Test Pit 2:         Aylesbury Road

11th May 2013

By Martin Cuthbert

Test Pit 2 was located just south of Aylesbury Road.

The main road through Wing is aligned North-South but eventually this changed as traffic increased from Aylesbury to Leighton Buzzard perhaps in the medieval period. Geophysics and fieldwalking  identified a focus of Roman settlement activity behind the Aylesbury Road close to the Mentmore Road gradually petering out further west. This test pit was excavated to see if the Roman settlement activity did continue further west.

First of all WOW what a view from the garden…stunning!! The rolling Chiltern hills and Mentmore towers peaking through the trees. The weather was again a bit variable but with the amazing views you could see it coming.  What was noticeable when i arrived was that the earthworks of ridge and furrow ploughing had survived (its very prominent in Jubilee Green). This suggests that the garden which would of formed part of the neighboring field has not been ploughed with modern machinery.. hmmm interesting!!

Unlike our first dig we found very little modern finds, hardly an blue and white china or post medieval pottery. However we did find lots of roof tiles, which are sadly hard to date. These may have been incorporated into manure that was placed onto the field.

We did find three sherds of pottery but they were very worn and had probably been bashed by ploughing. Sadly none of them looked Roman….But they were Medieval!! The assemblage comprised three sherds of Saxo-Norman pottery dating to 1075-1350 and another single sherd dating to 1200-1600.

A huge thank you to all our volunteers, Pauline from LBDAHS, Paul Blinkhorn for the pottery analysis and Catherine for letting us dig a hole in her garden.