The robbed-out foundation of the abbey church (F1) was located beneath 450mm of post-medieval/modern sandy-silt topsoil (L2) within the foundation pit (FP1) of one of the new floodlights around the perimeter of the new tennis courts. <1>
FP1, 1m x 1m in area, was located at the south-western corner of the tennis courts on the projected alignment of the southern-most wall of the abbey church.
No solid masonry survived in this location as the larger pieces of building materials had been robbed out for use in structures elsewhere in the town. The edges of the robber trench were not visible in the foundation-pit which indicates that it extended beyond the limit of excavation in all directions. The machine-excavation of the foundation-pit ceased once the robber trench had been identified. The rest of the foundation-pit was hand-excavated by CAT archaeologists down to the required depth. The base of the robber trench was identified at a depth of 1.15m below modern ground level where it cut the pale yellow natural sand (L4). The fill was a mixture of mortar and sand with numerous small to medium sized pieces of greensand, septaria, flint, Roman mortar (including opus signinum) and Roman brick/tile (including box flue tile).
The fill and depth of F1 in TP7 was comparable to the corresponding robber trench for the southern wall identified to the west during the 2011 evaluation.<2>