Site Event/Activity record ECH7175 - Archaeological Watching Brief: Warrington Youth Zone, Dallam Lane, Warrington

An archaeological watching brief was undertaken between November 2021 to January 2022 during the redevelopment of land at Foundry Street and Dallam Lane in Warrington (centred on NGR SJ 60550 88520), comprising the erection of a new building for Warrington Youth Club with an outside skate park and a storage facility. The watching brief was targeted primarily on the footprint of an iron foundry known to have been established in the late 18th century. It monitored the excavation of eight trial pits, followed by ground-reduction works to a depth of up to 1.40m across the majority of the site. Very little survived of the iron foundry and the adjacent buildings, although three stone-built wells were uncovered that probably dated to the late 18th/19th century. However, monitoring during the excavation of a large pit for an attenuation tank uncovered human remains. Three inhumations, all in supine extended positions in a west to east or north-west to south-east alignment, were encountered. Two of the skeletons were interred in a double grave, while the third was a single burial. The skeletons were between 50% and 65% complete, but the bones that survived were in excellent condition and only slightly fragmented. One skeleton was a mature adult female that had sustained five bladed weapon injuries, and dated by radiocarbon assay to AD1600-63. She shared a grave with the skeleton of a young adult male, dated by radiocarbon assay to AD1602-54, and therefore broadly contemporary. There is no documentary evidence to indicate that the site had ever been used as a formal graveyard, and the reasons for the presence of the skeletons has yet to be determined. It seems quite possible in the light of the horrific injuries sustained by the female and the date ranges returned from radiocarbon analysis that two of the skeletons had been victims of a skirmish during the English Civil War. Conversely, 17th-century epidemics are known to have had an impact on Warrington, such as typhus, which caused the deaths of 257 people in 1622, although death from disease does not account for the injuries recorded on the female skeleton. The third skeleton was that of a young middle adult, possibly male, who had mild developmental anomalies of the spine as well as lesions indicative of axial stress in the spine. The skeleton was dated by radiocarbon assay to AD1354-1437, and was therefore some two centuries earlier than the other two skeletons. This raises the question as to the longevity of the site as a burial ground, raising the slight possibility that the skeletons derived from a household living at Dallam Lane or Bewsey Street, who were buried at the rear of their land. (1) See SCH9307, R4645, for a report on the osteological analysis of the skeletons. (2)