EWX546 - St Martins House, Wareham; excavation 1974

Directed by D A Hinton and R Hodges. In November 1973 the site of St Martin's House was vacant and considered to be of significant archaeological potential. With the permission of the landowner; F H Cummings, a trial excavation was undertaken in January 1974. The results were positive and four weeks were spent excavating at St Martin's House in March-April of that year. The project was financed by the Ancient Monuments Division of the DoE. Trench 1 was a narrow trial trench in the centre of the road frontage and its excavation located several early medieval features. Notably a large amorphous pit may have been an early medieval sand extraction quarry containing early medieval and residual abraded roman sherds. A nearby gully may have been contemporary with it. Trench 2 lay at the south west corner of the site. It contained a number of linear features including a 'v' profiled gully aligned on the North Street frontage with abraded roman pottery in its fill and thought to date from the 11th century. This gully was also seen in trenches 1 and 3, continuing along the entire street frontage. The gully ran parallel to a medieval beam slot. The east end of the trench, set back from the street frontage contained a pair of possible beam slots set a right angles and associated with at least one post hole. This potential structure was also thought to be late Saxon in date. Numerous stake and post holes were scattered outside this structure and many contemporary, medieval and post medieval pits and wells were distributed across the site. Trench 3 was located in the north west corner of the site. The excavators suggested that the site had been cultivated during the roman period due to the presence of abaraded roman sherds. The site was phased primarily through the relative occurences of Roman, saxon and medieval pottery. Phase one contained mainly abraded Roman sherds with some late Saxon pottery and is though to date from the 10th century. This included two large pits and a scatter of stake holes. One group of stake holes in the south east part of the trench were arranged in a line and may represent a structure or fence. The activity is of a relatively low intensity suggesting a semi-rural character fro this area in the10th century. Phase 2 is thought to date from the 11th century and comprised a clay lined cistern with associated gullies. This may have been for industrial process such as tanning or iron working (some iron working slag was found elsewhere in the trench). The industry was close to the street frontage and the area behind was relatively open. Phase 3 dated from the late 11th-mid 12th century. Following the infil of the cistern a substantial post-built structure was erected set back from the North Street frontage. This has a partition towards the west end and contained a pit either just inside or outside its eastern end. This pit was later filled with gravel and a hearth built on top. The floor appears to have comrpised white clay. Phase 4 comprised a cobbled surface which succeded then building, although other evidence for occupation was negligable. A fourth trench was excavated in North Stret by contractors and was carefully watched. No medieval road surfaces could be seen due to later service trenches. A small group of larte Saxon objects were recovered from a dark soil layer below the water table at a depth of 1.5m below the road surface, possibly from a pit. [1]