Monument record 0580102000 - Sports Field, Stowe School

In 1990 a Roman pottery kiln (CAS 5801) had been discovered on the northern edge of the field and in 1995 in laying an all-weather pitch, further pottery finds were made. An area 102m x 67m was stripped to a depth of 0.7m in the north and 0.3m in the south to install a gravel bed and then new tarmac and astroturf. A system of french drains was also laid beneath the gravel. A small assemblage of pottery including large pieces of rim from a storage jar recovered from the southern section and another covering an area 5m x 3m from the centre. It is possible that this later spread was been relocated when the pitch was originally established in the 1930s. The gravel and clay at the southern end of the site contain large quanities of black ash. Several pieces of moulded baked clay (kiln lining and spacer bar) were recovered from the spoil heap at the southern end of the site, but their condition suggest that they were not in situ when they were disturbed. With the Roman road to Towcester running to the north of the site, this evidence combined with evidence from CAS 5801 suggests that this area could have been an important focus for industrial activity (B2.
Watching brief carried out by Oxford Archaeology in July 2007 during groundworks for new sports pitch and access road identified the truncated remains of Roman pits and ditches in the vicinity of the 1995 finds. The base of a small N-S ditch at least 9.4m long, 0.6m wide and 0.08m deep and a further ditch aligned NW-SE with steeply sloping sides and rounded base, at least 19m long, 0.5m wide and 0.18m deep were found flanking two sub-circular pits, one of which seems to have been deliberately dug to contain a large storage jar which may in turn have held 3 jars, a bowl and a dish. The pottery recovered was mainly pink-grogged ware of the late 2nd to early 4th centuries, probably from the Stowe kiln. See report for detail (B3).