Record Details
| NHER Number: | 8388 |
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| Type of record: | Monument |
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| Name: | 'Pothills field' medieval pottery works |
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Summary
The 'pothills' or 'pothills field' site incorporates a medieval pottery works which may also have been in use in the Roman period. The name is derived from mounds of black soil littered with fragments of 12th to 15th century pottery, which although are not prominent now, were said to have been clearly visible in the past.
Images - none
Location
| Grid Reference: | TG 4074 2111 |
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| Map Sheet: | TG42SW |
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| Parish: | POTTER HEIGHAM, NORTH NORFOLK, NORFOLK |
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Full description
Parish aquired name by AD 1182, being previously call previously Echam or Hecham (S1).
'Pothills Field' - mounds of ashes and potsherds. (S2) called the area Roman, there is a quote from (S2) in secondary file.
NNAS 1928 - vicar said that an old inhabitant remembered mounds (S3).
R. R. Clarke (NCM).
1953 'Pot Hills' north of Decoy Road on boundary with Catfield. Site of medieval pottery kilns. Low mound of black soil - seen littered with fragments of 12th to 15th century pottery, 13th to 14th according to J. G. Hurst.
Pits to East from which clay was probably derived. [1] [2]
R. R. Clarke (NCM). (S4).
Caution - an article in Bolingbroke Collection confuses this with lepers chapel site near Wayford Bridge.
E. Rose (NAU).
27 March 1980. Fieldwalking.
Collected from surface of field:
Red and grey medieval sherds.
A. Rogerson (NAU) and Gillian Crawley.
The finds recovered are in the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 1998.45) and are listed as comprising prehistoric worked flints, medieval pottery and kiln debris and at least one post-medieval clay tobacco pipe.
A. Rogerson (NAU), 28 March 1980. Amended by P. Watkins (HES), 29 April 2019.
A pottery sherd from this site was included in a petrographic study of late medieval and transitional (LMT) pottery from known and suspected kiln sites in Norfolk and Suffolk (Sample 3). Material was also examined from known or assumed production sites at Norwich (Mountergate, NHER 67512), Great and Little Plumstead (NHER 64833), Woodbastwick (NHER 1076) and Hopton (Suffolk), along with comparative sherds from ‘consumer’ sites at Norwich (Muspole Street, NHER 50560) and South Walsham (Suffolk). The sherds from the known and suspected production sites all have a closely related petrographic fabric. Those from the 'consumer sites' also had a comparable composition to the general petrological fabric represent by the kiln sites. This may simply reflects the homogeneous bedrock and superficial geology of this wide area, although it may indicate some degree of regional organisation to LMT production.
See report (S5) for further details.
P. Watkins (HES), 14 October 2024.
Monument Types
- POTTERY WORKS (Roman - 43 AD to 409 AD)
- HEARTH (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
- MOUND (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
- POTTERY WORKS (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
Associated Finds
- KILN WASTE (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
- POT (Medieval - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
- POT (Post Medieval - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
Protected Status
Sources and further reading
| --- | Record Card: Ordnance Survey Staff. 1933-1979?. Ordnance Survey Record Cards. TG 41 NW 3 [2]. |
| --- | Record Card: NAU Staff. 1974-1988. Norfolk Archaeological Index Primary Record Card. |
| --- | Publication: Faden, W. and Barringer, J. C. 1989. Faden's Map of Norfolk in 1797. |
| --- | Record Card: Clarke, R. R. and NCM Staff. 1933-1973. Norwich Castle Museum Record Card - Medieval. Potter Heigham [2]. |
| <S1> | Publication: Eckwall. Oxford Dictionary of English Placenames. p.221. |
| <S2> | Article in Serial: Woodward, S. 1831. A descriptive Outline of the Roman remains in Norfolk, by Samuel Woodward, Esq., in a Letter to Hudson Gurney, esq. V.P., F.R.S., accompanied by a Map of the County. Archaeologia. Vol XXIII pp 358-373. p 373. |
| <S3> | Article in Serial: 1929. The Proceedings of the Society during the year 1927. Norfolk Archaeology. Vol XXIII pp xli-lvi. p lii. |
| <S4> | Serial: Norfolk Research Committee Bulletin.. No 6. |
| <S5> | Unpublished Contractor Report: Haskins, A. 2016. Strip, Map and Sample of the new Overflow and Distribution Main, Postwick, Norfolk. Oxford Archaeology East. 1971. |
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