Orchard site, Walton
An old orchard site in Walton was excavated before houses were built on it. Lots
of Middle Bronze Age (1600 – 1100BC) and Middle Saxon (500-800 AD) remains
were found. Remains from the Bronze Age to the medieval period have been
found in other excavations around Walton.
Ten buildings were identified from the archaeological excavations. They were
recognised either from regular post-holes or beam slots. These are the empty
spaces left behind when a wooden post or beam has rotted away. The spaces
get filled up with soil after the wood has rotted. Archaeologists can still find the
spaces because the soil inside is looser and often a different colour.
There are three types of building. Sunken-featured buildings are recognised by a
roughly rectangular hollow with large post-holes at either end. The hollow was
planked over so there was a space under the floor, perhaps to keep the floor dry
or for use as storage. Post-holes look like little pits and are often round. They
were where an upright post was put in. The post-holes in the middle of each of
the shorter ends of the hollow supported the walls and roof. The sunken-featured
building, structure 1, found at the Orchard site was 3.1m long, 2.3m wide and the
hollow was 0.32m deep. Saxon pottery sherds were found in pits and post-holes
and in the hollow of structure 1 and several fragments of quern stone were found
scattered around the site. Lots of pieces of animal bones were also found in
structure 1 and in post-holes and pits. There were 379 fragments of animal bone
in the hollow in structure 1: 54 of the bones were sheep; 45 cattle; 18 pig; 2 duck;
2 fowl; 1 goose; 1 plover; and 1bone came from a red deer. Some charred grains
were found in the pits and post-holes. Grains of bread wheat and hulled wheat
were found, and a grain of rye and a piece of hazelnut came from structure 1.
Structure 2 was a building based on beam slots making a rectangle, with an
entrance on the south side. It was bigger than structure 1, being 6m long and
4.9m wide. Beam slots were for horizontal timbers, often square, which acted as
a base for a wooden structure to stand on. Although no wood was found it is
likely that the walls were made by setting posts close together or by having
overlapping planks. There was a small beam slot or gully in the entrance, at right
angles to the main beam slots. This may have been the base for a porch. A piece
of bone comb was found inside structure 2. Oyster shells were also found, two
pieces in one of the beam slots of structure 2.
The other eight buildings were all supported with posts dug into the ground,
leaving only post-holes behind. Some of the post-holes have been replaced,
Orchard site, Walton
possibly when the original posts rotted, so there are two or three post-holes next
to each other. Some of the buildings had posts half-way along one of the long
walls that may have marked an entrance and/or a porch. Some fragments of
daub were found near structures 8, 9 and 10. These were not so common around
other structures, so it is thought that the walls of the other buildings were
probably constructed some other way rather than with wattle and daub.
Seven are roughly rectangular, and range from 8.8m x 5.5m to 10.8m x 5.8m in
size. The size of the buildings was based on the Saxon rod measurement. There
were two rods, a long one and a short one. The short rod was 4.65m and the
long rod 5.03m. The measurements are not exact but structures 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 and
10 seem to be based on the long rod while structure 3 was based on the short
rod. There is one nearly square building, structure 10, which is only 4.4m x 4.3m
in size. It may be part of or an extension to structure 9.
Most of the buildings are aligned south-west to north-east but structures 4, 9 and
10 are aligned roughly south-east to north-west. They perhaps belong to two
different phases. Some of the houses overlapped. Structure 1, the sunkenfeatured building, is later than structure 5. Structure 2, the beam-slotted building,
is later than structure 7. Structures 9 and 10 overlap but it is not clear which was
built first.
There are several fences, recognised from straight lines of small post-holes or
stake-holes, running across the site. One was between structures 8 and 9, two
others were to the south-west of structure 4. Some of the other post- and stakeholes probably come from two, three or four-post structures that could have been
used as little sheds. Three areas of burning showed where hearths must have
been but none of these were associated with the buildings. One (numbered
1538) was close to the walls of structure 9 and so must be either earlier or later
in date. Saxon hearths were usually in the centre of the building. There were also
19 pits on this site. These were probably used as storage or for dumping rubbish.
www.buckscc.gov.uk/archaeology