Ipswich UAD child record record IPS 1057 - Building 4081

This sunken featured building had been burnt down leaving extensive carbonised remains of its timbers. It had been partially cut away by EMED sunken featured building 2140 to the south, and its eastern end was truncated by later pits (1937, 2865). It was 3.4m wide, at the west end, 1.4m deep, and a maximum of 3.5m of its length survived. A thin band of sand, gravel and clay (4372) below the burning in layer 2929, formed the floor surface on the base of the pit.
The walls were of regularly spaced posts set into foundation trenches on the north (4371), west (4370) and south (4362) sides. These walls appear to have been a replacement for earlier walls of individual post hole construction as two postholes (4540, 4541) were cut by the west wall foundation trench and one (4542) by the north trench.
Burning had preserved the bases of most of the wall posts above the floor and the two lowest levels of horizontal planking. The heat of the fire had been intense enough to carbonize the outer faces of the posts and planks, and the un-burnt interior of the posts had rotted away and the subsequent voids had filled with soil.
There were six carbonised posts in the west wall (from south to north: 4230 above posthole 4354, 4294 above 4353, 4293 above 4352, 4292 above 4351, 4291 above 4350, and 4287 above 4338). Two carbonised posts survived in the north wall (4288 above posthole 4339 and 4266 above 4340) and two in the south wall (4232 above 4357, and 4230 above 4454). The lowest course of horizontal planking survived behind the west wall posts , two courses behind the north wall (4285, 4286) and two behind the south wall (4228, 4229).
The largest surviving post was c.20cm square, but it was unclear how much had been burnt away prior to the reduction of wood into charcoal. All the posts had been squared along their back edges, where they joined exterior planking, and the shape of most of the carbonized outer corners were also square. Below floor level, the posts rotted rather than burned and it is unlikely that the shape of the post voids adequately reflected the shape of the posts as the filled voids in soft soil would tend to erode over time.
The maximum thickness recorded for the carbonized wall planking, behind the posts, was 22mm, which is likely to underestimate their original thickness. The width of each plank was 18-20cm.
The lowest 20cm of building fill (2975/4082) comprised burnt debris overlying the cellar floor. Most of the debris was ash and pieces of carbonized planking that had fallen into the pit from the fabric of the building during the fire. The carbonized timber represented only a small proportion of the timber structure most of the wood would have been reduced to ash and small charcoal flecks. Little of the timber was of any value in providing any structural detail, although post 4206, which might represent the collapsed upper portion of the south-west corner post (4230), contained two peg holes, which might indicate how the horizontal wall planks were attached to the posts.
Traces of textile (4265), found within the burnt layer above the floor, had probably been coated in a pitch-like substance, and may have been used as caulking between the wall planks.
Remnants of a circular wicker basket (4093) lay in the south-west corner of the cellar but no associated contents were retrieved.
Above the burnt debris, the pit was back filled with domestic rubbish, (S1).