| Description | Excavation on site of Medieval tenements on Tanners Row, Pontefract. Stratigraphic sequence as follows. Circular stone built oven, with flue/stoke hole and work area; function unknown. Attempts to obtain an archaeomagnetic date on the feature failed, but stratigraphically associated pottery gave a 12th/13th c. date. Post dated by two pit alignments. The first of these ran N S, and comprised five large, sub circular pits probably rubbish pits. An alignment of postholes running parallel immediately to the west of these pits may represent the tenement boundary their line is pepetuated in stone in a later phase. The second pit alignment consisted of three square cut pits running E W, interconnected and progressively deeper from west to east. The stone chamber of the oven was incorporated as the westernmost and shallowest end of this alignment, which may have functioned as a settling tank. The pit alignments were overlain by a group of apparent boundary walls, one of which preserved the alignment of the settling tank, and another of which preserved the alignment of the post holes noted in an earlier phase. The wall group apparently respected the alignment of the corner of a structure exposed in the SE most corner of the site, which probably represents one of the Medieval tenements which fronted Tanners Row. In the yard formed by two of the walls to the south of this structure were exposed a garderobe and the remains of what appeared to have been a small outbuilding with stone roof and sunken floor. The whole of the excavation area is overlain by features associated with the cultivation of licorice in the 19th c.
A brief summary of this excavation is provided in Gaimster et al. (1989, p. 222) |