Monument record BCG 026 - Medieval Moat and Priory: Nunnery Mount and land adjoining Great Bricett Church, Great Bricett (BCG 026)

June-December 2016: Magnometer survey in Nunnery mount and land adjancent to great Bricett Church.
Garden North of Church: A strong linear feature crossed the site which appears on the 1883 OS map as a dashed line indicating either a path or a boundary. In the western third of the plot, it is evident that noise levels are generally high. Excavations in the 20th century revealed foundations of chapels extending into this area (plan by PGM Dickinson 1957 in the church) and these could be partly responsible for this ‘noise’, but there is not enough detail for this to be diagnostic of any particular building or structure. No evidence was, however, found of the cloister and its associated structures as hypothesised by Dickinson.
Churchyard: The intention of the churchyard survey was to establish whether the Dickinson plan of the church, showing chapels extending to the south of the chancel, could be validated. However, as anticipated, ferrous material in the churchyard obscured any subtle detail. The strong striping and polar response strip to the north of the churchyard was caused by the church roof's iron guttering. Gravestones, manhole covers and services accounted for the other ferrous responses. The cluster of iron responses in the eastern half of the output was from modern gravestones where metal dowelling is used to lock headstones to their bases.
Nunnery Mount:Outside the Mount, the pentagonal enclosure is clear, although the line of the north eastern side is obscured by responses from fencing and buildings. Up to recent times the enclosure was open ditches and it is apparent that much ferrous debris is in their fill, particularly the southern arm, probably from scrap farm machinery and the like. To the north, two linears running NW and NE are the lines of former field boundaries. In the southwest quadrant, a former field boundary runs southwest to northeast. Crossing the southwest quadrant field boundary linear is one well-defined right-angled response line, which is probably a ditch. Alongside it is an irregular, broader and less well defined linear, whose line is part-filled in by a ferrous response. Rather than a single feature, it could be a small number of separate response areas. The ditch line is unusual and suggests that it is going round one side of a feature, which may be part obscured by the assumed later field boundary. Confidence in this interpretation is not high, though. (S1)