EDO147 - Savoy Cinema, Bimport, Shaftesbury; excavation

In October 1986 the Trust for Wessex Archaeology, assisted by the Shaftesbury and District Archaeological Group, carried out small-scale excavations in advance of the re-development of the site of the Savoy Cinema. A small trench was cut by machine along the western edge of the plot, which coincided with the proposed line of the defences of the Saxon burh. This trench exposed the eastern edge of a large ditch or pit, 2.6 metres deep and estimated as being well over 5m wide. The bottom filling of this feature contained massive greensand stone rubble and several sherds of late thirteenth-century pottery.