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Field-walk and test-pitting at High Bray - Jim Knights (Newsletter No 8 2004)
The Tithe Apportionment of c.1840 records a number of intriguing field-names around the village of High Bray (See the accompanying map). Fields containing the elements Barton and Coney lying near and adjacent to Barton Lane which does an interesting dog-leg around Garden Close are very suggestive of earlier arrangements. When the land-owner pointed out that a lot of pottery came up when he ploughed the field called West Barton (numbers 34 and 35 on the map – a boundary has gone missing), a field-walk seemed in order.
During a September Sunday afternoon members of NDAS
and inhabitants of Brayford, High Bray and the surrounding area gathered
together to walk the field. Having been shown examples of what to look
for, people were sent off to their starting points and began the slow,
methodical business of plodding along their allotted strip of ground.
There was no shortage of finds; the land-owner was right. In the end
1500 items were picked up which were briefly washed on site before being
roughly sorted and bagged up.
When the finds were analysed there were around 1100 pottery fragments
together with flints, scraps of metal, tile and iron slag which –
this being the Brayford area – might well have been Roman. The flints
ranged from Mesolithic through Bronze Age to gun-flints from flint-lock
guns. There were 150 medieval pottery fragments, and a similar amount
from the early postmedieval period plus around 800 sherds from the 17th
to early 19th centuries. This large quantity of pottery which was widely
and more or less evenly spread across the field suggested midden-carting
over many centuries. However, analysis of the distribution of the finds
indicated a concentration of medieval pottery in the north end of the
field, suggesting either a medieval settlement or a more restricted area
of arable at an early date. It is proposed to examine this area with the
resistivity meter.
Crossing fields to begin the walk, it was quite obvious that the fields called Coney Close and Higher Coney Close contained a significant number of earthworks. This prompted a closer examination of the area with a brief desktop study, a survey with the resistivity meter and finally test-pits. The provisional conclusion was that this area had at one time contained a rabbit warren and that the earthworks might be “pillowmounds”. The resistivity survey concentrated on a corner of the field called Coney Close (number 47 on the tithe map). In 1840 this small area was an enclosure (number 48 on the tithe map) described as “Waste”. The survey suggested structures, so a test-pitting exercise was organised. In all, seven 1m x 1m pits were dug, and the results both confirmed and contradicted the survey. Outside the boundary of the former enclosure, medieval (including one sherd of 11/12th century Saxo- Norman ware) and post-medieval pottery was found, but no structure. Inside the boundary a layer of 19th century material in a cindery matrix overlay what appeared to be the natural weathered shillet into which channels had been cut. Here two test-pits were joined up and extended to make a 3.5 metre trench which revealed a line of three post-holes set into the shillet. The channels were full of soft soil and had been – partially at least – lined with stone slabs suggesting either vermin traps or the constructed burrows of a medieval warren. No firm conclusions can be based on a few test-pits and more work needs to be done here.We appear to have the beginnings of a “High Bray Project”.
Copyright © 2007 North Devon Archaeological Society