agricultural archaeology at Trimley St Martin

On Wednesday (11th June), the Trust finished an excavation on a site at Trimley St Martin in Suffolk, ahead of the construction of an agricultural reservoir. We undertook the excavation in May-June, following an evaluation which we had conducted on the site in January. The site is adjacent to a known site of Anglo-Saxon settlement. Trust archaeologist Ben Holloway supervised the excavation, and he was assisted by Trust excavators Brian, Laurie, Nathan, Felix and Pauline. The site produced evidence of a long history of agricultural use and some tantalising structural evidence.

The evidence ranged in date from ?prehistoric to modern. We excavated a cluster of undated pits which may be prehistoric, as they contained burnt stones and flints. We recorded Roman agricultural features such as a trackway, and ditches which once defined fields and paddocks; the ditches are dated by the fragments of Roman pottery which were excavated from them. One ditch produced a possible 3rd-century coin. One group of Roman features consisted of a pit with post-holes, which probably represent a structure. The site also produced evidence of an Anglo-Saxon settlement in the area, as we excavated pits which contained fragments of Middle Saxon pottery and fragments of clay annular loomweights, which would have been used for weaving textiles on a loom. A group of undated post-holes probably represent another structure: this may be Roman or Anglo-Saxon in date but, because of the associated Anglo-Saxon pits, it is probably Anglo-Saxon. We also identified the line of a large modern ditch which was in use in the 1960s but is not shown on a map of 1971.

The archaeology of the site clearly relates to the adjacent Anglo-Saxon settlement site, and demonstrates a long and productive history of agricultural and domestic use.

Archaeological evidence previously identified at Trimley St Martin include a prehistoric barrow, a ring-ditch and, on the marshes, a Roman salt-making site. Trimley St Martin was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ‘Tremelaia’. The parish boundary includes the River Orwell.

The images show the machine-stripping of the site, and Brian standing in one of the excavated features in the heat of the midday sun.

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