Clifford Bateman

Excavations in advance of the construction of the Gloucester Business Park Link Road, Hucclecote, in 1998 revealed alluvium deposited by the Horsbere Brook, in places up to 2m deep. Radiocarbon dating demonstrates that the alluvium had been deposited by the 12th century BC. Three or four Middle Bronze Age cremation burials were probably part of a flat cemetery, the site subsequently occupied by a Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age settlement which contained in excess of four post-built roundhouses. In the 1st century AD a settlement that contained a number of probable mass-walled roundhouses was constructed. It was extensively reorganised in the early 2nd century when a series of ditched enclosures were linked to Ermin Street by a 320m-long trackway. A small cemetery of 12 inhumations is noteworthy as it demonstrates that the Late Iron Age tradition of burial by crouched inhumation persisted into the 2nd century AD. Several of the burials were accompanied by grave goods, and one of the males suffered from a very rare form of dwarfism to his forearms, a condition that would have been obvious to his contemporaries. The settlement continued in use until the late 3rd or early 4th century, although the trackway ditches continued to accumulate material into the later 4th century. The trackway and enclosures appear to have survived as visible earthworks into the medieval period as their orientation influenced the alignment of medieval field systems.