EDO6024 - South Western Scaffolding, Unit 9A, Grove Trading Estate, Dorchester; watching brief 2011

A watching brief was commissioned by South Western Scaffolding prior to construction of a new building to comply with planning consent. Strip footings were excavated by machine and measured 0.6m wide and between 1m and 2.4m deep. A number of archaeological features that appeared to be Late Iron Age, Roman or post-Roman were recorded. These were two parallel ditches on the western side of the trench, a probable sub-rectangular feature in the SW corner and one ditch cutting a deep pit on the eastern side of the trench. The ditch contained 1st century BC/AD pottery (one rim sherd of black burnished ware), worked flint thought to be late Bronze Age, fired clay and bone. The two western ditches contained similar fills and no finds and were thought to be part of the western boundary of a Roman enclosure which my have been later recut. No definite conclusions were drawn about the single ditch, pit or sub-rectangular feature.