Find Spot record 7785 - Ploughsoil artefacts from Malpas

<1> L-P Archaeology, 2016, Archaeological Watching Brief Report Tall Trees, Malpas (Client Report). SCH8019.

Finds assemblage recovered from a waching brief on a housing development in 2015. The watching brief produced a total of 75 finds of various materials. These included a single flint artefact, one glass find, 13 bone fragments, 22 clay tobacco pipe stems, 4 metal finds and 34 ceramic finds.

The assemblage shows a mix of material typical of finds assemblages found on agricultural fields across Cheshire, close to historic settlements. The bulk of material comes from ceramic finds, including clay tobacco pipe stems and domestic wares. It is clear that this is a plough soil and over time artefacts have been moved around the field by this ploughing activity. The HLC refers to the site as townfields and this type of material would support that interpretation. The fields would have been used by occupants of the village, who would discard unwanted items like ceramics onto the fields, which would then be ploughed in.

The presence of materials from the 15th century onwards suggests that the fields had been worked over an extended period. The single Roman find may have been imported from neighbouring fields as a main Roman road runs reasonably close to the eastern edge of the site.