EDO4960 - Dolphin Development, Church Street (Site X11.3), Christchurch; excavation 1974 to 1975

During December 1974-January 1975 a rescue excavation in advance of development was directed by M Fox for Poole Museums on the site of the Dolphin Development, Church Street, Chrischurch. This involved a trial trench (site X11.1), a main excavation (site X11.3) and a watching brief with salvage excavation and recording (site X11.2). The main excavation was confined to a roughly rectangular area measuring c. 18m x c. 16m at the southern end of the site in the area of recently demolished buildings fronting on to Church Street and Church Lane. Much of the Church Street frontage had been disturbed by an 18th-19th century deep cellar with modern infill. Nevertheless, the earliest features on site were found close to the Church Street frontage, either side of the cellar. These included a Saxo-Norman pit located within an undated six post structure, and four early medieval pits (11th-12th century). It is likely that the street frontage has moved since the 12th century to encompass the castle moat. These pits are likely to have been at the rear of plots that are now largely beneath the modern Church Street. The late medieval period was represented by a post-hole alignment running parallel to Wick Lane and many late medieval pits containing small quantities of pottery and bone. One 15th-16th century pit [F76] was stone lined with eight slabs of limestone stacked in two tiers to form a rectangular pit 1.4m x 1.2m x 1.2m deep. Near the Church Street frontage a clay filled trench [F32], dipping towards Church Street, contained four glazed late medieval water pipes, a fifth was of a different fabric and may have been a later repair. In the post-medieval period several walls and robbing trenches were recorded but no definite structures could be identified. There were many post-medieval pits, circular in plan and with steep sides and wells with stone or brick linings.