Archaeological Excavation at the Site of the former Tayor's Garage, Bridge Street, Wye

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTES AND SUMMARIES 311 archaeological e taTAyLOR’s GARAGE, STREET, wye During January 2003 Archaeology South-East archaeologists under the supervision of Neil Griffin conducted excavations at the site of the former Taylor’s Garage, Bridge Street, Wye (NGR TR 0529 4667). The site is situated on head deposits overlying chalk bedrock and lies at c.42m aod on land which slopes gently down to the Great Stour River, some 0.5km to the north-west (Fig. 1). A c.375m² excavation area was investigated in the northern and western parts of the site targeted on evaluation trenches 1 and 2 which had identified medieval and post-medieval features. The work was commissioned by Richard Daniels Associates on behalf of Mereyton Homes Limited. W ye is an historic town with Roman origins and Saxon continuance first recorded as a royal vill in an eighth-century charter. After the Norman Conquest, Wye was given to Battle Abbey and this remained the case until the Dissolution when the college and other religious buildings founded there were granted to the secretary of Catherine Parr. The prop-erties stayed in private hands for some 350 years until the eighteenth century when they reverted to an educational status. Today little medieval evidence is visible in Wye, however, The Old Swan House, which bounds the site to the west, may have some surviving 15th-century elements. 312 Fig. 1 Site location and plan of excavated features. Stationery Office ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTES AND SUMMARIES 313 The earliest feature recorded in the excavations, perhaps defining an early property, is a ditch that had fallen out of use sometime in the 13th century. During the later 13th to 15th centuries, numerous refuse pits were in use on the site and one large feature, some 10m across, which contained lots of tile, may represent a medieval burgage plot. The features generally yielded large amounts of finds including animal bone, marine and freshwater shells as well as brick and tile, pottery, glass, burnt clay, slag and a copper pin. These finds are indicative of relative prosperity in the area at this time and reflect historical sources which maintain that Wye was indeed a prosperous place during the 14th century. This use of the site as a place for depositing rubbish apparently continued into the early 17th century; however, by the later-17th/early-18th century there is evidence that much of the site had been raised-up and levelled and that several brick-built properties, with gardens or yards to the rear, existed on the site. These are shown on an 18th-century map of Wye and were demolished sometime in the 19th century. The single most notable find from the excavation was a late 16th-century silver slip top spoon from an 17th/18th-century pit. This was hallmarked with a leopards head crowned (for London) in the bowl with a date letter for 1591 just before the end of the stem. Two further marks on the back of the stem showing the lion passant (for London) and a makers mark resembling a crescent or the letter ‘C’ enclosing an illegible letter or symbol. The makers mark, although not clear resembles two known contemporary examples, one of an unknown silversmith, the other of William Cawdell whose makers mark was that of the letter ‘C’ enclosing the letter ‘W’. He was an eminent maker of silver spoons operating in London between the late 16th to early 17th centuries. Four-hundred and thirty-three sherds of pottery were recovered, most of which were post-medieval. One-hundred and fifty-two brick samples were taken representing 14th- to 20th-century industries. One-hundred and thirty-one fragments of medieval peg-tile ranging from the 13th to the 15th centuries and 255 post-medieval tiles were also recovered. The recovered ironwork consisted of 28 items and contained five medieval nails/nail fragments and post-medieval nails, the remains of a bone handle from a knife with tang and three pieces of medieval iron smelting tap slag. Seventy-two pieces of copper alloy were also recovered. Only one piece, a bar-shaped belt mount, is of medieval date. The remaining copper alloy items are all of a 17th to 19th-century date and are dominated by 63 spherical-headed pins and three dome-headed upholstery tacks. A single fragment of window lead was also recovered. Other finds of note included fragments of later 17th to 19th-century clay tobacco pipes, later 17th- to 18th-century vessel and bottle glass and an early 18th century beaker. A single fragment of a 19th century worked bone toothbrush were also recovered. ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTES AND SUMMARIES 314 The collected faunal remains show that oysters, cattle and sheep were consumed from the 13th century onwards, with chicken and pig rep-resented from the 17th century onwards. Horse bone was recovered from all periods. Cultivated food plants were bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.s.l.), oat (Avena sp.), barley (Hordeum sativum L.) and pea (Pisum sativum L.). Possible wild plant foods were elderberries (Sambucus nigra L.) and hazelnuts (Corylus avellana L.). dan swift [The full report can be found on the KAS website kentarchaeology.ac]