Hessett, Suffolk (NGR TL 936618)
 |
Hessett today is a small rural village located c. 6 miles south-east of Bury St Edmunds at 64-69m OD. The northern, lower-lying, end of the present (and 19th century) village takes the form of a linear settlement along a single central north-south-oriented street with a church in the centre on the east side. The southern end of the village is around 5m higher and arranged around a former small rectangular green (bisected by the road) whose lines are clearly visible on the first edition Ordnance Survey 6" map, and survive today as sharply cut ditches. There are several farms of at least pre-Victorian date in, or within 500m of, the village, some of which are associated with moats. Two other deserted moated sites also lie within 500m of the main village street.
Local Information Websites
2006
Nine test pits were dug in Hessett in 2006, most of which were sited in the northern end of the present village. Just a single small (3g) very abraded sherd of Roman pottery was found, in test pit HES06/8 in the south of the village on the edge of the green. On its own, this cannot be of any significance, although the absence generally of Roman pottery from Hessett to date is perhaps more interesting to note. Pottery of late Anglo-Saxon date came from two test pits near the church (HES06/2 and 5). These pits also revealed pottery of 11th to 14th century date, and the latter was also found at HES06/4 (Elm's Farm) and HES06/6 (Malting Farm), possible hinting that medieval settlement away from the area around Hessett church at this date may have taken the form of a scatter of discrete farmsteads. Neither of the test pits around Hessett Green produced any material predating the 19th century, although more work clearly needs to be done in this part of the settlement, which will take place in 2007.
 |
Pottery Report |
 |
Test Pit Location Map |
 |
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!). |
2007
Six test pits were excavated in Hessett in 2007, adding to the nine dug in 2006. No further Romano-British material was found, supporting the observation in 2006 that the site of the present village was not intensively exploited at this date. Similarly, the pattern, noted in 2006, of activity in the period 850-1100AD restricted to the area immediately around the church was also reflected in the 2007 excavations, with nearly all the pits in this area (but none elsewhere) producing pottery of this date. On present evidence, it seems that it is not until the 12th to 14th centuries that more intensive use was made of the area to the south, including Hesset Green, Maltings Farm and the moated stie 600m to the west of the latter.
|
Pottery Report |
|
Test Pit Location Map |
|
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
Twelve test pits were excavated in Hessett in 2008, bringing the total over three years to twenty-seven. Outlying sites west of the present village included The Heath (HES/08/6-HES/08/9) and a nearby moated site (HES/08/5) were investigated as well as others within the present village. Just a single tiny sherd (1g) of Roman pottery was found, confirming earlier inferences that the area of the current settlement was not intensively used in the Roman-British period. The only sites to produce pottery of ninth to eleventh century date were those within c. 100m of the church, suggesting that a nucleated settlement here in the late Anglo-Saxon period may have taken the form of a single row, as few of the sites east of the road past the church have produced pottery of this date, in contrast to those on the west of the road, almost all which have done so, and in quantities likely to indicate settlement rather than less intensive use. The moated site east of the Heath, Maltings Farm, Elm Farm and Hessett Green all appear to come into existence in the eleventh to fourteenth century, with the area of the Heath only coming into more intensive use from perhaps the mid-seventeenth century. Here then, the origins of the dispersed elements of the settlement pattern appear to date to the post-conquest period.
|
Pottery Report |
|
Test Pit Location Map |
|
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
Nine test pits were excavated in Hessett in 2009, bringing the total over four years to thirty-six. The focus was on filling in gaps in between previous test pit excavation sites and in targeting some new isolated sites beyond the present village. Most of these are now single farms, two of which are surrounded by moats. A further test pit (HES/09/06) was sited immediately north of an unoccupied moated site of unknown date. No new Roman material was found in 2009, and it remains the case that there is no evidence to suggest that any of the present areas of settlement in Hessett parish were in existence in the Roman period. Only one site produced any pottery of Anglo-Saxon date, this being HES/09/03, on the northern edge of Hessett Green, which yielded a single 6g sherd of Thetford Ware. No pre-twelfth-century pottery has been found in any of the sites beyond Hessett and Hessett Green, a pattern in marked contrast to those in other areas of dispersed settlement investigated by the HEFA CORS programme, such as Carleton Rode and Chediston where the dispersed pattern of settlement clearly does seem to be developing in the later Anglo-Saxon period. Three of the new outlying sites produced pottery of twelfth to fourteenth century date (HES/09/05, HES/09/07 and HES/09/08), although only at Lawney's Farm did this amount to more than a single small sherd (very small quantities of small sherds are likely to be indicative of manuring rather than intensive occupation). Some evidence for late medieval contraction remains apparent at Hessett, with Lawney's Farm and Hessett Green apparently deserted and Hessett itself seeing a marked reduction in the volume of material from the southern end of the present village and to the north-west of the church. This decline appears to have been reversed in the post-medieval period, although there remains little sign of activity in most of Hessett Green until the nineteenth or even twentieth centuries.
|
Pottery Report |
|
Test Pit Location Map |
|
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!). |
|
