New insights into Nene Valley archaeology are promised by a project being run at Stanwick Hall over the next few years.
The objective is to provide opportunities for amateur archaeologists to learn new hands-on skills and to contribute to an improved understanding of how the site has evolved since the late Saxon period.
A number of the expert team contributing to the “Udig Archaeiology” initiative have long association with the Nene Valley Archaeological Trust, including Derek Roberts, Dr Stephen Upex, Dr Paul Stamper and Carmel Crawley.
In Stanwick Hall’s parkland, earthworks show possible building platforms as well as medieval ridge and furrow crossed by later trackways. Archaeological trial trenching in 2006, as part of the Rockingham Forest Project and later excavations by Pre-Develop Archaeology in 2021, found pits, ditches, robber-trenches, stone walls and wall-trenches, post holes, and floors - evidence of continual occupation on the site from at least the late Saxon period through to the 18th and 19th centuries.
This evidence is starting to suggest that the village of Stanwick shrank over the centuries, leaving abandoned tenement plots along a previously significant route leading south out of the village and then west toward the area of Stanwick Lakes. Here excavations have found prehistoric long barrows and burial mounds, an opulent Roman villa, and the deserted settlement of West Cotton. Udig believes this is a landscape with great time depth which offers potential for further significant discoveries.