York Historic Environment Record

Further archaeological evaluation was conducted at Germany Beck, Fulford, under instruction from Persimmon Homes (Yorkshire) Ltd. and Hogg the Builder and with permission of the farmer, Mr Atkinson. Seven trenches were excavated to evaluate the area of the Proposed On-Line Ponds located south of Germany Beck in Area I. A machine excavated the topsoil from all of the trenches, which were then hand cleaned, photographed and planned. One modern feature was located in Trench 1, a land drain running east-west. In Trench 2 a natural hollow had been filled with modern topsoil. Along the lowest part of the natural slope down towards Germany Beck were a series of silt deposits up to 1.lOm deep, which included organic remains at the level of the water table. Several flint artefacts were found. A testpit was machine excavated to expose the natural sands in Trench 2, and a north-west by southeast aligned land drain was found below the silt deposits. In Trench 3 similar deposits were uncovered. The silt deposits in Trench 3 contained Eighteenth century clay tobacco pipe and two sherds of Roman Pottery. Three features were uncovered in Trench 4, a shallow dshaped linear gully, and east-west aligned v-shaped ditch and a modern tree bowl. The segments excavated through the gully and the ditch did not provide any dating evidence. Trench 5 contained two features, an east-west ditch, which was cut by a north-north-west by south-south-east orientated linear gully. No finds were recovered from the ditch, but clay tobacco pipe stem was found in the gully, but these artefacts could be intrusive. A single land drain, orientated north-west by south-east was seen to continue from Trench 6 to Trench 7. Again no features or artefacts relating to the 1066 Battle of Fulford were found in any of these evaluation trenches. A metal-detector survey was undertaken of the topsoil spoilheaps. NMR Information: Evaluation of the On Line Pond Area recorded Roman fields and an east-west v-shaped ditch but no evidence for the Battle of Fulford.