The Wootton-Quarr Survey

Attention was drawn to the Wootton-Quarr area in the late 1980s, when a scatter of Roman pottery was found at Fishbourne on the eastern side of Wootton Creek near to the Sealink (now Wightlink) ferry terminal. Further site visits also revealed intertidal post alignments, peats and recumbent trees, which were becoming exposed through coastal erosion, and consequently Sealink funded a preliminary survey of the beach. Archaeological material was found to extend further eastwards, and the results of the preliminary work prompted English Heritage to fund a project which combined intertidal survey with a study of the hinterland and the offshore zone of this stretch of coast.



The survey area was centred on Wootton Creek and stretched from King’s Quay in the west to Ryde pier in the east. Unexpectedly rich results were obtained. More than 180 individual features, including pottery strews, scatters of worked and burnt flints, timber structures including hurdles, post alignments and smaller settings of posts, and palaeoenvironmental sites were recorded. Organic material was exceptionally well preserved in the waterlogged conditions and finds included Roman and medieval leather shoes, a wood and silver knife handle and fragments of wooden bowls.



More than 3000 individual posts were surveyed using total station theodolite, and the height above sediment level, cross section dimensions, inclination and magnetic bearing was recorded. Timber structures recorded during the project ranged from early Neolithic to post medieval in date. Several of them were obviously fish traps. These include small V-shaped settings which may have held basketwork fishtraps similar to those found on the Severn. A large V-shaped structure composed of double rows of posts with the remains of hurdling and reinforced with Quarr limestone rubble was dated to the Saxo-Norman period. This trap had a post and wattle circular pound at its apex, in which fish would have become trapped on an ebbing tide.

The most extensive structure recorded during the survey was a longshore alignment of posts stretching in a fragmentary form for c 1.25km at present mean low water and dating from the 6th to 8th century. The function of this structure has not been satisfactorily resolved.

A series of seaward-running trackways were noted at extreme low water. Radiocarbon dating of these has shown them to be of Neolithic date. They were constructed using various different methods, including staked hurdles, brushwood and longitudinal roundwood and split timbers. However, their position at extreme low water has meant that they are very rarely visible, so it has been difficult to record them adequately. A Bronze Age hurdle trackway was also noted on Ryde West Sands.



Ancient channels at Fishbourne, Quarr and Binstead were traced using a hand auger and were later followed offshore using seismic survey techniques. Peats and sediments were sampled and analysis of pollen, diatoms and insets carried out. 113 recumbent trees and 92 root systems and tree stumps were surveyed, and tree ring dating of 58 of the submerged trees produced a sequence spanning the period 3463-2557 BC. This information was used to reconstruct the environmental history of the area and to produce a preliminary sea level curve for the Solent.

A popular account of the project is available, and the full results of the survey are soon to be published. Click here for details of Time & Tide