EDO270 - Site of the Crown Hotel, The Square/East Borough, Wimborne Minster; excavation 1979

Excavations undertaken for the Dorset Archaeological Committee in advance of redevelopment of the site by construction of new shopping units and bank for Barclays Bank Ltd and construction of an extension to Lloyds Bank, and funded by the Department of the Environment. A number of trenches were excavated by machine, and sample excavation undertaken in order to examine areas on The Square frontage and relate these to the back street area; identify the comparative development of street frontage on East Borough and The Square; and identify property boundaries and possible outer circuits, the site being situated between circuits postulated by Taylor (3) and Penn (4). Four trenches 1m wide were cut by machine and subsequently extended in four places to examine features observed in the trenches. The general stratification on that part of the site formerly occupied by the Crown Hotel and tap was disturbed, with the lowest construction level being visible as a thin layer of lime mortar, mostly directly on the natural gravel with no survival of old soil horizons. A sequence of medieval occupation was identified on the frontage near The Square, the earliest features being two rubbish pits of 12/13th-century date. One of these pits contained burnt structural debris. Above these was: a wall footing with sandstone rubble, dating to the 13/14th century; a 17th-century kiln (or possibly oven), wall-trench and post holes. No slag or other material was found in or associated with the kiln, and the excavators concluded that it may have been domestic in nature. The area on East Borough was used for the dumping of rubbish from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries; the excavators felt that it was probably an open 'orchard' area in the medieval period, suggesting that East Borough was always the back street of a two street plan.