Carleton Rode, Norfolk (NGR TM 115925)
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Carleton Rode is today a small rural village situated less than 16 miles south west of Norwich in Norfolk. The settlement now falls into two distinct parts: a small cluster around the church which includes a primary school, Church Farm and the old and new rectories, and a more attenuated arrangement of housing which extends for more than 0.5km along two sinuous roads (Flaxlands and King Street) intersecting at a cross-roads on the western margin of the settlement. The area to the west of the approximately north-south oriented King Street is shown on the tithe map as a large common, and this part of Carleton Rode thus appears to be common-edge settlement, which would be considered most likely, on the basis of field-work in other parts of this region, to be of 12th to 14th century date.
Local Information Websites
2007
Thirteen test pits were dug in Carleton Rode from which several observations could be made. Four pits (CRO07/6, CRO07/7, CRO07/9 and CRO07/11) produced Thetford ware (850-1100AD), all of which were in the Flaxlands/King Street common-edge part of the settlement. All six of the excavated pits in this part of the village containing medieval pottery dating to between c. 1200 and c. 1400. Of these, CRO07/6, CRO07/7, CRO07/ 9 and CRO07/11 all produced substantial quantities likely to indicate settlement in the near vicinity, with CRO07/9 revealing a beam-slot containing twelfth century pottery, sealed by undisturbed deposits containing no pottery later than c. 1400AD. CRO07/9 was the only site to produce any post-1400AD material, yielding just four small sherds (14g total assemblage weight) of Cistercian ware (1475-1700), which could equally well date to the early post-medieval period. Post-medieval pottery was recovered from five of the six pits in this part of the village (the exception being the easternmost, CRO07/5). A very different pattern was noted from the seven pits excavated around the church, which together produced a total of just one sherd of pre-1700AD date, possibly indicative of medieval manuring, but highly suggestive of an absence of settlement in this area until the post-medieval period, when CRO07/1 and CRO07/4 produced modest quantities of glazed red earthenwares (c. 1550-C19thAD). Although investigation at Carelton Rode is still at a very early stage, the evidence does seem at present to point towards the presence of an interrupted row medieval settlement near the common (which may or may not be contemporary) which probably originated in the later Anglo-Saxon period and which all but ceased to exist in the last couple of centuries of the middle ages before being re-colonised in the post-medieval period; while the area around the church was unoccupied, possibly used as arable, until quite recently. Further work will be carried out in Carleton Rode in 2008.
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
2008
Another twelve test pits were excavated in Carleton Rode ) in 2008, bringing the total to twenty-five. The evidence from these very closely mirrored that from 2007, supporting the inferences made then regarding the development of the settlement. The only entirely new discovery was a shallow cut feature which contained pottery of late Iron Age date in the upper fill and was tentatively interpreted as the drip gully of a round house. Otherwise the data echoed that of 2007: no Roman material was found in any of the pits, while pottery of late Anglo-Saxon date was once again found only in the Flaxlands area of the present village. Nearly all of the pits in this area produced significant quantities of post-Conquest pottery. The spatial limits of the settlement in 1100-1400 AD appear to be marked by a sharp decrease in the number of sherds recovered between CRO/08/11 and CRO/08/7 (from nine in CRO/08/10 and twenty-seven in CRO/08/11 to just one in CRO/08/7 and CRO/08/8). This seems likely to mark the edge of village and the beginning of the non-settlement land (probably the arable fields), which encompassed the area around the church which has still produced only three sherds of pottery from nine test pits. The marked decline, noted in 2007, in activity by the fifteenth century is also clearly evident from the 2008 data, with a total of just seven sherds dating to c. 1400-1550 AD recovered from the twenty-five excavated sites.
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
2009
Another nine test pits were excavated in Carleton Rode in 2009, bringing the total to thirty-four. These included one additional pit in the village near the church, three in the Flaxlands area of the village and five in the gardens of a string of outlying farms along Rode Lane and Ash Lane, c. 1km south-west of the church and up to 3km south of Flaxlands. Today, settlement in this part of Carleton Rode parish takes the form of an attenuated interrupted row, with farms or cottages both sides of the road interspersed with paddocks and larger areas of field.
As in previous years, no pottery of Roman or early/middle Anglo-Saxon date was found in any of the excavated pits in Carleton Rode parish, suggesting that the excavated areas are unlikely to have seen intensive use during these periods. Likewise, no further pottery of high medieval date was found in the pit excavated near the church, supporting previous inferences that this area was not occupied until well after the end of the medieval period. By way of contrast, however, it was particularly interesting to note that two of the pits in the Rode Lane/Ash Lane area (CRO/09/04 and CRO/09/06 produced pottery of late Anglo-Saxon date, suggesting that this part of the present settlement pattern is likely to have been in existence before the Norman Conquest. Four of the five pits in this area (CRO/09/03-CRO/09/06 inclusive) also produced pottery of twelfth to fourteenth century date, suggesting settlement here was sustained after the Conquest and increased in intensity in the high medieval period. CRO/09/04 and CRO/09/05 in particular produced in excess of five sherds from undisturbed medieval levels, highly likely to indicate settlement in the immediate vicinity. Only one of these pits produced pottery dating to the post fourteenth century medieval period, however, and this was limited to a single 6g sherd of late medieval transitional ware. It seems from this that the marked post-fourteenth century contraction in settlement, noted in the Flaxlands area from test pit excavations in 2007 and 2008, was replicated in the Rode Lane/Ash Lane settlements which appear to have been almost completely deserted. Revival here is clearly apparent in the post-medieval period, however, with all pits in this area producing glazed red earthenwares and other wares dating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
2010
Sixteen test pits were excavated in Carleton Rode in 2009, bringing the total to fifty. These extended the HEFA excavations far out into the landscape, with new areas under investigation for the first time including Hargate, c. 1km south of the church, Upgate Street, nearly 2km west of the church and several farms along Rode Lane and The Turnpike, respectively c.1 and 2kms south-west of the church.
As in previous years, virtually no pottery of Roman date was found (just a single sherd, 3g in weight, from CRO/10/3 at Hargate). The first evidence for any activity of early/middle Anglo-Saxon date was, however, found, from CRO/10/6, just south of the cross-roads in Flaxlands. It is interesting to note that this is one part of the landscape which has consistently produced material of later Anglo-Saxon date, so the 2010 find may hint at an earlier precursor for settlement on this site. Continuous occupation is not presently evidenced, as there is a gap of at least 150 years in the pottery sequence, although of course any argument based on negative evidence from test pit excavations must be regarded with extreme caution.
The 2010 test pits also produced clear evidence for the origins of Upgate Street in the high medieval period, where both pits produced several sherds of pottery. All three pits at Hargate also produced medieval pottery, although with only one or two sherds from each pit, it is difficult to be certain whether this relates to settlement or some less intensive use of the landscape. Both Upgate and Hargate seem to have been less badly affected by late medieval shrinkage than the main area of late Anglo-Saxon and high medieval settlements at Flaxlands which, as noted before saw a considerable reduction in activity as represented by pottery finds.
2010 - May
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
2010 - June
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
2011
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
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