|paradise street | former royal mail depot in becket street | rutherford appleton laboratory |

Former Royal Mail Depot, Becket Street


Evaluation and excavation showed the level of the eastern part of the site was raised in the mid thirteenth century with building taking place immediately.  Prior to this a north–south holloway, later known as Church street, crossed the site.  One of the first buildings fronting St Thomas’ Street, probably built totally in stone, was quickly extended by the building of a further two rooms to the west constructed from cob.  A further house existed to the east. In the later thirteenth century or early fourteenth century the houses were extensively rebuilt throughout in stone.

A large back-to-back fireplace was added in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century and the building continued in use from then until c. the 19th century when a larger building was constructed.

Throughout the history of this site there are indications that the households were connected with the wool, cloth and clothing trade.  This originates with the later 13th century lime cooker and its associations with the Cotswolds and Welsh wool industries, and continues with the probable tanning pits in the late 13th/ early 14th century, the 16th century aquamanile and the artefacts (thimble, a probable lead loomweight, five copper alloy buttons and a bone button) from one of the rooms in the 17th -18th century.

No dating was obtained for the earliest metalled surface for Church Street.  Later surfaces date to the post-medieval period.  Part of the nineteenth and twentieth century Convent of the Sisterhood of St. Thomas was examined as was the Red Ox Ditch that crossed the eastern part of the site in a north-south direction.

 

 

 

 

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