A Medieval Well at the Asda Site, Crawley

Introduction

The town of Crawley has seen considerable redevelopment in recent years, and hand-in-hand with this building work there have been many archaeological investigations, a number of which have been published in the Sussex Archaeological Collections. It is now clear that the town was an important centre for the Wealden iron industry in the medieval period, founded in the early 13th century, prosperous for the next three centuries, but apparently subject to a steady decline following the introduction of the blast furnace technology by 1500.

The largest project to date was carried put in the 2002 prior to the construction of a new Asda Superstore at the southern end of the town’s now–pedestrianised High Street. Following an archaeological evaluation of the site which identified various archaeological deposits, a series of area excavations were undertaken which uncovered a range of medieval features including rubbish pits, boundary ditches and evidence of local ironworking. A full report is nearing completion, and will be published in due course, but one feature encountered at the site is worthy of particular attention.

The Well

The feature was a 4m deep well, originally identified and partially examined during the evaluation of the site by trial trenching in June 2002, but fully excavated and recorded during the subsequent excavation later that year. The upper fills were manually excavated, but on grounds of safety the lower fills were excavated by machine under archaeological supervision, with the contents removed from the well and placed on the surface of the excavated area, allowing thorough, and safe investigation to take place.

A remarkable assemblage of artefacts and environmental evidence was retrieved from the well fills, the lowest of which was partially waterlogged. An almost complete anthropomorphic jug was particularly striking as was the sheer quantity of ironworking slag used to backfill the upper part of the well (over 20kg from the upper fills). The evidence of the impressive ‘face jug’ and other pottery from the features suggest a date range of 1300-1400AD for the backfilling. The waterlogged conditions near the base of the well led to excellent preservation of organic remains, including part of a shoe, charred and waterlogged plant remains, charcoal and a menagerie of insect remains, including numerous species of beetles, various other bugs, woodworm, grain weevils, flies, ants and part of a honey bee.

Material recovered from environmental samples taken from the well suggests the deposition of industrial and domestic waste, as well as the use of the feature for the dumping of cess, apparently soon after the ‘cessation’ of use for drawing water. This theory is given support by the nature of the insect assemblage that suggests that the inclusion of waste began when the well was still ‘wet’. The similarity of the environmental material from the different fills of the well suggests the feature was rapidly backfilled, with cess-derived remains of apple (including fragments of a core), bramble, sloe, cherry and fig present in both samples. A seed of caraway was also recovered from the upper fill.

There was also a range of other plant remains, both deliberately dumped ‘industrial’ waste such as flax, hemp, and wood chippings, and a range of taxa of weeds and other plants which would have accumulated in the well from plants and trees in the immediate area surrounding the well. The insect remains support the view of partial accumulation and partial deliberate dumping, adding the intriguing detail that some of the dumped material originated inside a structure, as the remains of beetles who favour indoor conditions were recovered in significant quantities.

Conclusion

The excavation of the well was a ‘first’ in the archaeology of medieval Crawley although another well of similar date was encountered on the opposite side of the High Street in 1995, but was not fully excavated on grounds of safety. The part manual, part mechanical excavation of the well at the Asda site allowed the recovery of an illuminating range of material, combining ‘conventional’ artefacts of interest with fascinating environmental remains. The results clearly illustrate the potential of such features, which, although not easy to excavate, can repay the trouble.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to all the specialists who contributed to the site report, and whose work has been used to prepare this article : Luke Barber, Samantha Crawt, Chris Butler, Lucy Sibun, Wendy Carruthers, Rowena Gale, and especially to Enid Allison and John Carrott who prepared the report on the insect remains. Gratitude is also extended to the excavation team: Samantha Crawt, Chris Derham, Catherine Drew, David Dunkin, Henry Escudero, Peter Ginn, Fiona Griffin, Alex Langlands, Dan Lee, Tom Neyland, Paul Riccoboni, Edward Wilkinson and Dave Yates.