely datable to the early Roman period, although some, containing Iron Age artefacts, seem to belong to an earlier enclosure system. Probably contemporary with the latter are two small ring-trenches (c.5-7m in diameter) which may represent structures.
Also Roman in date was a large (c.30m x c.7m) aisled building (Fig. 10 ). This had at least two structural phases, both of which seem to be associated with agricultural use, although possibly not serving the same function. In both phases there was an aisled building with a compacted chalk floor; a layer of burnt debris between the two floor layers probably relates to the destruction of the first recognised building phase. A number of the second phase post-holes contain broken millstones, perhaps remnants of an earlier building function, and there are a number of gullies, or possible flues, within the floor of the second phase must relate to the function of the structure.
Further Roman ditch systems belong to a phase that post-dates the aisled buildings. A small number of post-medieval features were also identified, including field boundary ditches which relate to the more recent history of the site. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 1999 (S3).