Terrington St Clement, Norfolk (NGR TF 552204)
Terrington St Clement today is a large, irregular, sprawling village around 8km west of King's Lynn in the Fenland region of west Norfolk. It lies on peat and alluvial and marine deposits at around 3m OD but now protected from inundation by a sea bank known as Roman Bank, 1km north of the church. Previously it has been subject to some historical research by local historians resident in the village, while archaeological investigation has most notably included field walking during the Fenland Survey, although this largely excluded the area around the present settlement.
Local Information Websites
Terrington St Clement History Group
Terrington St Clement Village Website
2005
Terrington was the first site to be investigated by HEFA. A total of nine test pits were excavated in Terrington St Clement in July 2005, one of which was dug by one of the property owners, at the same time and using the same instructions and recording system, the other eight were dug by 28 year 9 pupils (mostly aged 14). The main focus of HEFA attention in this large village was on the eastern side of the settlement, north and south of the church, although one 'outlier' was sited c. 1500m to the west, on the top of the sea defence bank, known as Roman Bank. This produced only pottery of Victorian and later date, relating to occupation of one of the cottages sites on top of the bank. Of more interest was late Anglo-Saxon pottery which was found in lower, undisturbed layers of the three test pits north of the church (TP 05/4, 05/5 and 05/8), including Thetford Ware and Stamford Ware, also found in TP 05/7 immediately west of the church. TP 05/7 also revealed undisturbed early levels, in this case containing medieval pottery (Grimston Ware, dating to c. AD 1080 and 1400) and a floor surface with slight traces of a post hole. Undisturbed levels with Grimston Ware were also present in 05/50, south-west of the church. One very abraded sherd of Grimston Ware in TP 05/2, found 20-30cm below the surface, appears more likely to have been associated with manuring, suggesting that this northern-most part of the present village was under cultivation in the Middle Ages. None of the test pits north of the church produced pottery post-dating c. 1550.
Taken together, the evidence from the 2005 test pits indicates that the areas both north and south of the church were in occupation from the late Anglo-Saxon period until perhaps the later Middle Ages, possibly as a planned row settlement along the line of the present Church Street. This itself suggests that the most likely date for the construction of Roman Bank (known, despite the name, not to be Roman as these levels are buried beneath c. 2m of post-Roman silts) is around the 9th or 10th century AD, as occupation north of the church would not have been possible before the construction of the bank. Further HEFA-derived work in the future in Terrington St Clement will aim to investigate other parts of the village including looking at possible manorial sites within the area of the current settlement.
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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!). |
2006
Seven test pits were excavated in Terrington St Clement in 2006, adding to the nine excavated in 2005. In this large sprawling settlement, the 2006 test pits were able to investigate several new areas, including the site of a C14th brick kiln (TSC06/5), previously thought to be much later in date. Pottery of Anglo-Saxon at medieval date from TSC06/4 suggested that the saltern mound on top of which the test pit was sited was in use then, possibly for dairying, before being abandoned c. 1400AD until the mid C20th. TSC06/2, sited in an isolated small, square, ditched field c. 250m south east of the church and considered by some local residents to be a moated site, revealed a substantial quantity of animal bone and late Anglo-Saxon and medieval pottery suggesting a period of occupation spanning AD 950-1200. Further south, two test pits at Lovell's Hall produced trace evidence for Anglo-Saxon and medieval activity. Combined with the evidence from 2005, there is now plausible evidence that much of the area occupied by the present settlement of Terrington St Clement was, from the late Anglo-Saxon period, highly dispersed, with separate nodes of occupation which included areas north and south of, but possibly not always immediately adjacent to, the church.
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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
Eight test pits were excavated in Terrington St Clement in 2009, focussed on areas of the present village which had not previously seen test pit excavation by the HEFA CORS programme, in particular in the central-eastern part of the village, 100-600m south and west of the church. As in most previous HEFA excavations at Terrington St Clement, no material pre-dating the late Anglo-Saxon period was found, unsurprising in an area where the Roman and sub-Roman occupation horizons are mostly covered by recent inundation deposits up to 2m deep. Pottery of late Anglo-Saxon date was found in one 2009 pit (TSC/09/08), near the southern edge of the present village, where a total of six sherds, mostly from undisturbed levels, constitute good evidence for contemporary settlement on this site. It is interesting to note that this area is some distance from any other sites which have produce pottery, of ninth to eleventh century date, with several in between them having produced no material of this date. This invites speculation that the late Anglo-Saxon settlement in the area of the present village of Terrrington St Clement may have taken a rather dispersed form. In contrast, all but one of the 2009 pits (the exception being TSC/09/07) produced twelfth to fourteenth century pottery, pointing towards an expansion of settlement at this time. This settlement, on evidence from all pits excavated in 2005-9, seems to have extended for nearly 1km, as there is evidence for high medieval activity extending from TSC/09/08 right up to more than 500m beyond the church. At this length it seems unlikely that this represents a single nucleated village, although there is little evidence from the test pits excavated so far for any unoccupied areas within this spread, apart from in the area immediately south of the church.
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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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