SDO14033 - An Archaeological Evaluation of a Proposed Redevelopment at the Coldstream Dairy, Milborne St Andrew, Dorset

The archaeological evaluation of a proposed redevelopment at the Coldstream Dairy involved the machine excavation of thee trenches on the fringes of the site. Two trenches (1 and 2) were located in the north-west corner at the rear of the dairy, with a single trench (3) located on the east side. Trenches 1 and 2 contained archaeological features likely to be of Iron Age/Romano-British date, predominantly consisting of a sequence of linear features all east to west aligned. It was not possible to hand-excavate any substantial depth of these deposits due to their identification at around 1.50m below the current ground surface, largely sealed by relatively modern (post 1929) infilling. Sufficient artefacts were recovered from the upper fills of some features to enable an informed opinion as to their likely nature and date. Any potential disturbance to these deposits from the redevelopment of the site is largely dependent on the nature and depth of future groundworks. There were no archaeological deposits present in Trench 3, although there is the potential for the survival of deposits, as this area has not been subjected to extensive truncation during the initial construction of the dairy and subsequent groundworks. The presenece of a number of service trenches may, however, have removed some evidence. The evaluation has confirmed the likelihood that archaeological deposits have possibly been removed from a large part of the dairy complex, with survival limited to the areas around the fringes of the site.