EDO5371 - Stainer's Yard, Bell Street, Shaftesbury; evaluation

A field evaluation of an area of 220m2 carried out by AC archaeology for a potential developer in connection with planning application 2/98/0047. Three trenches were excavated by machine in the southern part of the site, within the footprint of the proposed new dwelling. Features were observed in two trenches. A pitched stone hearth was recorded in Trench 1, in the central southern part of the site, and parts of two conjoining walls were recorded in Trench 3, to the NW of the hearth. A sequence of soil layers dating from the medieval to the present day was observed to the east of the hearth. These features were interpreted as the remains of an early post-medieval building. Later medieval pottery was recovered from the site, but it was only present in buried soil layers or residually later contexts. The excavators concluded that these were the remains of a building shown on a map of 1799 (DCRO D1/KL34), but not on a 1615 manuscript map by William Willis (reproduced in Hutchins (1803). This building appears to have been demolished by 1817, as a map of the borough (DCRO Photocopy 485) shows only a small outbuilding in the SW corner of the plot, the rest being open ground. Nothing in the excavated evidence suggested that the site has been used for anything other than agricultural purposes before 1615.