North End Barn, Hamsey, East Sussex

On Good Friday 2004 a small group carried out an excavation at North End Barn, Hamsey. The owner had found a large quantity of Medieval pottery, and we wanted to try and establish the context that it had originated from.

The pottery appeared to come from a bank which had been cut away, so the first objective was to excavate part of the bank to see if we could see any features. Cleaning the section and excavating down from the top of the bank showed us that the pottery had probably come from a pit (approx 1m in diameter) cut into the natural.

Although the relationship had  gone due to the truncation of the top part of the pit, it was probably cut down from a layer that represented the original Medieval land surface. This layer produced huge quantities of Medieval pottery, and at one end of our trench there was a layer of flints that may have been the remnant of a floor or metalled surface. Also cut into the section was another pit or ditch (see photo), although this was not excavated.

A full report will be produced in due course. Many thanks to all those members who helped with this project.