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Summary

Animal bones, stone objects, pottery and coins and part of a stone fireplace found when digging foundations for town hall in 1876, also once interpreted as the site of a Roman or Norman watermill

Associated Legal Designations or Protected Status

• Conservation Area: Newbury Town Centre

Other Statuses and Cross-References

• Berkshire SMR No. (pre 2000): 01387.00.013
  
• National Monuments Record No.: SU 46 NE 18
  SU 4712 6712

Monument Type(s):

• FINDSPOT (Lower Palaeolithic to Mid 18th - Mid 19th century - 500000 BC? to 1850 AD?)
• (Former Type) WATERMILL? (Roman - 43 AD? to 409 AD?)
• WATERMILL? (11th century to 12th century - 1066 AD? to 1200 AD?)

Full Description

Various 'relics' were found in 1876 on the site of the "New Municipal buildings" (the group of buildings now called the Town Hall in Newbury), during the excavations for the foundations. In a peaty bed about 8 feet from the surface were animal bones (including red and fallow deer, ox, sheep, boar), a quern fragment, a worked piece of oak, a bronze steelyard weght (or counterpoise to a statera) and some fragments of Roman and Anglo-Saxon pottery, some with a characteristic zigzag pattern. In the upper or made earth of the diggings were found some fragments of medieval and Jacobean pottery and fragments of a 15th century stone chimney piece, a cannon-ball, tobacco pipe and coins <1>. Some of the objects were presented to Newbury Museum by Walter Money. In the vaults of the building, further objects were found (see MWB9948).

The fireplace of Bath stone was c 7 ft 6 ins wide, with carved shields on it <1>; it seems likely that it must have come from a nearby medieval building.

Ford <6> speculated in the 1970s that a water-driven mill had stood where the Municipal Buildings were. He based this speculation on the presence of several features and finds from around the Market Place. From the 19th century digging in the Municipal buildings came: the fragment of quern of sarsen stone, reinterpreted as a bearing for a water-wheel; fragments of oak, pointed at the end, suggested as revetting or part of a mill structure; the bronze steelyard weight, suggested as being a requirement for a miller. During Ford's excavations of 1 Market Place in 1974, other finds included fragments of millstones and pieces of Roman tile and a stream bed, silted prior to the medieval occupation of the site <6>. However, Eggleton considered that there was no direct evidence of watermills existing in Newbury during the Roman occupation of Britain <7>, and Ford himself retracted the Roman date in a later article in the Transactions of the Newbury District Field Club <8>, preferring instead to date the mill to the Norman period.

Sources and further reading

Related Monuments

Associated Excavations and Fieldwork

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