Eggington Before 1086

The Bedfordshire Historic Environment Record [HER] contains information on the county’s historic buildings and landscapes and summaries of each entry can now be found online as part of the Heritage Gateway website. A number of prehistoric and Romano-British finds have been made in three places around the parish.

The area around Manor Farm [HER 9] has evidence for settlement from the early Iron Age through into the Anglo-Saxon period. An early Iron Age burial was found in 1932 while digging a sand pit on the hilltop just east of the village. Above the burial were pits dating to the Romano-British period. Manshead Archaeological Society undertook investigations which revealed Romano-British pottery. A small excavation by the society in 1972 found evidence of Roman and Anglo-Saxon occupation. Roman finds donated to Luton Museum in 1962 included pottery, a gilded copper alloy pendant, a copper alloy stylus for writing in wax and several coins.

A field belonging to Charity Farm called Ardells was identified from surface finds as a Roman site in the First World War from surface finds [HER 1437]. The field is on a ridgetop. Excavations were undertaken in 1959 and 1962 and Romano-British occupation seemed to be represented by a hut with a clay floor and a central hearth and two ditches which produced 2nd to 4th century pottery and a pit with pottery and a 2nd century brooch as well as a few pieces of Anglo-Saxon pottery. The Roman features were overlain by three 13th and 14th century buildings.

A sherd of pottery was also found at Claridges [HER 1953]. The antiquarian F. G. Gurney lived at Claridges and was probably the person who found the item. It was a sherd from a rim of a greyware vessel. An unidentified Roman object was found south of Eggington House [HER 12747].