EDO5046 - Medlycott Building, Sherborne School, Sherborne; excavations in advance of construction

C.E. Bean excavated a number of small evaluation trenches during 1954-5 in advance of the building of a new classroom at the NE side of the Sherborne School quadrangle. He also observed the excavation of footings trenches for the classroom. The geology of the site was gravel over clay. At least seven walls, numbered [A]-[G] were recorded in the excavations, the most significant of which may be [A]; an E-W aligned wall 3.5 feet wide and traceable for 42 feet or more including robber trenches. It seems to represent a building approximately 35 feet wide, as surmised from parch marks visible on air photographs. Only the NW corner and parts of the north and west walls were seen in the excavations, however. Ham stone chamfered buttresses were seen on the north wall and at the NW corner, an entrance was recorded in the north wall with an external staircase next to it. The foundations, 7 feet below the surface rested on white tufa, possibly suggesting the existence of a spring nearby. The foundations had cut through a number of W-E aligned burials. A second wall [B] lay 13 feet to the north of [A], and was parallel to it and a third wall [C] lay 22 feet north of A but at a slight angle to it. Faint traces of an earlier foundation [D] and associated pits contained 12th-13th century pottery and other domestic items. Cornish or Delabole slates were found above foundation [D]. A trench was also dug in the back garden of a property on the west side of Cheap Street on the projected line of wall [A], to see if it continued eastwards under School House as might be expected if it were the north wall of the infirmary block. [A] was not seen here, but a N-S wall [E] was, about 17 feet from the back wall of School House, it was though that this might represent one of the monastery’s open drains. A further wall [F] was seen east of [E], in the centre of the back garden, running E-W, although it could not be further examined. Foundation [G], 100 feet west of cheap Street and 83 feet east of School House, is followed by property boundaries on the OS 1:500 map both to the north and south so as to meet the Abbey gate on Church Avenue. It may be then that the Cheap Street plots back on to the Abbey walls (1). Three E-W oriented skeletons were also excavated and two of them were radiocarbon dated. The results suggested that, together with burials from The Slype, they formed part of an early Christian cemetery of 7th-8th century date (2).