EDO5463 - Rear of 5 King Street, Wimborne Minster; excavation 1990

Following the discovery of several sherds of twelfth-century pottery during small-scale excavations inside the house in 1989, students from Bournemouth Polytechnic carried out excavations in the garden at the rear of the building. The scale of the excavations is not clear from the published note. The excavators reported several possible medieval post-holes with associated coarse pottery, and a large depression which they suggested might be the butt end of a large ditch. This feature was at least five metres wide, and of uncertain date, though initial results of pottery analysis suggested that it was an early post-Conquest construction. Its filling consisted of an initial layer of silt, with a deep layer of cess on top, and the feature was subsequently filled with domestic rubbish, the latter (it appears) being partly sealed by a stone wall of probable late medieval date that had collapsed or been dismantled in the sixteenth century. The excavators suggested that this might be part of a structure removed to make way for the present building. Considerable quantities of post-medieval pottery were found, including fine wares of German and Flemish origin.