Site Event/Activity record ECH5208 - Delamere Street: Watching Brief, Post-excavation Assessment, 2008

Between January and May 2008 Birmingham Archaeology undertook a watching brief on the Gorse Stacks Development at Delamere St., Chester, ahead of residential and retail development. Previous excavations by Earthworks and Birmingham identified the remains of a 16th century sandstone quarry with stratigraphy surviving to potential depths of over 6m. The planned development included three levels of basement parking which would cut through this quarry. The area was divided into six areas to ease excavation and recording. Material was removed down to contractor formation level, and as a result the quarry was not bottomed. The quarry was filled with a mixture of deposits ranging from late post-medieval demolition rubble, quarry stone processing waste and eighteenth to nineteenth century domestic waste. The upper fills were cut by the foundations of several nineteenth century buildings and a twentieth century bus station.