Nos. 3–5 Round Church Street and the Cambridge Union Society, Cambridge: Archaeological Excavations

Abstract

Excavation and monitoring at the Trinity College and Cambridge Union Society site on Round Church Street/Park Street, Cambridge, by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit between April 2019 and February 2021 covering c. 900 square metres revealed features and material relating to a 1st/2nd–4th-century roadside settlement known from previous investigations and the later town, spanning the 10th to 19th centuries. As the focus of occupation was on Bridge Street, the archaeological evidence for both the 1st/2nd–4th-century and 10th-century and later occupation relates mainly to activities that took place in backyard areas. Most features of all periods were pits, with a beamslot, building related features, cesspits, ditches, drains, culverts, a grave, a hollow, an oven, planting beds, postholes, a soakaway and wells also present. The work also included significant investigation of 12th–16th-century phases of the town boundary, known as the King’s Ditch. The 10th-century and later archaeological remains can be linked to several properties documented from the 13th century onwards and depicted on 16th century and later maps. Important discoveries include several rapidly deposited, moderately sized assemblages dating to the 2nd, 14th and 16th–early 17th centuries, which probably relate to individual households, a mid-2nd–3rd-century skeleton with probable sharp force trauma, a 13th–15th century sword pommel, a 16th-century flower vase and a 17th-century sundial.