Site Event/Activity record ECH7349 - Archaeological Evaluation Report: The Friars, Chester

Two archaeological trial pits were excavated at The Friars, Chester, in July 2024 prior to proposed conversion of the site for use as a school including construction of a new single storey extension to the existing building and provision of a games pitch, fencing, landscaping works and additional car parking spaces. The trial pits were excavated to a depth of 1.8m (TP1) and 1.4m (TP2) bgl. In both pits complex and deep sequences of urban stratigraphy dating between the end of the Medieval period and the 19th/20th century were encountered. 18th and 19th century foundation and floors were recorded as well as stratified layers which produced material of 16th to 18th century date. Amongst these layers was a deposit rich in fragments of ceramic sugar cone mould probably associated with the documented sugar house depicted on Lavaux’s map of 1745. There was also a layer rich in fragments of decorated Medieval floor tile which probably formed during the post-Dissolution demolition of the Friary buildings. Both trial pits located structural elements of a late Medieval stone-founded building that is likely to represent one of the buildings on the northern range of the Friary complex (perhaps the kitchen or convent hall). The Medieval and earlier remains were only investigated in TP1 owing to the presence of ‘live’ sewers in trial pit TP2. This included a series of layers producing assemblages of animal bone and pottery dating to the 13th to 15th centuries, also iron-working waste and worked deer antler. Beneath this sequence was a layer which produced pottery dating to the late Saxon occupation of Chester during the 10th/11th century. The layer directly overlay a spread of sandstone rubble which may represent the demolition/collapse of a Roman building and is likely to demarcate the top of in situ Roman archaeology. Significant assemblages of Roman pottery and ceramic building material were recovered as residual finds in Medieval and later deposits. (1)