Site Event/Activity record ECH4284 - Excavations at St Mary's-on-the-Hill, Chester in 1996

Second stage of work following a watching brief of repair works to the nave floor. Evaluation concentrated in the North Aisle with trenches to a depth of 700mm. The later archaeological deposits were in a generally poor state of preservation, apart from the timber post [20] located in Trench III which was left in situ, its depth unascertained. Grave cuts were located in each of the trenches, with the tops of coffins reached at a depth of c.20cm in Trench I and II; in Trench III no coffin was reached in the grave cut. Generally the excavated deposits were somewhat mixed, and the mixed nature of the finds recovered confirms this. Therefore, no internments could be accurately dated other than a tentative mid-nineteenth century suggestion for the aforementioned grave cuts. In Trench III the timber post predates, stratigraphically, the grave cut (1).