Site Event/Activity record ESF22585 - Watching Brief,131/133 St Helens Street, Ipswich.

SCCAS visited the site on the afternoon of the 18th October 2000. The properties lie at the base of a relatively steep south facing slope and a concrete hard staning area of the rear yard of number 1333 St. Helens Street had been terraced into the slope. The digging out which had already been carried out continued the level of the existing hard standing through to the rear of number 131 St. Helens Street. The base had already been covered in hardcore leaving only the western and northern cut faces visable. At the base of the cut, 0.5-0-6m of the naturally occuring dirty yellow clay subsoil was visible, overlain by a variable thickness of dark brown loam topsoil (max thickness of c.1m in the rear section). One feature was visible as a c.1.5m wide vertical cut, with indeterminate depth, in the rear section (see accompanying figure). The feature, which had a fill comprising homogenous brown/grey loam with a thin layer of mortar/sand on top, was sealed by the topsoil layer. No finds were recovered from the fill of the feature.