72 
NOTES ON AN EXCAVATION 
AT THE CORNER OF 
CASTLEGATE AND COPPERGATE. 
By GEORGE BENSON, A.R.I.B.A. 
'THE area excavated has a frontage of 69 feet to Coppergate, 
and an average width of 16 feet. The portion facing Castle- 
gate had been cellared, but the new cellar is 3 feet deeper and 
continued along the whole of the site. The excavations were 
made during October and November, 1906. The material was a 
black deposit having in places brushwood, pieces of old leather, 
bones and horns of cattle, sheep and goats, tusks of boars, cut 
antlers of deer, and a few oyster shells. A layer of pig manure 
about twelve inches deep was found in one place 6 feet 6 inches 
below the surface, and in another place 10 feet deep. Amongst 
the subsoil were a quantity of piles and horizontal balks and 
boards, 10 inches wide and 1 inch thick ; and about 5 feet deep 
were a row of planks 15 inches wide and 3 inches thick, laid a foot 
apart. The position of the timbers is shown on the plan and 
sections (plate i.) 
The bottom of the deposit was not reached. The site seems to 
have been a tipping place for refuse which has been saturated by 
rain, vegetation growing between times to be entombed by further 
deposits. A previous excavation on the other side of Coppergate 
to High Ousegate (see Report 1902) revealed tan pits. The piles 
and timber found on this site may have been a platform in con¬ 
nection with the tannery, and on its abandonment the piles, etc., 
were entombed by fresh deposits of rubbish. A tree trunk, 16 feet 
6 inches long, was formed into a drain or water pipe by hacking 
out a 4 in. by 4 in. square channel, and attaching by wooden pins 
a thin board to the trench; this was some 4ft. below the platform, 
and may have conducted a liquid to one of the large pits. Later 
the area was built upon, those buildings have now been removed 
and part of the site merged into the street, and on the other portion 
