Kings Gate Primary School, Amesbury, Wiltshire - Post-excavation Assessment

Wessex Archaeology

Wessex Archaeology was commissioned to undertake archaeological mitigation works comprising an archaeological strip, map and record excavation, and post-excavation assessment of a 0.68 ha parcel of land in the playing fields of the new Kings Gate Primary School located within the Kings Gate development, Amesbury, Wiltshire, centred on NGR 416033 140513.

The site and wider Kings Gate and Archer’s Gate development areas have been the subject of an extensive series of archaeological investigations which revealed features of Mesolithic to recent Second World War date, including Late Neolithic monumental features such as a pit-circle and separate palisade, Beaker and other Early Bronze Age burials and funerary deposits, including two round barrows, and numerous prehistoric pit deposits.

Significant evidence has also been found of Early Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement, and of later prehistoric landscape organisation, including Wessex Linears and other ditches, as well as Romano-British settlement and economic activity, and late Romano-British cemeteries.

The features identified within the Kinggate Primary School mitigation area were relatively small in number, and comprised a single grave, prehistoric pits, apparently short linear features and postholes. The most significant of the features being a Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age pit containing numerous finds, including fragment of burnt wooden planks, and single Romano-British grave containing the skeletal remains of a child.