Excavation of the Middle Saxon to Medieval Village at Lordship Lane, Cottenham, Cambridgeshire

Abstract

Situated on the fen-edge north of Cambridge, the village of Cottenham is an elongated village, string out for c.1.75km along a crooked min street which appears to divert around an early village core. Excavations by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit took place during the autumn and winter of 1996/97 in advance of a large housing development around Lordship Lane. Extending over 2.70 hectares, the site lies immediately to the northeast of the village centre alongside Crowlands Moat, a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Crossed by a dense network of ditches, the chaotic appearance of the site plan reveals a continuity of settlement from the Middle Saxon through to the areas abandonment in the early medieval period, and attests to the dynamic interaction between manor and village. The site confronts questions of the mechanics of village formation, the metamorphosis of a Middle Saxon hamlet into a Medieval nucleated village.