An Archaeological Evaluation at 7 St Austins Street Shrewsbury

An archaeological field evaluation was carried out in June 2005 by the Archaeology Service, Shropshire County Council, on the former Central Garage site, 7 St Austin Street, Shrewsbury. There are proposals to erect a block of flats and extend a restaurant on the site of 5-7 St Austin’s Street. The proposed development site lies within the historic core of the medieval town and in an area that is likely to have been in existence in Anglo-Saxon times and which continued to be developed throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods.

It was thought that significant archaeological remains dating to these periods might survive here, and a programme of archaeological work was required as part of the planning consent for the site. This programme comprised initially of this field evaluation. A desk-based assessment of cottages behind 5-6 St Austin’s Street had previously been carried out.

A single trench was excavated across the frontage of 7 St Austin’s Street, revealing a series of pits of Anglo-Saxon date sealed by a yard soil of late medieval and early post-medieval date.

A programme of further archaeological work is recommended should groundworks associated with the development exceed 0.8m in depth below the present ground surface.

Introduction

In 2005 there was a proposal to erect a block of flats and extend a restaurant at 5-7 St Austin’s Street, Shrewsbury, Shropshire (NGR SJ 4882 1261). The proposed development site lay within the historic core of the medieval town and in an area that is likely to have been occupied in Anglo-Saxon times and which continued to be developed throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods.

In view of the archaeological potential of the site, it was made a condition of planning permission that a programme of archaeological work should accompany the development. The Archaeology Service was commissioned by Morris Property Ltd. to carry out a field evaluation in June 2005 as part of this programme of archaeological work.

The aim of the field evaluation was to provide information that would enable an informed and reasonable decision to be taken regarding the archaeological provision for the development.

2 THE EVALUATION

2.1 Previous Archaeological Work

A desk-based archaeological assessment of the rear of the proposed development site has been undertaken. (Morriss, R K, 2003). The study area also lies within the area covered by the Shrewsbury Urban Archaeological Database and Assessment.

There has been no previous fieldwork undertaken on the site, although a watching brief was maintained in 2001 on water main renewal work in the street outside the study area (Hannaford, 2001).

It has been suggested that the line of Barker Street, St Austin’s Street and St Austin’s Friars may be one of the more ancient thoroughfares in Shrewsbury and may date to the Saxon period. In the period after the Norman Conquest, the proposed development site lay within the area known as Romaldesham (first recorded in 1155). The reference suggests that at this time the area was not fully built up (Gelling, 2004, p21). It has been assumed that the area took its name from the chapel of St Romald (Shropshire County Sites and Monuments Record [SMR] no. 62574), located within St Chad's parish on the east side of Barker Street. However, the reverse may be the case – i.e. the chapel’s dedication to St Romald was derived from the place name. The name “Rumwaldeshamm”, which means “Romald’s settlement in the river loop”, may even have been an early name for Shrewsbury, before the building of fortifications led to the town acquiring the status of “byrig” (Gelling, 2004, pp21-2).

Somewhere in the area behind Barker Street and St Austin’s Street is thought to lie the site of Blakes Hall (SMR no. 01537). The site of this medieval hall was once thought to lie on the site of St Chad’s vicarage, though more recent opinion seems to favour a location at the bottom of the hill on the west side of Barker Street. Red sandstone walls of probable medieval date seen on the west side of Barker Street in the 2000 watching brief on water main renewal (Hannaford, H R, 2001, p6-7) may be associated with Blake Hall.

2.2 The Site Evaluation

The study area
The study area comprises a former garage site, a brick building of 20th-century date on the St Austin’s Street frontage, probably originally constructed as part of the Cock & Sons tannery. The floor of the garage consisted of thick reinforced concrete, with a vehicle inspection pit covered with steel plates let into the floor in the western half of the building.

The Trial Trench
A trial trench 5m long by 2m wide was excavated within the study area. The reinforced concrete garage floor (2), up to 0.25m thick, had been broken and removed from the trench prior to the excavations. The over burden (4) was excavated with a mechanical mini-excavator to a depth of between 0.1m and 0.4m, exposing a dark grey, organic, silty loam (5) which produced a quantity of decayed animal bone (not kept) and a quantity of late medieval and early post-medieval glazed pottery. The surface of this loam was examined by hand and then the deposit was removed with the mini-excavator, being periodically examined by hand. This loam deposit was homogenous in composition and had not been disturbed by intrusive features. Excavation continued by machine to a depth of 0.8m below the floor level. At this point excavation continued by hand.

The lower 0.15m of the loam layer (4) was removed by hand. No further finds were made from this layer. In the northwest corner of the trench a patch of this loam layer contained a number of cobbles and fragments of iron slag. Elsewhere the loam layer was removed to a depth of 0.95m below floor level, exposing the natural subsoil (18), a buff-coloured sandy silt.

