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Description

In 2007 and 2008 Wessex Archaeology conducted archaeological fieldwork in the centre of Newbury, prior to the redevelopment of a former car park into a cinema complex on the corner of Cheap Street and Market Street. The site occupies a sizeable plot on the southern edge of the historic core of Newbury, about 250 metres to the south of the River Kennet. Previous excavations within the medieval town have revealed sequences of activity from at least the 11th century, and it was hoped that this excavation would augment these results and confirm the general picture of a planned town in which development spread outwards from the area around the church and market place from the late 11th century, extending down the Cheap Street frontage in the 13th century.

During the excavations, some medieval features were found, and one possible structure, dating to the 12th or 13th century. However, most of the evidence for buildings within formal property boundaries dates no earlier than the early post-medieval period (15th to 17th centuries), and most of the building plans recovered dated from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries.

A limited programme of documentary research and map regression has supplemented these results by confirming the broad dating for the site and linking the excavated evidence to known properties and, for the later period, known occupiers.

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Published	Published By	Pages
Jan. 1, 2011	Wessex Archaeology	25
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Copyright © Wessex Archaeology. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-ND 4.0