Section cut across Lion Walk itself, revealed that the earliest metalling sealed post-Roman topsoil and at least one stake-hole. The latter was one of several which cut the topsoil. These indicate the site of a post-Roman structure pre-dating the street. <1> During archaeological excavations 1971-4, two sunken huts and over 100 sherds of early Saxon pottery were found. The distribution of the pottery was such that other buildings are likely to have existed but no conclusive structural evidence of these was discovered. Hut 1 (TL 99692507) had been built up against the outside wall of a Roman house and its floor dug through the stokehole of a hypocaust full of fragments of roof tiles and lumps of mortar which in many cases still retained the shapes of imbrices. The tiles and mortar lumps had clearly come from the roof of a Roman building and indicate that although some of the walls of the house were still standing, it was in a derelict condition when the Saxon sunken-floored hut was built. Only one of the huts 2 postholes survived, the floor was flat, peppered with stakeholes with a distinctive trampled surface of fine grit. In addition to the stakeholes there were two irregular shallow grooves at right angles to one another, a deep roughly rectangular shortslot and several depressions or holes. Stakeholes around the outer edge of the hut were in pairs. Crummy <2> suggests that the slots could have contained loom structures; finds from the hut included a bone comb, loomweight and spindlewhorl. Groups of stakeholes were at the ends of the postulated looms. On the southern side the hut was dug against the wall of a Roman house; Crummy suggests that the Saxon-built walls comprised stacks of turves retained by stakes. Over 20 vegetable- tempered sherds were found either in the fill of the hut or nearby, dated to the sixth to seventh centuries. <2> The second hut was irregular in plan and had sloping sides. The hollow had been dug through a tesselated pavement which had as a base a layer of greensand stones, several projected into a hollow; the shape, profile and projecting stones of the hollow all suggest that Hut 2 had a timber floor. Stakeholes were nearby but there was no evidence for stakes retaining the walls. Several shallow pits may have been Saxon. The pottery from hut 2 contained a low proportion of grass-tempered sherds, but was mostly black, burnished wares including carinated bowls. <2>