Surrey Archaeological Society

Evaluation by R Lambert of SCAU in advance of school development revealed three 19th century pits and a single struck flint.

Evaluation and monitoring of ground reduction by S Maher of PCA revealed no finds or features of archaeological interest.

Archaeological assessment by N Bannister for the Woodlands Trust of secondary woodland on a former site of Knaphill Nursery, a late 19th century internationally renowned commercial nursery. The most common earthworks revealed were boundary banks, the structure and form of which suggest that they originated as field boundaries. Depressions occurring within the wood may be bomb craters.

Evaluation by G Hayman of SCAU in advance of the construction of a new school revealed residual stray flints of possible Neolithic date and a sherd of Late Roman pottery, but no features of archaeological interest.

Report on an archaeological assessment undertaken in 2003 by N Bannister for the Woodlands Trust. Because the wood was probably managed as a wood pasture common (where manorial tenants could graze stock beneath an open canopy of pollarded trees and where there was little need for wood banks dividing the property of different woodland owners), and because of levelling for and laying out of a munitions store located here during the Second World War, few features of antiquity exist.

Evaluation by S Hoad of MoLAS in advance of the construction of a new community hall on the site of the graveyard in use between 1868 and the late 1920s revealed two grave cuts (which were not excavated) dating to the late 19th century.

Watching brief by J Robertson of SCAU during redevelopment revealed an in-situ layer producing a domestic pottery assemblage of late 13th/early 14th century, fragments of tile, charcoal and animal bone, and a struck flint flake, beneath a 19th century topsoil containing late 19th century domestic debris.

Evaluation by J Robertson of SCAU in advance of a proposed extension to the cemetery revealed a large number of features including an Iron Age pit and three large pits (deneholes) of medieval date. All the pits contained residual finds of prehistoric date, as did a number of undated pits, ditches and a posthole, and provide evidence for activity from the Neolithic to the Iron Age in the vicinity.

Investigation by Time Team comprising geophysical survey, field survey and trenching identified a number of Roman features including several pits, one of which was over 3m deep, a kiln or oven, and that the Roman road connecting London and Brighton ran through the site and not along Tilburstow Hill Road, a short distance to the east. (398)

Archaeological work under the guidance of P Jones of SCAU and by N Branch of ArchS focused upon a dry valley (the hollow, as it was formerly described) visited repeatedly by Mesolithic communities that had been identified during previous evaluation at the quarry. The archaeological work consisted of geophysical survey, environmental sampling and excavation and was undertaken by professional, volunteer and student archaeologists.