Site Event/Activity record ECH6171 - Archaeological Watching Brief at St Albans Church, Tattenhall

The archaeological watching brief at St Alban’s Church, Tattenhall revealed the earlier foundations of the medieval church and associated buttress lying beneath the existing church wall. This showed that upon rebuilding of the church in 1869/70 that the medieval footprint had been utilised, at least at the western end of the northern elevation, as foundation footings. The monitoring of the new drainage trench to the south of the church revealed a dry-bonded wall constructed from red sandstone blocks and running east to west across the trench. The origin and identity of this wall is unknown and it may have formed the foundations of a structure associated with the church which has since gone out of use and been demolished. Another hypothesis is that the wall represents a structure that predates the church however no stratigraphic or artefactual evidence was recovered to either confirm or deny this theory. The medieval and post-medieval finds recovered compliment those from previous archaeological investigations (see Axworthy-Rutter 1982; Cootes 2009). Although largely unstratified, the decorated medieval floor tiles nonetheless provide examples of designs additional to those previously recorded at Tattenhall and at religious houses elsewhere in Cheshire and beyond. A Detailed finds report of the artefacts recovered from the 2009 excavations was commissioned to complement the finding of this watching brief.