Excavations at Parkway¸ Ludlow

Ludlow Library and Museum Resource Centre, Corve Street

In February 2001 the Archaeology Service began an excavation on the site of the new Library and Museum Resource Centre in Ludlow.

The Corve Street area is one of Ludlow’s medieval suburbs; it was established outside the town’s defences perhaps as early as the late 11th or early 12th century. The new Museum Resource Centre is being built in the tails of former medieval burgage plots which ran from the east side of Corve Street across to Portcullis Lane.

The excavations have uncovered a sequence of features and deposits which date from the 12th to the 19th centuries.

One of the earliest features found consists of the foundation remains of a medieval building, associated with debris (clay mould fragments and slag) from bronze-casting and pottery of 12th - 14th century date.

Other features have included a number of medieval and post-medieval rubbish pits, containing pottery, animal bone, and other domestic rubbish.

These features were all sealed by post-medieval yard and garden soils, which had in turn been cut into by the foundation walls of a series of one-room cottages off Portcullis Lane. These cottages were built in the 18th century, and some were still occupied as recently as the 1970s.

To find out more about the Ludlow Library and Museum Resource Centre, follow the link on this page.