Monument record NYW 057 - Post Medieval wall and multi period finds from Archaeological test pit excavations in Nayland

Test Pit excavations revealed a post Medieval wall indicatating a former existance of a roomr or porch towards the rear of a 14 to 16th century timber framed building. The majorty of the finds recovered from the test pit ws of pottery ranging in date from Roman, Anglo Saxon, Medieval and Post Medieval period. Lithic implements abd burnt flakes of Later Neolthic to Early Bronze Age was also recovered during the test pit excavations. The results provided new evidence for the development of the area now occupied by the village from the prehistoric period onwards. This appears to have lightly used by humans in the prehistoric period, but in the Roman period a small site, probably a rural settlement was present at the east end of the present village, and a possibly a second site on its west side. No evidence was found for activity in the 5th - 9th centuries AD, but finds of Thetford Ware from a few pits hint at the presence of a limited core of settlement around the present church. The test pit data showed the settlement to have grown rapidly into a large and densely packed nucleated market village or small town after the 11th century, arranged along several streets extending out from the core around the church and along the north sides of the Stour River valley. Nayland continued to expand in density, and by inference wealth, in the later medieval period, transcending regional trends dominated by contraction in rural settlements in this period, with the volume of pottery recovered the richest in the eastern region. In the post-medieval period, the test pit data indicates that the settlement stagnated, as other sites caught up. (S1).