King's Sutton, Northamptonshire
A watching brief was undertaken in the Cherwell valley on land off Wales Street, Kings Sutton, during the construction of a housing development and a flood alleviation scheme.
Soil stripping for the flood alleviation scheme revealed significant archaeological features. Under the planning condition attached to the development only a limited programme of salvage excavation was possible. Despite this constraint, most of the principal features present were rapidly excavated and recorded.
The earliest evidence of activity on the site, collected during the watching brief, was an assemblage of worked flint dating to the Mesolithic/early Neolithic periods. The earliest occupation on the site comprised part of a small middle Iron Age settlement, represented by enclosure ditches, a droveway, two possible circular buildings, pits, post-holes, gullies and a kiln or hearth. Significant evidence for iron smelting was also recorded. This comprised fragments of fired clay, some with impressions of wood, possibly from the structure of a kiln. A fragment of a crucible was recovered from one of the enclosure ditches, and further fragments of iron slag were found in the northern part of the site.
Few sites of Iron Age date have been recorded in the Cherwell valley, and relatively fewer of middle Iron Age date are known nationally. The discovery of a site of this date with associated metalworking is rarer still. Accordingly, the site is probably of more than regional importance.
