C15/C16 timber framed house.

Following a ram raid in December 2017, which destroyed the 1950s frontage of the Co-operative Stores, a Historic England Level 3 historic building recording was undertaken by Leigh Alston in 2018.<1> Test pit evaluation was carried out inside the Co-op by Colchester Archaeological Trust.<2> This was followed by archaeological excavation by Colchester Archaeological Trust between June and September 2018.<3>

The excavation defined seven phases, relating to the development of the current building (as well as earlier occupation on th site. The earliest evidence, indicated by the remains of two open hearths, was for an open hall of a medieval house, probably built somewhere between the mid 13th and the late 14th century. A sample of charred material from one produced a radiocarbon date of 1272 to 1389 cal AD (SUERC-91972; 677 ± 27; 95.4% confidence). This was replaced or remodelled in c.1520 into the jettied hall range of the high status merchant's house identified during the historic building record. In the 17th century (Phase 3), the burial of an almost complete tripod pot in a pit, immediately behind the (new) front wall, may well have been a deliberate act. The pot mainly contained later backfilled building rubble but included a small quantity of copper-alloy dress pins and iron nails, commonly found within witches bottles, suggesting that this was a deliberately buried apotropaic (protective) deposit.<3>

The evaluation also produced several finds from L3 (soil accumulation) with a broad date range of mid 1st millennium to late 1st millennium BC, comprising two sherds of handmade prehistoric pottery and a single struck flint flake.<2>