lots of medieval pottery from the University of Essex

The Trust recently conducted an archaeological evaluation on a site at the University of Essex, ahead of the building of a new innovation centre. Today (4th October), Trust pottery specialist Steve Benfield was studying the pottery from the site, here at the Trust’s HQ. The university campus and grounds are on land which was formerly Wivenhoe Park, along the River Colne and between Colchester town centre and Wivenhoe. We conducted the evaluation in February 2016 and uncovered mostly pits and ditches, with some post-holes, and this led to the commissioning of an archaeological excavation on the site which we undertook in the summer. Steve is studying the material which the evaluation produced ahead of the writing of the site report by Trust archaeologist Laura Pooley.

About 90% of the material consists of fragments of pottery, while the rest consists of fragments of peg-tile and fired clay. It is all medieval and, overall, Steve dates it to the late 12th/early 13th-14th century. The pottery is mostly locally-made, coarse wares, across a range of grey wares. There are also some fragments of Hedingham wares and Colchester wares. The fragments are very degraded and in poor condition after their centuries in the ground. A large number of the fragments also include cessy residues. The fragments mostly represent cooking-vessels, although some represent larger vessels which may have been used for food storage: there are also a few fragments of glazed jugs. Some of the fragments show evidence of sooting, which suggests that the vessels they represent must have been used for cooking over a fire. Steve thinks that the material is very interesting and that it strongly suggests a medieval domestic occupation site, perhaps a farmstead, on the high ground overlooking the river and near the road from Colchester to Wivenhoe.

Two joining pottery fragments represent a large cooking-pot or food-storage jar which included applied ‘thumbed strip’ decoration. This is simple and decorative and also, probably, would have strengthened the vessel, in the form of a cordon around the rim and ribs down the body. This vessel was locally made. It would probably have been hand-formed and then finished on a potter’s wheel (see Colchester Archaeological Report 7: post-Roman pottery from excavations in Colchester, 1971-85). Field names in Wivenhoe parish suggest that there were potters’ kilns within the parish. The pottery evidence seems to suggest that our site was abandoned by the people who lived there in the 14th century. We can only speculate here on the reasons for this: perhaps the Black Death in 1348-9, which badly affected Colchester; the land being cleared by the landowner for parkland; or perhaps the besieging of Colchester in 1350 by Lionel de Bradenham, the lord of Langenhoe, when houses in the suburb on the eastern side of town were damaged, and grain and hay were taken from Greenstead not far from our site – this may have been a dispute over exploitation of the River Colne. During the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, there were violent incidents at Wivenhoe and at St John’s Abbey in Colchester, which held land in Wivenhoe. Apparently, it also seems that Colchester stagnated or declined in the early 14th century (Victoria County History of Essex 9: the Borough of Colchester).

Yesterday (3rd October) was the first day of the new academic year at the university. Visit their web-site at www.essex.ac.uk and their web-page for the local community at www.essex.ac.uk/community/ . The Trust’s online report library is a joint project between the Trust and the Department of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the university. Visit our online report library at http://cat.essex.ac.uk/ .

The evaluation was funded by the University of Essex. It was supervised by Trust archaeologist Ben Holloway, assisted by Trust excavator Alec Wade.

The images show two site photo.s from February, both with university buildings in the background, and two photo.s taken today, of just one representative bag of pottery fragments, and the two joining fragments of the rim of the thumbed-strip vessel (you can see the cordon and part of one rib of the thumbed-strip decoration, and some cessy residue). All the pottery fragments were washed and marked by the Trust’s archaeology volunteers.

.