SDO9659 - Excavations and Survey at Fordington Farm and the Trumpet Major: an Interim Note.

The development of housing and sports facilities along Alington Avenue and Fordington Farm continues to encroach on an important sequence of settlement remains. Two archaeological evaluations were undertaken in 1986: to the west and south of Fordington Farm, and to the north of Alington Avenue in a coppice to the west of Trumpet Major. At Fordington Farm, the excavation and survey concentrated on 2 areas; the pasture field to the west of the Farm and the area immedieately to the south and west of the Alington Avenue excavations. Earthworks in the pasture field consisted of a ploughed barrow and relict field boundaries asscoiated with Fordington Farm. Geophysical survey however, produced few anomalies. The excavation was designed to section and identify all the earthworks and geophysical anomalies. The barrow was revealed to be a 3 phase structure. Other trenches revealed a RB double ditched trackway and earthworks of medieval and post-medieval date. The trenches to the south of the Farm only produced evidenc for a droveway aligned on the 'spectacle enclosure' at Alington Avenue. A series of test pits were also dug and seived in order to assess the distribution of artefacts across the ridge. At Trumpet Major 3 trenches were cut within an overgrown coppice prior to development as two houses. The western Trench revealed a Romano-British ditch. The NE trench contained late Iron Age droveway ditches and a crouched burial. The southern trench contained a series of LIA/early RB settlement ditches and 2 crouched burials.