C12 and later church.

Colchester Archaeology Group were asked to carry out a small archaeological excavation in a trench 1.2m x 75m within the tower of Peldon Church. A builder was to cut the area through concrete, we were then to excavate down to the natural, subject to our brief re. Human remains. On arrival at the site we found the builder had removed a large amount of spoil from the trench and placed it outside the church, this we thoroughly searched for finds. <2>

We cleaned the already exposed brick foundations and excavated the fill on North West corner down to natural sandy clay at a depth of 80cm to foundation gully in north west corner at which point water rose in the trench. Photographs were taken and plans were drawn. Finds were identified and all were post medieval, except for one sherd of pottery just below the mortar rubble layer, the sherd was identified by Steve Benfield of Colchester Archaeological Trust, as an abraded hand made sand tempered sherd ,Iron Age or Saxon. The finds have been labelled and returned to the church. They included nails, lumps of mortar and modern brick and tile. No human remains were observed. <2>

Our conclusion was that the fill may have been rubble from earlier floors in the tower or imported to make up the level for the modern concrete floor, which had an underlying polythene sheet as damp- proof membrane. <2>