Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire (NGR SP 995595)
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Sharnbrook today is large village, with a range of shops, primary and secondary schools and large areas of relatively recent housing, less than nine miles north of Bedford. It lies between 50m and 60m OD on Oxford Clay. The village today is a nucleated settlement mainly arranged as a double row along the NW-SE oriented High Street which runs parallel with the Sharn Brook to the north. The parish church lies c. 200m south of the High Street within a large churchyard, while c. 0.5 km west of the church are the oval banked and ditched remains of a probable medieval moated site (Beds HER 994).
Local Information Websites
Sharnbrook Local History Society
2007
Five test pits were excavated in Sharnbrook in 2007, selected to focus mainly on the High Street. With such a small number of pits excavated to date only the most general of preliminary observations can presently be made, but it is notable that test pit SHA07/2 produced a large (21g) sherd of Iron Age scored ware, and also the only sherd of St Neots ware from Sharnbrook in 2007, while SHA07/3, less than 50m to the north-west, produced 6 sherds of medieval shelly ware dating to 1100-1400 AD, two of which were above 10g in weight. No Roman material was recovered from any of the sites. Further test pitting will be carried out in Sharnbrook 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
Eleven test pits were excavated in Sharnbrook in 2008, bringing the total to date to sixteen. In 2008 the focus of investigation expanded further north up the High Street and also encompassed other sites including one site near Castle Close, a probable medieval moated site (Beds HER 994) c. 0.5 km west of the church, and two at Manor Farm, c. 300m north-west of the present village.
As in 2007, no Roman material was recovered from any of the test pits and no further pottery of Iron Age date was recovered. Three test pits contained material dating to 850-1100 AD, including Stamford Ware, Thetford ware and St Neots Ware, with pits SHA08/4 and SHA/08/5, sited close together in the north of the High Street, producing five and four sherds respectively, suggesting that this area may be a focus of later Anglo-Saxon activity in Sharnbrook. A sherd of Thetford Ware from SHA/08/1 is tantalising as possible evidence of pre-Conquest activity of some sort at Manor Farm, but this cannot with any confidence be assumed to be evidence of settlement in the vicinity without further investigation. However, eight sherds of pottery dating to 1100-1400 AD found on the same site from a single 10cm spit containing no later material (and therefore presumed likely to be undisturbed)) 70cm below the surface provides convincing evidence for settlement at this date on this spot, whose pottery sequence continues uninterrupted thereafter up to the modern day. Within the village, therefore, current evidence suggest that the settlement expanded north along the High Street in the post eleventh-century period, with the area immediately north of the cross-roads in the centre of the present village appearing to be less intensively used throughout the post medieval period. Unexpectedly little medieval pottery was recovered from the test pit near Castle Close. There is no evidence for any later medieval decline in either the village or at Manor Farm. No pottery at all post-dating 1400 AD was recovered from the Castle Copse test pit. Further test pitting will be carried out in Sharnbrook in 2009.
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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
Ten test pits were excavated in Sharnbrook in 2009, bringing the total to date to twenty-six. New sites excavated in 2009 included several on the north side of the High Street, between this and the Sharn Brook, and three beyond the limits of the present village near the present railway line, an area presently known as Barleycroft.
As in previous years, no Roman material was recovered from any of the test pits and no further pottery of Iron Age date was recovered. Two test pits contained material dating to 850-1100 AD, supporting the inference made in 2008 that the northern part of the present High Street was a focus of activity in the later Anglo-Saxon period. 2009 excavations also hinted at the presence of a second area of late Anglo-Saxon activity immediately south-west of the church, although as only two sherds were found, both weighing less than 5g, this interpretation must be regarded as somewhat tentative at present. It is however possible to infer with a greater degree of confidence that there is at present no sign of a large nucleated village here in the late Anglo-Saxon period, as fifteen of the twenty pits excavated in the centre of the present village have now produced no evidence for occupation at this date. In contrast, all but five of these twenty pits have produced pottery dating to 1100-1400 AD, suggesting that the settlement expanded in this period, and it was probably then that it took on a more nucleated form. That said, it should be noted that several of the pits did in fact only produce a small number of sherds for this period. Notably, there is no sign of any marked post fourteenth century contraction, with all areas in use before this time continuing in use afterwards, including the outlying sites at Manor Farm and Barleycroft, which have been tentatively interpreted as outlying homesteads in the medieval period.
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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
Seventeen test pits were excavated in Sharnbrook in 2010, bringing the total to date to forty-three. New sites excavated in 2010 included several on the south-western side of the High Street, and west of the church.
Two test pit excavations in 2010 produced the first datable material of Roman date, although only single sherds were recovered from either pit. SHA/11/02 was in a part of the north of the present village where no test pitting had previously been carried out and produced a 10g sherd derived from a context 50-60cm below the surface which contained no recent material, but did also yield a sherd of medieval pottery. This layer was just above the natural which was encountered at 70cm. This does not seem to indicate any significant Roman activity in the area, although it is possible that more extensive material of Roman date may exist in the unexplored area to the west of this test pit. SHA/11/06 yielded a much smaller sherd (3g), from a similar depth, also with a medieval sherd. However, this pit was not excavated to natural, so further material of early date may survive in lower levels.
This second find of Roman material would be easy to dismiss also as being too small and disturbed to be significant, but it is noteworthy because the same pit, along with another one nearby (SHA/11/07) both produced the first finds from test pitting in Sharnbrook of pottery of early Anglo-Saxon date (AD450-700). Both early Anglo-Saxon sherds are small (3g and 2g respectively), but given their proximity to each other, they can be interpreted as likely to indicate activity of some sort in this area in the earlier Anglo-Saxon period, and given the limited volume of pottery of this date normally found, it is reasonable to infer in these circumstances that this is likely to derive from some sort of settlement in this area. As excavation has not yet taken place in the gardens of adjacent properties, it is impossible to say how far this settlement may have extended, but given that several pits have been excavated immediately to the north and produced no pottery of this date, it seems unlikely that the settlement extended north of the present village street in the 5th – 7th century. No pottery of definite middle Anglo-Saxon date, such as Ipswich Ware, was found in either of pits SHA/11/02 or SHA/11/06, indeed, no material of this date has to date been found in any of the test pits in Sharnbrook. As in previous years, it seems that later Anglo-Saxon settlement occupied the area west and north of the church, and this does not appear on current evidence to have been very extensive or very compactly nucleated. It is in the period between 1100 and 1300 that the settlement seems to grow most markedly, and it is then that the eastern part of present village seems to come into existence, perhaps as a new planned extension along the High Street. As in previous years, there remains no evidence of significant post-fourteenth century contraction, with areas including the outlying sites of Manor Farm and Barleycroft in use before this time also continuing in use afterwards. There is, however, a possibility that the settlement may be shifting around at this time, with some plots coming into use and others declining.
2010 - HEFA
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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 - Community Dig
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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!). |
2011 - Community Dig
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
2012
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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 |