Monument record CHD 079 - Chediston Green historic settlement

Indicative area of the historic settlement surrounding Chediston Green, defined from historic maps, the locations of listed buildings and artefact scatters (S1, S2, S3).

In eastern Suffolk c.2km west of Halesworth on clay and alluvial deposits between 19m and 46m OD. The village today comprises two quite separate elements. One settlement cluster surrounds the church on the north side of the valley of a small tributary of the River Blyth while, 0.5km to the N.W. on higher ground away from the stream valley, Chediston Green consists of a string of properties along both sides of a former green, all set well back from the road which bisects the green along its long axis. Several outlying farms are located within 500m of these two main settlement foci, with others further away within the parish. Local amateur archaeologists have been active in the parish (although they have given less attention to the village itself), having identified and excavated a Roman settlement site immediately beyond the eastern limits of the present settlement around the church; made numerous finds of prehistoric and Roman date during field-walking and metal detecting elsewhere in the parish (pers comm. Gilbert Burroughes); and discovered and excavated a late 15th century kiln site in Chediston Green (ibid.), near the site of HEFA test pit CHE06/10.
9 test pits were excavated in 2007, bringing the total excavated in 2006-7 to 21. Roman pottery has now been discovered on both Chediston and Chediston Green, although only in very small quantities (just one sherd from each pit), which is surprising considering the close proximity of test pit CHE06/7 to a known Roman settlement site. Two test pits near the church in Chediston have produced pottery of late Saxon date, with CHE06/2 yielding four sherds of Thetford Ware from an undisturbed level which also contained burnt daub (tentatively interpreted as part of an oven or possibly a burnt building) and lay directly on top of a floor surface cut by a post hole. This was interpreted as the site of a structure of some sort near the church in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Only four of the test pits around the church produced pottery of 11th-late 14th century date, and none of these produced more than one or two sherds, and this is a pattern which persists into the post-Black Death period, perhaps indicating that 11th-16th century settlement here was of very limited extent. The earliest evidence for activity at Chediston Green dates to the 1100-1400 AD, with a substantial number of Early Medieval Ware sherds (33) recovered from undisturbed levels 40-80cm below the surface, from CHE06/8. This activity predates the production of pottery in this part of the settlement by at least a century or so. CHE06/9, 10 and 11 all produced 15th-16th century pottery, mostly in small amounts, contemporary with production at the nearby kiln site adjacent to CHE06/10, although notably no pottery from this period was recovered from the test pit at Ash Farm (S4).