Monument record 1572900000 - NE of Buckland Road, Buckland

Evaluation trial trenching carried out in March 2023 by Wessex Archaeology in advance of proposed water pumping station found a single boundary or drainage ditch in Trench 5, at least 1.8m long, 0.92m wide and 0.93m deep, aligned NE-SW, with steep sides and a v-shaped base. The ditch had four fills, the two lowest of which included animal bone fragments (cattle, sheep/goat and red deer) and a single sherd of prehistoric pottery; whilst a post-medieval iron nail (presumably instrusive) was found in the upper-most fill. A bulk soil sample taken from one of the lower fill was found to contain very small quatities of burnt wheat grains and wood charcoal, and very abundant freshwater and land snails - mostly the freshwater species Anisus leucostoma, common in ditches, with fairly large numbers of terrestrial molluscs which prefer shady and moist, wet and marshland habitats. 6 post-medieval plough furrow bases were also recorded in trenches 3, 4 and 5. See report for detail (B1).