Cottenham, Cambridgeshire
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Cottenham is today a large village nearly 1.75 km long lying at c. 10m OD on a low greensand ridge surrounded by fenland, c. 8km north of Cambridge. The church of All Saints contains 12th-century masonry and is set apart from the core of the present village, whose main centre, containing a range of local shops and both primary and secondary schools, lies nearly 1km to its south. It has been suggested that a second church may have existed closer to the centre of the present village at Church Hill near the moated site of Crowland Manor House (Cambs HER 01118), although no archaeological evidence for this has been found to date. The present church lies immediately east of a road which kinks around its churchyard as it makes its way to Wilburton, some 10km to the north. Properties either side of the road south of the church are notable for their long narrow gardens, which may preserve earlier, possibly medieval, boundaries whose form may be determined by having been laid our over strip fields. To the south, the main part of the present village within the area defined by High Street, Rooks Street and Denmark Road has a marked rectilinear plan and it has been suggested that the medieval village grew from a nucleus in this area, a suggestion supported by excavations off Denmark Road and High Street. Excavations in 1996-7 on Lordship Lane (immediately south-east of Lambs Row) revealed evidence of settlement from the seventh century, abandoned in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.
Local Information Websites
2009
18 test pits were excavated in Cottenham in 2009 during two episodes of activity, one a standard HEFA event with secondary school pupils and the second a special weekend event funded by the University of Cambridge as part of a wide-ranging programme celebrating the 800th anniversary of the founding of the University in 1209. The aim of the latter event was to give local residents and other members of the public the chance to look for archaeological evidence in their own locality which could reconstruct the development of the village during the centuries of the university's earliest origins. Most of the test pits were sited in the centre of the present village, with just three along the road towards the church. Four pits, sited in three locations separated by c. 400m, all in the southern part of the present settlement, produced pottery of Roman date, although in only one instance was more than a single sherd found. Together, this pattern hints at the possibility of scattered low-intensity activity in the Roman period. Four test pits produced handmade pottery of early Anglo-Saxon date (450-650AD), but the distribution of these appears more likely to indicate settlement as three of these pits (COT/09/02, COT/09/04 and COT/09/05) were sited close together in the same part of the settlement, immediately south-west of Rooks Street. This same area (COT/09/04 and COT/09/06) also produced pottery of middle Anglo-Saxon date, suggesting that settlement persisted in this area, possibly shifting its location somewhat. Test pits in the same area (COT/09/04; COT/09/05 and COT/09/06) also produced pottery dating to the later Anglo-Saxon period, as did two further pits to the south (COT/09/12 and COT/09/16), suggesting that the settlement was expanding at this time. If settlement was continuous between the areas where these pits were excavated, it would be reasonable to infer the presence of a nucleated village at least 400m in extent from north to south, although further test pitting in the intervening areas would be required to test this hypothesis. It is interesting to note that these pits all lie within the Rooks Street/Denmark Road/High Street area suggested by Ravensdale as the early core of Cottenham: the evidence from the test pits appears to support this hypothesis, but suggests that its origins are considerably earlier than he suggested.
March 2009 - 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!). |
May 2009 - University of Cambridge 800th Anniversary Funded Community Dig
For more information please see the Cottenham 800th Anniversary Dig page
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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
Seven more test pits were excavated in Cottenham in 2010 bringing the total to twenty-five. Most of the 2010 test pits were sited to fill in gaps in previous work, including several in the south of the village and two in the northern part of the settlement in the area of long narrow plots, possibly laid out over ridge and furrow.
Test pit COT/10/4 produced several sherds of pottery of Bronze Age date, in the same area which produced Roman material in 2009. No further pottery of early or middle Anglo-Saxon date (450-850AD) was found, reinforcing the impression that settlement in this period was limited to the area in the centre of the present village, immediately south-west of Rooks Street and east of Lambs Row. A couple of sherds of later Anglo-Saxon date from COT/10/4 similarly supported the inference from test pitting in 2009, that the settlement at this time extended along the High Street, probably taking the form of a nucleated village at this time. It is interesting to note that most of pits in the Rooks Street/Denmark Road/High Street area have produced pottery of high medieval date, suggesting that the village expanded significantly at this time. It is plausible to suggest that the rectilinear street plan visible today in this area may therefore be of 12th or 13th century date.
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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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Pottery Distribution Map |