The fifth season saw the completion of our excavations at West Hall Paddock and the establishment of a firm sequence of events on the site. Work in 1999 had shown that a sequence of boundaries and pathways had existed on the site from the 13^th to the 17^th centuries, boundaries that are thought to have once separated the land owned by the Priory of Norwich and that of the local lords, the de Sedgefords. The excavation had also uncovered important earlier medieval and Romano-British remains that needed further investigation in the 2000 season.

West Hall Paddock in 1999

Below the later medieval boundary system, the 1999 excavations had unearthed what was thought to be the remains of a chapel, probably related to an early manor mentioned in Domesday Book and of possible Late Saxon foundation. Little evidence remained of the structure and our area of excavation was limited, giving us only a part of the structure to study and consequently leaving its function open to debate. A posthole, an area of mortar and flint hardcore with a defined straight western edge, and three equally spaced grave cuts were recorded. The central of the three graves was excavated and revealed the remains of a woman of approximately 30 years of age with severe skeletal deformities: a deformed right leg and scoliosis or curvature of the spine.

Plan of skeleton S5001 in situ.

THE 2000 SEASON
The wet weather over the 1999/2000 winter had severely waterlogged the site, leaving the eastern half unworkable. Fortunately the most significant deposits lay in the western half and we were able to study them extensively. Further study of the remains of the early medieval ‘chapel’ in 2000, yielded another posthole cutting the mortar and flint hardcore between two of the grave cuts. We also excavated the northern grave cut, but it failed to produce any articulated human bones for comparison with the 1999 skeleton, having been disturbed, robbed of its contents and immediately backfilled at some point in the medieval period. Why the grave had been robbed is impossible to tell but it is probable that it took place when the ‘chapel’ was demolished or dismantled.


All reusable or perishable material - flooring, beams or posts, roofing and walling materials - had left little trace in the ground. No flooring surfaces, collapsed building debris or grave markers lay directly above the mortar hardcore and burials; only a thick layer of soil and occupation debris built up over time after the abandonment of the area. The lack of such deposits can partly be attributed to the natural decay of the organic materials that would have been used for the building. Even so, no evidence of posts having rotted in situ was discovered, suggesting that they had been removed. It is probable, then, that when the ‘chapel’ went out of use, some of the building materials were reclaimed to use elsewhere, and at the same time the second grave cut was disturbed and its contents removed.

RADIOCARBON DATING
Dating evidence for this ‘chapel’ structure was equally scarce. Therefore it was decided to get Skeleton S5001 radiocarbon dated, producing a date of 950±40 Before Present (BP, with the ‘present’ conventionally taken as being AD1950), which can be calibrated to a calendar date range of AD1010 to AD1180. This shows that S5001 probably died between these dates and that the ‘chapel’ was in use before AD1180 and was abandoned later than AD1010. Although a wide date range, it confirms our ideas that this phase of activity on the site dates to the earlier years of the medieval period, even stretching back to the Late Saxon period. The scientific report of the radiocarbon result can be viewed by clicking here.

Above Left: Recording skeleton S5001 and Above Right: A close up of her deformed spine.

INTERPRETATION
There was certainly uninterrupted continuity of activity and settlement at West Hall from the Late Saxon period, through the medieval period. Again there were problems of interpreting the data due to the small area of excavation that we were unavoidably limited to and because of disturbance by later medieval activity. Nevertheless the 2000 season uncovered a sequence of clearly dated Late Saxon remains with no hiatus before the construction of the ‘chapel’. A substantial soil layer containing occupation debris such as Ipswich and Thetford ware fragments, bone and shell represented the Late Saxon land surface and on to this a rammed chalk surface had been constructed. A large irregular shaped pit was later cut through the surface and was left open to silt up. What the surface and the pit represent remains unknown as their full extent could not be uncovered. It is possible that the pit was in fact a pond; the land being near the river and therefore very wet. Eventually the ‘pond’ was filled and levelled off when the whole area of the west end of the Paddock was raised above the water table with a series of dumped sand and soil deposits. The ‘chapel’ was then built on dry and flat land.

The Paddock under excavation.

Prior to the Late Saxon activity, it seems that the Paddock was left unoccupied for several hundred years. Work in 1999 had identified Romano-British layers and a small gully running east-west. The 2000 season confirmed the date and uncovered a shallow ditch and another gully, again running east west across the site. They all contained preserved plant remains showing that the area had been waterlogged continuously since the ditch and gullies were dug and that the area was very wet and probably marginal land. It is likely then, that the ditch and gullies were attempts at drainage after the land had become increasingly waterlogged.

Eventually nature won out and the area was abandoned until the Late Saxon population of Sedgeford decided to utilise it. Unfortunately, the great depth of the deposits, over 2m below the present ground surface and the waterlogging of the site made it impossible to excavate deeper for more Romano-British or earlier prehistoric remains. Even so, Iron Age pottery sherds were recovered from the Romano-British layers suggesting that there had been activity of this date nearby.

Although brought to an end by practicalities rather than lack of archaeology, the five-year excavations at West Hall Paddock have been a huge success. We have identified the boundary between the two medieval manors and discovered previously unknown early medieval, Anglo-Saxon and Romano-British activity in the village. Not only important in their own right, these discoveries have also helped bring us a step closer to fulfilling one of our main research aims: to discover when and why the Anglo-Saxon settlement moved to the site of the modern village on the northern side of the river. The West Hall excavations have shown that, certainly by the Late Saxon period (AD850-1066), people were using the land on this side of the river, and that it is likely that an early manor was also established there during the period. The significance of this is yet to be fully understood but future work in the area and at Boneyard and Reeddam will no doubt elucidate this.

Updated by Pauline Fogarty 2004