15 May 2008: Archaeological works at the Lewes House site

Media: 995

Archaeological works will begin shortly on a large site in the historic centre of Lewes and continue over the summer.

Archaeology South East (ASE) has been appointed by Lewes District Council, Ash Mill Developments and the Southern Housing Group to carry out archaeological excavations on land bounded by Walwers Lane, Church Twitten and Broomans Lane.  The site will be fully excavated as a prelude to development of the site.

ASE has considerable archaeological experience in Lewes. It carried out a desk study of this site in 2000 and trial trench evaluation in 2005. It also excavated the neighbouring Baxters Printworks site in 2006/7. The programme of works has been drawn up in consultation with the County Archaeologist.

The initial task will be to prepare the site for excavation. This will include the demolition of the vacant 1950’s houses on the site and the pruning of some trees. ASE will be using a tracked machine and dumper trucks to machine strip areas, removing modern deposits and top soil to expose the archaeological deposits on the site. Once opened up, a team of archaeologists will carefully excavate and record the archaeology. The site will be stripped in two phases and excavated material stored on site in mounded bunds. The work is expected to last 16 weeks, finishing in early September.

There will be a number of opportunities during the works for local people to visit the excavations and detailed information on “open days” and other events will be publicised later. Notice boards will be put up around the site and will be regularly updated as work progresses.

However, for health and safety reasons, the site will be closed to the public, except on open days. Normal working hours will be Monday to Friday, 8.00am to 4.00pm.

After the on site works finish in September, ASE will still have much more work to do in cleaning, collating , recording and interpreting archaeological remains . This will lead to a full report, which will doubtless add to our understanding of the history and culture of Lewes.

Media enquiries: Liz Lacon, Communications Manager