Event/Activity EPM162 - Archaeological Watching Brief at the Former Three Crowns Public House, 10 St James's Street, Portsmouth

Thames Valley Archaeological Services carried out a watching brief at the site of the Former Three Crowns public house 10 St. James' Street in 2011, on groundworks for new student accommodation, which included a basement cycle storage area. The foundations for the new building consisted of piles linked by relatively shallow groundbeams. The trenches were generally 0.90m wide by 0.95m deep, and revealed predominantly made ground. The exception to this was the south west corner, where the stratigraphy was made up of 0.18m of overburden above 0.66m of made ground, lying directly above natural gravel and reaching a maximum depth of 1.35m. No archaeological features were observed during the work, but a few sherds of late medieval and post-medieval pottery were recovered from the made ground deposits in the north west corner of the site. These deposits may have been used to build the site up following gravel extraction. A significant proportion of the site had been disturbed by the footings of the Three Crowns public house, which had been demolished in 2007 and the cellar in-filled. Accession number: 2012/25