Broomhill 1989

(by kind permission of the farmers, A.H. Cooke & Sons and Mr. Ted Baker)

Excavations

The fifth and final season of excavation at Broomhill Farm, Camber, East Sussex continued the examination of marshland in the environs of the church. This report includes work in two areas.

A series of six trenches were excavated around the church to record the sequence of underlying sediments. No further evidence was found for activity of a possible domestic nature preceding the construction of the church, which had been discovered in earlier years' work. The sections showed that the church had been built in an area of shingle and former mud flats. The very localised character of the sedimentary deposit? was demonstrated in the varied sequences found in the trenches. Building material from the church a llowed the upper sediments to be dated. The west side of the churchyard was recorded and a trench east of the church located the tumbled wall encircling the church previously seen on the north side in 1987.

In two of the trenches evidence was found for the truncation of the sedimentary stratigraphy due to erosion in the medieval period. An incursion by the sea would appear to have reached almost as far as the church, cutting back existing sediments.

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A trapezoidal earthwork adjacent to a spread linear bank in the field between Broomhill Farm and the coast road ·was recorded (see plan). Since this area was due to be brought under plough, a section was excavated through the earthwork and bank. The earthwork contained a surface of brokeh brick, and some stone which had been robbed from Broomhill church 1 km to the east. The brick was very fragmentary and it was not clear if it came from a building in the enclosure or had been laid down to produce a hard surface. Pottery of 16th-I7th century date was found. The enclosure is provisionally interpreted as an animal pound.

Mark Gardiner

Stratigraphical Investigations

In Seotember J 989 two oieces oi work were undertaken on Broomhill Level: the first was to determL,e the reiationship of the 'high level' shingle of Beach Banks Conage to the older buried shingle; the second was to establish the thickness of estuarine sediments in the Wainway Channel.

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An excavation 140 cm deep was made with a JCB through the high level shingle close to sampling site 12, where the shingle fonns a series of complex recurves, possibly bearing witness to an ingress by the sea from a north westerly direction in the thirteenth century. The ground altitude was +2.19 m O.D. The upper 97 cm comprised rounded gravel in a fine sand matrix with beds of ashen coloured sand containing shell fragments. This passed down into silts, with reworked peat, and then into peat 209 cm from the surface. This peat bed was 61 cm thick and contained fruits of the bog bean, Menyanthes, and rhizomes of the water lily, Nymphaea, and the saw sedge, Cladiurn mariscus, indicative of freshwater conditions. Beneath the peat, were sands with coarse laminations and containing shell fragments and some woody detritus. At 420 cm (-2.01 m O.D.) the sediment became impossible to penetrate. It can be concluded that here the' 'high level' shingle' is not anchored onto a ridge of buried shingle. Samples for foraminiferal analysis were collected by Dr D. Huddart from 150-155, 180, 205, 275-280, 3 10-320, 370-380 and 4 10-420 cm.

North west of the high level shingle, close to sampling site 14, a second boring proved shingle at 243 cm (-0.17 m OD) from the surface.

An attempt was made to reach the floor of the Wainway Channel by continuing the borehole at sampling site 16, which lies in Broomhill fleet. The ground altitude was at •1.67 m O. D. and sampling to 977 cm (-8. 10 m O.D.) yielded coarsely laminated clayey, sand,· silt, organicall)' blackened in places and containing rare shells, such as Cerastoderma, Cardiu;n and 􀋫- The floor of the Wainway Channel has now been proved to be even deeper than -8. l O m 0. D.

Samples for radiocarbon dating have been taken from the Broomhill Church Site, and from Broomhill Level, and are being dated at the University of Cambridge, Subdepartment of Quartemary Research by Dr V.R. Switsur. The dosimeters, which were inserted for a year into the sediments of Broomhill Level to measure the natural background radioactivity, were damaged by stubble burning and will be replaced this year in a fire-proof tube.

The balance of work on the Midley sands and buried shingle in the Broomhill Level area will be completed this year.

Michael Tooley

A paper, "Sea Level and Coastal Change since 5000 B.P." by Dr M.J. Tootey - is due to be published this summer in a British Archaeological Report edited by Sean McGrail, Professor of Boat History, University of Oxford.

Foraminiferal analysis of samples taken from Broomhill

Foraminifera are microscopic animals found at various levels of marine conditions. Some float in the water mass of the oceans. Others live on salt marshes and tidal flats and are found in the sediments there. Each assemblage is characteristic of a different salt-water concentration. They are never found in non-marine sediments. Hence these organisms are particularly helpful in the reconstruction of past marshland environments.

The purpose of this investigation is to obtain further ecological information to help in analysing part sedimentary environments. The work is still at an interim stage, and when complete the results will need to be closely tied in with the complementary work carried out by Michael Tooley and Mark Gardiner. The following are three examples of results and their interpretation.

1. At Broomhill Church, Pit M., where foraminifera are present in 6 samples between 2.46 and 2.16 m O.D., the stratigraphy is as follows:

a) 10 cm brown silt with a foraminiferal assemblage interpreted as high intertidal mudflat.

b) 5 cm blue clayey silt with occasional foraminifera.

c) 15 cm fine sand ,,􀋬th a foraminiferal assemblage in the upper 5 cm, interpreted as an intertidal sand_ flat in the littoral zone.

2. At Broomhill Church site 4, at 15 cm, an assemblage of foraminifera indicates a high intertidal mud flat, although there are also many foraminifera present, generally of small size, which have been transported from the sublittoral marine shelf to the salt marsh. This sample probably equates with a) from Pit M (above). Mark Gardiner ( 1988) suggests that an area which had previously been enclosed in Broomhill Marsh, was partly lost to the sea in 1570 when walls were breached. A map of 1589 shows that the sea had broken through and flowed up the Jury's Gut Sewer. The sediments analysed at Broomhill Church, which show a regressive sequence, are likely to have been brought in then.

3. In the Midley sand facies close to Broomhill 8 (see Tooley map), the five samples were all barren of foraminifera down to 2.5 m. This negative evidence suggests a non-marine facies, possibly a wind-blown dune, and further sedimentological analysis may clarify this.

From an Interim Report by David Huddart