Pottery from the Sharnbrook Test-pits (2007)
Paul Blinkhorn
IA: Iron Age. Soft, grey-brown ware, usually with fairly large pieces of shell visible in the clay. Outside of vessels sometimes covered in vertical scratched lines, giving it the named ‘Scored Ware’. Found all over the East Midlands and western East Anglia between the 5th and 1st centuries BC.
SN: St Neots Ware. Made at a number of as-yet unknown places in southern England between AD900-1200. The early pots are usually a purplish-black, black or grey colour, the later ones brown or reddish. The clay from which they were made contains finely crushed fossil shell, giving them a white speckled appearance. Most pots were small jars or bowls.
SHC: Early Medieval Shelly Ware: AD1100-1400. Hard fabric with plentiful fossil shell mixed in with the clay. Manufactured at many sites in western Bedfordshire. Mostly cooking pots, but bowls and occasionally jugs also known.
EMW: Early Medieval Sandy Ware: AD1100-1400. Hard fabric with plentiful quartz temper. Manufactured at a wide range of generally unknown sites all over eastern England. Mostly cooking pots, but bowls and occasionally jugs also known.
LB: Lyveden/Stanion 'B' Ware. c. AD1225-?1400. Made at Lyveden in Northamptonshire between AD1225 and 1400. The clay used for this pottery is very easy to recognise has it contains small, egg-shaped fossils known as Ooliths. The earlier pots are quite crude, as the potters did not thrown them on a wheel, but built them by coiling. The clay fabric is usually grey with buff or orange surfaces. The main types of pot are jars, but also jugs with a poor-quality green glaze on the outer surface, and vertical stripes and dots painted with white clay. Around AD1300, the potters changed to wheel-throwing their pots, resulting in better-quality vessels, but stopped decorating them with slip designs. Lyveden ware is found all over the east midlands and East Anglia, and some pots have been found in Norway. They were probably shipped there from King’s Lynn.
BD: Bourne ‘D’ Ware: 1450-1637. Made in the village of Bourne in Lincolnshire, until the place was destroyed by a great fire in 1637. Fairly hard, smooth, brick-red clay body, often with a grey core. Some vessels have sparse white flecks of shell and chalk in the clay. Vessel forms usually jugs, large bowls and cisterns, for brewing beer. Vessels often painted with thin, patchy white liquid clay (‘slip’), over which a clear glaze was applied.
LMOx: Late Medieval Oxidized Ware: Hard, red pottery with lots of sand mixed in with the clay. Made from about 1450 – 1500 in lots of different sites in the south-east midlands and western East Anglia. Used for everyday pottery such as jugs and large bowls, and also large pots (‘cisterns’) for brewing beer.
LMRd: Late Medieval Reduced Ware: 1350-1500. Very similar to LMOx, but pots are a uniform dark greyish-blue colour, and slightly earlier in date.
GRE: Glazed Red Earthenwares: Just about everywhere in Britain began to make and use this type of pottery from about AD1550 onwards, and it was still being made in the 19th century. The clay fabric is usually very smooth, and a brick red colour. Lots of different types of pots were made, particularly very large bowls, cooking pots and cauldrons. Almost all of them have shiny, good-quality orange or green glaze on the inner surface, and sometimes on the outside as well. From about AD1680, black glaze was also used.
BG: Black-glazed Earthenwares. Late 17th century +. Basically a development of Red Earthenwares, with a similar range of forms, although with a black glaze which was coloured by the addition of iron filings.
SMW: Staffordshire Manganese Ware, late 17th – 18th century. Made from a fine, buff-coloured clay, with the pots usually covered with a mottled purple and brown glaze, which was coloured by the addition of powdered manganese. A wide range of different types of pots were made, but mugs and chamber pots are particularly common.
CR: Creamware. This was the first pottery to be made which resembles modern ‘china’. It was invented by Wedgewood, who made it famous by making dinner surfaces for some of the royal families of Europe. Made between 1740 and 1880, it was a pale cream-coloured ware with a clear glaze, and softer than bone china. There were lots of different types of pots which we would still recognise today: cups, saucers, plates, soup bowls etc. In the 19th century, it was considered to be poor quality as better types of pottery were being made, so it was often painted with multi-coloured designs to try and make it more popular.
V: ‘Victorian’. A wide range of different types of pottery, particularly the cups, plates and bowls with blue decoration which are still used today. First made around AD1800.
Results
Test Pit 1
CR / VTP / Context / No / Wt / No / Wt / DateRange
1 / 1 / 4 / 33 / 1800-1900
1 / 2 / 1 / 6 / 1800-1900
1 / 5 / 12 / 41 / 5 / 33 / 1750-1900
1 / 6 / 5 / 32 / 1800-1900
All the pottery from this test pit dated to the middle of the 18th century or later, which suggests that the land was never used by people before this time.
Test Pit 2
IA / SN / LB / LMOx / VTP / Context / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / DateRange
2 / 1 / 5 / 7 / 1800-1900
2 / 2 / 1 / 4 / 2 / 10 / 1200-1900
2 / 3 / 1 / 21 / 1 / 3 / 3 / 19 / 2 / 12 / 500BC-1900
This test-pit produced a fairly large piece of Iron Age pottery, showing that people were almost certainly living here over 2,000 years ago. There is also a small amount of late Saxon and medieval pottery, showing that there was another period of occupation between the 10th and 15th centuries. After that, the site appears not to have been used to any great extent until Victorian times.
Test Pit 3
SHC / EMW / LMOx / LMRd / GRE / SMW / BG / VTP / Context / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / DateRange
3 / 1 / 1 / 4 / 1 / 17 / 17 / 106 / 1100-1900
3 / 2 / 1 / 5 / 30 / 88 / 1550-1900
3 / 3 / 1 / 15 / 1 / 13 / 30 / 99 / 1100-1900
3 / 4 / 1 / 8 / 27 / 80 / 1100-1900
3 / 5 / 1 / 3 / 12 / 11 / 1800-1900
3 / 6 / 2 / 11 / 2 / 36 / 1 / 4 / 4 / 16 / 1100-1900
3 / 7 / 1 / 12 / 1 / 5 / 1100-1900
This test-pit produced a wide range of pottery from the early medieval period onwards. It shows that people having been living on the site more or less continuously for 900 years, although glazed pottery of the 13th – 14th centuries is absent, and so the site may have been deserted at some point in that time.
Test Pit 4
GRE / BG / VTP / Context / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / DateRange
4 / 1 / 7 / 21 / 1800-1900
4 / 2 / 17 / 44 / 1800-1900
4 / 3 / 1 / 38 / 20 / 32 / 1680-1900
4 / 4 / 2 / 19 / 3 / 9 / 1680-1900
4 / 5 / 2 / 6 / 3 / 5 / 1550-1900
All the pottery from this test-pit is post-medieval, and suggests that no-one was using this site before the 16th century.
Test Pit 5
SHC / BD / GRE / SMW / BG / VTP / Context / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / No / Wt / DateRange
5 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 12 / 20 / 1550-1900
5 / 2 / 1 / 5 / 1 / 2 / 16 / 25 / 1450-1900
5 / 3 / 1 / 18 / 1 / 5 / 65 / 113 / 1100-1900
5 / 4 / 18 / 35 / 1800-1900
5 / 5 / 25 / 51 / 1800-1900
5 / 6 / 1 / 16 / 2 / 5 / 19 / 43 / 1550-1900
This test-pit produced pottery from the early medieval period onwards, although there was none which could be said for certain to date to the 13th or 14th centuries. It may be that the site was abandoned at that time. The rest of the pottery shows that people have been here from around the middle of the 15th century onwards.