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AFTER several years of uncertainty, a housing
complex of 2-, 3-, and 4-bedroomed houses has been built on the site of a well-known agricultural business.
Burgess (Agricultural Engineers) Ltd was once sited in
buildings in St Anne's Lane, off Welsh Row (above, left). When that was
demolished the site lay derelict.
At one time the site was all set to become the location for 62 sheltered housing apartments for
the elderly, together with offices and a shop. The name St Anne's Court had been approved
earlier.
Nantwich Town Council weren't completely happy as they said there would be
"traffic issues" with vehicles emerging from St Anne's Lane on to Welsh Row.
The former Crewe
and Nantwich Borough Council had previously turned down a plan for 55 apartments, stating the new homes would be too close to homes already in the area.
The then Historic
Environment Planning Officer (Archaeology) for the former Cheshire County
Council,
Mark Leah, called for a ban on building work until
a dig had been carried out on the site.
At the time, Mark told me: "I
have advised the Borough that any planning permission needs to be accompanied by
a programme of archaeological work (following a programme of trial
trenching
which
showed that there was
archaeology across much of the site).
"An
archaeology firm had already carried out such a lot of Roman archaeology'."
Mark went on: "Elsewhere on the site, there is archaeology but this is
buried by a thick deposit of black organic material and I have agreed with
the developers that they will commission their
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archaeological consultant to
liaise over the design of the foundations so that the archaeology can be
preserved in situ."
[When
historical artefacts found on a development site cannot be easily removed
they are left in place
- for future archaeologists to try to remove. With better means of
access available to them, presumably. But the foundations of new buildings
are designed so that the artefacts are not damaged in the meantime.]
AS work got underway on the development, Mark
- now the
Development Control Archaeologist, Cheshire Archaeology
Planning Advisory Service, Cheshire Shared
Services - gave me an
update on the site:
"Basically, everything went
very quiet for some time and
then Jones Homes took over
the site and engaged
archaeologists at RSK
Environment to address the
archaeological issues.
"We
should note at this point
that the northern part of
the site had been dealt with
some years ago, when shallow
Roman deposits were
excavated by Gifford in
2006 and the results
published as an appendix to
the
report on
the Kingsley Fields
excavations by
Manchester
University in 2001. [See
note below].
"This
left the southern two thirds of the
site and here
it was agreed that the deeply-buried
and less-sensitive
archaeology in this
part of
the site would be
largely
preserved beneath
the new houses.
"This
was achieved by limiting the amount
of disturbance caused by the piled
foundations to less than 5% of the
site and making sure that the
overlying concrete slabs for the
houses were laid within
the top metre of
modern soil.
"Inevitably,
there was some deeper disturbance
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and this was associated primarily
with the excavation of the main
sewer. A watching brief was
maintained during the excavation of
this feature by Oxford Archaeology
North over the summer and confirmed
that although archaeological
features were sealed beneath the
thick deposit of black sediment and
isolated finds were present within
it, major archaeological deposits
were not present in this area.
"All
disturbance was, however, fully
recorded and a report is in
preparation for deposition in the
Cheshire Historic Environment
Record."
o
Work on the northern
part of the site is mentioned in:
"Roman
Nantwich: a salt-making settlement.
Excavations at Kingsley Fields
2002", Appendix B by Peter
Arrowsmith and David Power (2012),
British Archaeological Reports,
557,
Oxford.
www.biab.ac.uk/issues/97305 |
site
earmarked
developments
in Nantwich |
www.jones-homes.co.uk
sales rep
who lived in a town mansion
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