Site Event/Activity record ECH3887 - Excavations at Warrington Friary in 2000

A developer-funded excavation on the site of the Augustinian friary at Warrington found evidence for five phases of activity, beginning in the Roman period. Remains of this date included three pits, and two extensive deposits which produced 353 sherds of Romano-British pottery; it is suggested that the pottery was being made or distributed in the immediate vicinity. Almost a thousand years later, the site was acquired by the friars. Their first church was probably built soon after 1261, and the sandstone foundations of the north wall and internal column plinths of the nave were revealed. The most distinctive feature of the church was the large, almost square north transept, its exact form unique in England; the excavation showed this to be a later addition, probably built by c 1350. The church was retained for the use of the townspeople when the friary was dissolved in 1539, with this historical event not being archaeologically visible. However, the removal of the floor covering may have followed soon afterwards, whilst the north transept is likely to have been taken down before the end of the century, and the nave had been demolished by the mid to late seventeenth century. In total, 106 partial or complete articulated inhumations were excavated. Some could not be phased because of the removal of stratigraphy in previous excavations, compounded by a lack of artefactual dating evidence. Nevertheless, thirty seven burials were identified as predating the Dissolution, including two in partially surviving coffins, dated by dendrochronology to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries. It is clear that the site was used for burial until the eighteenth century.