Monument record 0632103001 - Taplow Hillfort: Saxon Building

In 1999 Oxford Archaeology carried out an excavation and located the foundation trench of a sub-rectangular Saxon timber building at least 5m long and 3.5m wide, in the NE corner of the site (B1).
A shallow foundation trench was found in the north-eastern corner of the main excavation. It formed a U-shape in plan. Within this trench close-set sircular post-pipes, marked by dark brown sandy silt set within orange brown sandy silt packing, were found. It contained a few pieces of flint and some charred plant remains. Part of a further, rather irregular, curving gully was found by Wessex Archaeology in a nearby evaluation trench but there were no post-pipes so it may not have been associated. It may have been associated with the Early-Middle Iron Age hillfort entrance (perhaps a guard-house tucked behind the hornwork), or related to the Late Bronze Age double palisade. Post-in-trench is characteristic of the Middle and Late Saxon periods and there is a Saxon burial nearby. The structure is, however, irregular and narrow for a Saxon building so cannot be closely dated (B2).