EDO4824 - WDDC Leisure Centre extension, Thomas Hardye School, Coburg Road, Dorchester. Trench 1

WDDC commissioned Wessex Archaeology to carry out archaeological excavations during June 1995 in advance of the construction of extensions to existing buildings at WDDC Leisure Centre, Coburg Road, Dorchester. The area had already been the subject of extensive archaeological work during 1994. These excavations, in two separate trenches, revealed a small number of prehistoric pits and ditches beneath depths of made ground and shallow modern disturbances. Small quantities of pottery and worked flint were recovered, for analysis at a later date. Trench 1 was approximately rectangular in shape, aligned N-S and designed to cover the area of groundworks for an extension on the west side of the lesisure centre. The natural comprised upper chalk sloping gently to the south. A single, small rounded pit [100] was revealed against the western edge of the trench towards the southern end. It measured 0.7x0.6x0.23m deep filled with a single deposit of yellow-brown silty clay containing pieces of worked flint and fragments of bone/antler. At the northern end of the trench an abandoned modern sewer inspection pit was revealed. All deposits were sealed by 0.3-0.4m of dark yellow-brown silty clay with 0.5m of dumped soil above [1].