Monument record 14016 - Excavated Seventeenth/Eighteenth Century Farmhouse, Cobbled Road and Associated Features, North of Brook Street, Neston

<1> AOC Archaeology Group (Chester), 2008, Land Between Brook Street and Raby Road, Neston, Cheshire. An Archaeological Evaluation Report, R2874 (Client Report). SCH5128.

An archaeological evaluation, comprising the excavation of four trenches, was undertaken in 2008 on land between Brook Street and Raby Road, Neston, in advance of re-development of the site. In Trench 2, a sandstone wall foundation bonded with with lime mortar was recorded with, to the east, the remains of a cobbled surface.

<2> AOC Archaeology Group, 2009, Land Between Brook Street and Raby Road, Neston, Cheshire: A Post-Excavation Assessment Report, R4056 (Client Report). SCH8306.

Following on from the earlier archaeological evaluation in 2008 (ECH4507), an excavation was undertaken in 2009 on the plot of land between Brook Street and Raby Road. The aims of the excavation were to establish the extent of stone built, early post medieval foundations, revealed during the earlier trenching and to fully record all remains within the development area.

The truncated remains of a building, probably a farmhouse, of seventeenth/early eighteenth century date were uncovered, comprising three sandstone walls, two sandstone post pads and an associated brick-lined drain. One of the walls had been previously recorded by the 2008 evaluation. An extensive associated cobbled surface, probably a path or drive, lay to the east of the building and led towards Brook Street to the south, indicating that this was a property of reasonably high status for the time.

A large gully, orientated north-south, appears to have divided the plot into two, with the buildings to the west and agricultural land to the east. The gully measured 3.4m wide and 0.66m deep; it produced a single find of a 'trifid' spoon, dating from the 1670s. Additionally, several ditches, some inter-cutting, were identified in the east and north of the site; these, along with the north-south gully, probably represent enclosure ditches. However, two east-west ditches in the north of the site, could have origins in the medieval period, along with a closely located unstratified pit and a post hole. The nature of the fills, also finds dating to the early post medieval period retrieved from the fills, of these ditches suggest that they may have been in use in the medieval period and left to naturally back fill in the early post medieval period. As such they could form part of a pre-enclosure field system. Three of the inter-cutting ditches in the east of the excavated area produced significant quantities of local black glazed wares, eighteenth century glass bottles and cattle bone fragments, some with signs of butchering, indicating a domestic setting and linking them to the farmhouse to the west. The partial remains of two large pits with sandstone blocks in their base, may represent quarry pits, however they also appear to have served as refuse pits, as they produced finds of bone and pottery dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A third similar pit was identified in the east by the earlier 2008 evaluation (Trench 1).

The pottery recovered from the excavation of these features comprised not only local wares, some high quality, but also imported wares from North Devon, Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands, illustrating that Neston was operating as an ocean going port in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

The remains of the seventeenth century farmhouse were heavily truncated by a much larger Victorian farmhouse (see MCH24390); the alignment of the two buildings is quite different, perhaps indicating that the course of Brook Street changed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.