A number of pits and features (7, 9, 15, 17, & 20) were seen to have been cut into the natural subsoil. The largest of these (7) was about 2.1m long by at least 0.7m wide and 0.36m deep. The feature extended beyond the southern edge of the excavation trench, where it had been cut away by a modern vehicle inspection pit (3). The feature was filled with a dark grey silty loam, containing charcoal flecks, decayed animal bone, metal-working slag and 14 shards of Anglo-Saxon Stafford ware pottery. Another pit (9) was filled with a similar material, also containing bone, slag and a further 7 shards of Stafford ware pottery. , A smaller feature (17) also produced a single Stafford ware shard from a similar fill. A shallow linear gully (13) cut across the tops of the fills of the two larger pits (7 & 9) and its fill also produced a single shard of Stafford ware. A small shallow pit (15) produced no finds, and two features (20 & 22), which contained identical fills to the other sampled features, were recorded but not sampled themselves.

2.3 Discussion

The desk-based research (Morriss, 2003) suggested that the line of Barker Street/St Austin’s Street/St Austin’s Friars may have been an important thoroughfare in the Anglo-Saxon period. The current evaluation does not necessarily confirm this, but it has demonstrated that the area was occupied in this period.

The excavation of the test trench revealed a number of features of Anglo-Saxon date (9th-11th century) cut into the surface of the natural subsoil. The dating of these features was provided by the pottery contained in their fills, which was exclusively Stafford-ware. This pottery is known to have been produced at kilns excavated in Stafford in the 1980s, and the peak of production at these kilns has been dated on stratigraphic grounds and by archaeomagnetism to the 10th century AD (McCarthy & Brooks, 1988, p204-5).

The type of feature found appears to be rubbish pits, containing a mixture of domestic (the pottery and butchered animal bone) and industrial (the metal slag) refuse. The linear feature cut into the tops of these pits may possibly have been structural – possibly the remains of a beam slot.

The presence of features in the study area dating to the Anglo-Saxon period is highly significant for the understanding of the early development of Shrewsbury. In 1975 Martin Carver, drawing on the meagre evidence then available, came to the conclusion that the Anglo-Saxon town was confined to “a narrow strip of high ground” in the centre of the town (Carver, 1978, p250). More recent research and fieldwork within the river loop, notably the excavations on the Owen Owen store site in 1991 and on Beeches Lane in 2002, have revealed that Anglo-Saxon occupation within the river loop was more widespread. The current field evaluation has added to this growing body of evidence , and confirmed that the northwest side of the town within the river loop was also occupied in the Anglo-Saxon period. The pottery and animal bone finds from the excavated features indicate that this was domestic occupation, but the presence of metal working slag shows that industrial processes were also taking place here.

During the medieval and early post-medieval periods a homogenous loam built up behind the St Austin Street frontage, sealing the Anglo-Saxon features and deposits. This in turn was sealed by a layer of demolition rubble, containing red sandstone and 18th-19th century brick and tile beneath the garage floor. This demolition rubble is likely to have come from the buildings known from the map evidence to have stood on the St Austin’s Street frontage in the post-medieval period,

3 REFERENCES AND SOURCES CONSULTED

Baker, N J, Lawson, J B, Maxwell, R, and Smith, J T, 1993: Further Work on Pride Hill, Shrewsbury, TSAHS LXVIII 1993, 1-64
Baker, N J, forthcoming: Shrewsbury: an Archaeological Assessment, English Heritage
Barker, P A, 1962: Excavations on the Town Wall, Roushill, Shrewsbury, Medieval Archaeology, V, 1961, pp181-210
Bassett, S, 1992: Anglo-Saxon Shrewsbury and its Churches, Midland History, 16, (1991), 1-23
Burghley, 1575: map of Shrewsbury
Carver, M 0 H, 1978: Early Shrewsbury: An Archaeological Definition in 1975, TSAS, Vol. LIX Part III, 1973/74, pp225-263
Carver, M 0 H, (ed.), 1983: Two Town Houses in Medieval Shrewsbury, TSAS, 61 (1977-8)
Gelling, M, 2004: The Place-Names of Shropshire, Part Four, EP-NS vol LXXX
Hannaford, H R, 2001: An Archaeological Watching Brief on the Shrewsbury South Central (Phase 3) Water Main Renewal, Shropshire County Council Archaeology Service Report No. 199
Hobbs, J L, 1954: Shrewsbury Street Names, Shrewsbury
McCarthy, M R, & Brooks, C M, 1988: Medieval Pottery in Britain AD 900-1600, Leicester
Morriss, R K, 2003: 3-4 Claremont Court, Rear of 5-6 St Austin’s Street, Shrewsbury, Shropshire. An Architectural Analysis & Archaeological Desk-Top Study, Mercian Heritage Series No. 188
Ordnance Survey 1882: Shrewsbury Town Plan 1:500 1st edition
Rocque, J, 1746: map of Shrewsbury
Speed, J, 1610: map of Shrewsbury

ABBREVIATIONS

AOD Above Ordnance Datum
ASD Above Site Datum
DoE Department of the Environment
OS Ordnance Survey
PRO Public Record Office
SMR County Sites and Monuments Record, Shirehall, Shrewsbury
SRRC Shropshire Records and Research Centre, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury
TSAHS Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society
TSAS Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society

4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writer would like to thank Morris Property and its staff for their assistance with the field evaluation. Also Alison Hosker for her help with the on-site work and the processing of the finds from the excavation. Thanks also to Dr Nigel Baker for his comments on the Stafford ware pottery.