Little Hallingbury, Essex (NGR TL 503175)
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Little Hallingbury is situated seven miles north east of Harlow in Essex immediately west of the M11 motorway. It is today a sprawling but still very rural settlement, much of which appears to be the result of 20th century expansion and infilling. The medieval church is surrounded by a small cluster of houses including Monksbury Farm. More then 0.5m to the south-east lies a medieval moated site within which is a still-occupied timber-framed farmhouse. The dispersed nature of the pre-modern settlement is hinted at by the presence of several green names, now agglomerated within the semi-continuous spread of settlement but presumed formerly to have been separate. Ribbon development extending for more than a kilometre lies either side of main modern road through the settlement which leads north to the nearby market town of Bishop's Stortford. No archaeological investigation has previously been carried out within the village, although excavations along the line of the M11 have revealed several sites including Roman occupation near to the eastern limits of the modern village of Little Hallingbury (Essex HER 4318).
Local Information Websites
Little Hallingbury Village History Society
Little Hallingbury Village Website
2007
Thirteen 1m2 test pits were dug in 2007 by year 10 children from five local schools and one excavated by pupils at Little Hallingbury Primary School. The latter, rather unexpectedly, revealed an undisturbed Bronze Age horizon, with 20 sherds of pottery (52g weight in total) and several very fresh flint flakes found in a layer with no later material just 0.4m below the surface. Thereafter, however, activity in this area seems to have been very much less intensive for several thousand years. A single sherd of Romano-British greyware from LHA/07/12 indicates Roman activity of some sort somewhere nearby but is not suggestive of intensive activity in the immediate vicinity. A total of six test pits excavated near the church revealed nothing of Anglo-Saxon date and limited quantity of medieval material (one sherd of early medieval sandy ware from LHA/07/2 and four from LHA/07/P). Activity in the area around the church, it seems on current evidence, may have been of limited extent and/or intensity until the post-medieval period.
Other parts of Little Hallingbury were more productive. Ipswich Ware (720-850 AD) was recovered from two separate locations, one (a single large sherd weighing 25g from LHA/07/1) on the edge of Gaston Green and the other (LHA07/6), more than a kilometre away, from within the garden of the moated site on the easternmost margins of the present village, a site which also produced seven sherds of Romano-British greyware. Three of these sherds were residual within a beamslot which also contained a large piece of Ipswich Ware, which was itself one of four from this test pit. This evidence points clearly to the presence of Roman occupation nearby succeeded by a previously unknown substantial timber-framed building of middle Saxon date. Nothing dating to the later Anglo-Saxon period was recovered, but LHA/07/6 also produced seven sherds of medieval sandy ware (dating to 1100-1400 AD) and five sherds of late medieval transitional ware. The latter were all found in a single post hole, thereby dated to between 1400 and 1500AD, which was intrusive into middle Saxon beamslot. The presence of four sherds of medieval sandy ware in LHA/07/8 at Wright's Green brings to three the number of separate areas which produced sufficient quantities 110-1400 AD pottery to tentatively indicate settlement. Further test pitting is planned for Little Hallingbury 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
Sixteen test pits were excavated in 2008 in Little Hallingbury, bringing the total to date to twenty-eight. Most of the 2008 sites were chosen in order to investigate places some distance away from the church, particularly three with 'green' elements to their names: Gaston Green, Wright's Green and Mott's Green. In contrast with the results of the 2007 HEFA CORS excavations (which produced middle Saxon pottery from two separate sites, no material predating the 13th century was recovered from any of the sites excavated in 2008. Later Anglo-Saxon material remained elusive: as in previous years, no evidence dating to between the eighth and eleventh centuries AD was recovered from any of the excavated sites in Little Hallingbury, supporting the suggestion that activity in the later Anglo-Saxon period in the area occupied by the present village was minimal and/or non-intensive. In contrast, five separate sites (west of the church, Gaston Green, Wright's Green, Mott's Green and the moated site east of Wright's Green) yielded pottery of post-conquest date, although only the latter produced more than five sherds. This hints at a dispersed pattern of activity, but possibly of a low intensity. Only in the post medieval period does activity seem to become more intensive (although apparently ceasing at Wright's Green), to coalesce around the church and extend along the north-west to south-east oriented route which is now the main road through the village.
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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
Sixteen test pits were excavated in 2009 in Little Hallingbury, bringing the total to forty-four. Most of the 2009 sites were sited in order to fill gaps in between previously excavated areas, with a particular focus on Gaston Green and the area around the church, where little evidence for medieval activity was found in previous years. As in 2008, no further evidence of occupation dating to the middle Anglo-Saxon period (c. 650-850AD) was found and, as in all previous years, no pottery of late Anglo-Saxon date was found in any of the pits. Although extrapolations made from negative evidence from test pitting across a large area must always be regarded with great caution, the fact that nearly fifty test pits have now been excavated in Little Hallingbury with none producing as much as single sherd of pottery dating to the ninth to eleventh centuries does suggest that activity in the later Anglo-Saxon period in the area occupied by the present village was minimal or non-existent. Evidence for the high medieval period (eleventh to fourteenth century) suggest the settlement pattern then took the form of a dispersed pattern of at least six thinly scattered small hamlets or farmsteads. The disposition of these, in an area of extensive woodland in the eleventh century, suggests they may have originated as a result of assarting. The area immediately around the church is largely devoid of finds of this date: settlement in this area appears instead to favour the current main road which leads north-west to the small town of Bishops Stortford. Three of the high medieval hamlets at Little Hallingbury have no evidence for activity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, possibly as a result of late medieval contraction. In the post medieval period settlement appears to be arranged as four separate hamlets, including Gaston Green, a probable interrupted row arrangement along the main road and, for the first time since the early Bronze Age, a cluster of settlement in the area immediately around the church.
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map April |
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Test Pit Location Map October |
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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
Ten test pits were excavated in 2010 in Little Hallingbury, bringing the total to fifty-four. Most of the 2010 sites were sited in order to fill gaps in between previously excavated areas, with several in the northern part of the present village along the main road. Two test pits in the area east of Wallbury fort have now produced a small number of sherds (three in total) of high medieval date, and it may be that this area was the focus of some sort of activity at this time, possibly relating to settlement of limited extent and intensity. It is clear however, that the period at which this area came into more intensive occupation was later, probably around 1700 AD or later. This probably relates to the development of the north-south road from Bishop's Stortford to Chelmsford. As in previous years, no pottery of late Anglo-Saxon date was found in any of the 2010 test pits: it seems increasingly clear that later Anglo-Saxon period activity in the area occupied by the present village was minimal or non-existent. Settlement in the high medieval period (eleventh to fourteenth century) was clearly of a dispersed form, arranged as perhaps seven or so thinly scattered small hamlets or farmsteads which probably developed as a result of assarting in a woodland area which had been largely uninhabited since the Roman period. Two test pits in 2010 near the church produced very little pottery of medieval date found, supporting the inference that the medieval church was not immediately adjacent to any area of contemporary intensive settlement. The later medieval period (mid 14th to mid 16th century) appears to see little significant contraction of settlement, although there is a certain amount of shift between the various elements of the dispersed settlement, some of which appear to be depopulated while others produce pottery for the first time. This is also the period which seems to see the first signs of a shift of focus towards the area between the church and the main road, with all of the pits in this area producing pottery of later medieval date, albeit only in small quantities in some instances. The overall effect is, however, of a nucleated settlement in this area where previously the settlement pattern had been much more diffuse.
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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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Pottery Distribution Map |