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Site Code. BARCOMBE11

Site identification

and address

Barcombe

County, district

and / or boroughEast Sussex

O.S. grid ref. TQ418143

Geology. River Gravel and Clay Head over Greensand

Project number. SNUFFLER1102

Fieldwork type. Geophysics

Site type.

Date of fieldwork. 21/05/11

Sponsor/client. IHRG

Project manager. David Staveley

Project

supervisor.

Period summary Roman

Project summary.

(100 word max)

Magnetometry of the field north-east of Barcombe villa and north-west of

the Barcombe bath house

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A Geophysical Survey of the Barcombe Bath House Field

by David Staveley

Introduction

Barcombe Roman villa has been excavated by UCL/Sussex Uni/MSFAT, who have now moved on

to excavating the batch house (reports forthcoming), in an adjacent field. With the excavations of

the bath house still ongoing, a magnetometry survey was undertaken in the rest of the field

containing the bath house, in order to understand the bath house in its wider context. The

excavations at the bath house limited the surveying in the south end of the field, but that may be

completed at a later date once the excavations have been backfilled.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Barcombe Church for giving permission for the survey, David

Rudling for negotiating with the landowner, and John Kane and Jan Oldham who helped with thesurvey on the day.

Methodology

The magnetometer survey was undertaken using a GRAD601-2 using 40x40m grids, with lines

spaced 1 metre apart and 4 readings per metre along the line, walking SE-NW. The data was

processed using Snuffler with destripe, destagger, despike and interpolation (X only) filters applied.

Positioning

The grids were set out and recorded using a total station and an arbitrary grid. Two resection pointsand two baselines are described in the table below.

Description Grid North Grid East

Centre of W edge of E gatepost N edge of field 726.48 493.15

Centre of S edge of NE post of bridge W edge of field 600.3 335.61

NW corner of survey area 700 460

Three grids S of above point 580 460

SW corner of survey area, not a grid corner 500 463.89

SE corner of survey area 500 540

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Results

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Interpretation

The survey area is bounded by a dotted line, ad within, probable modern features are shown in red,

and possible archaeological features are shown in blue. There are a large number of possible

archaeological features in this field.

At point A can be seen a wide curving ephemeral feature surrounding the top of the hill near the car-

park. Whilst it is possible that this feature is related to the construction of the car park, it is a little

too far away for that, and shows no features on the surface for such a recently constructed feature. It

may be some sort of enclosure. It may extend further around to the north-west, but modern features

obscure that area on the results.

At points B and C are faint trackways. They are of different construction, with the surface of B

showing as a faint linear leading towards the churchyard, and fragmented ditches either side of C

showing leading towards the bath house. Track B is not the modern footpath that crosses the field.

The fragmentary nature of track C is due to the method of collection, and the feature would show

up clearer had collection taken place perpendicular rather than parallel to it. Tracks of both formshave been seen on the same geophysics of a Roman site 1. Whilst track C is almost certainly Roman

in nature, track B is not as clearly so, but they both seem to lead to the same crossing point of the

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small stream that separates the fields containing the bath house and the villa, which is at point F,

roughly 18m SE of the modern crossing of the stream. If track B is indeed Roman, it may point to

further Roman features in the area of the church.

Near to track C, at point D, there are some sub-rectangular features which may be the foundations

of buildings, or very small enclosures. These are on the same alignment as track, with their open

faces adjacent to the track.

At E, which in reality is a large swathe covering a thin stretch of land across most of the survey

area, are the bulk of the probable archaeological features. There are a series of strong features,

strongest near the supposed crossing point at F, which are broadly parallel to the stream that passes

between the two fields. These features are all less that 10nT, so are probably not industrial in nature,

which would be the obvious interpretation, so their purpose is unclear.

1. Hodgkinson, R & McLaughlin, T, An Investigation into Bardown and its Environs, 2010