Watching Brief

Date 2 August 2016

Event ID 1023715

Category Recording

Type Watching Brief

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1023715

NX 68232 50813 A watching brief was undertaken, 2 August 2016, during the machine excavation of foundation trenches for house extension. The site is located within the area enclosed by the town wall of the medieval burgh. The NE corner of the existing building, fronting directly on to the

High Street, is c25m W of the site of the town’s former main gate – the Meikle Yett. The frontage of the present building is c7.5m wide, but the property would have formerly occupied the N end of a burgage plot extending c80m S from the High Street frontage to a boundary marked by the presumed southern line of the medieval town wall.

The two foundation trenches contained a subsoil consisting of a yellow brown clay overlying a natural deposit of rounded cobbles in a clay matrix. Evidence of human activity consisted of a mixed topsoil, including brick, stone and mortar debris, and trenches for 20th- century drainage pipes. No other earlier cut features or foundations were observed and the earliest

pottery finds were 18th-century in date.

Archive: NRHE (intended). Report: Dumfries and Galloway HER and NRHE

Funder: Mr M Wilson (Site developer)

David Devereux

(Source: DES, Volume 17)