SWX9251 - Norden Open Pit: Archaeological Assessment March 1987

A summary of the results of fieldwork carried out at Norden Farm on an area of former pits and clay mining wast heaps around an embankment which had formerly carried a narrow-gauge railway. The Trust for Wessex Archaeology was commissioned to carry out the work by ECC Ball Clays Ltd in order to determine to what extent areas of surviving archaeology might be affected by backfilling of the pits and the construction of a lagoon. A number of test pits were dug in those areas where it seemed most likely that the original ground surface might survive. Features were not excavated, but their presence noted. Wherever archaeological levels survived they were overlain and sealed by a black sandy loam deposit containing archaeological finds. The authors concluded that, while archaeological deposist would not be damaged by the deposition of material over them, they might well be disturbed by the proposed construction of a lagoon, and that the area of the former embankment seemed most sensitive in this respect.