The former Radmore and Tucker site, Frog Street, Exeter: Archaeological Investigation

A programme of archaeological investigation was undertaken by Cotswold Archaeology in November 2018, at the request of Create Construction, at the former Radmore and Tucker site, Frog Street, Exeter. An area of 90 square metres was excavated within the proposed development area. The excavation followed a programme of evaluation, which had identified structural features and the remains of furnaces across the site. Excavation Area A targeted the area surrounding the furnaces, and exposed one medieval wall and a number of medieval deposits. The medieval features may relate to a series of tenements suggested by historical cartographic and documentary sources. The remains of five post-medieval walls had been disturbed or truncated by later robbing and industrial activity. Stratigraphic relationships suggested a number of sub-phases of construction and modification during this period, and two distinct phases of industrial activity of post-medieval date were identified. The first was represented by the remains of a single furnace, which was sealed by later post-medieval demolition deposits and made ground. A later post-medieval phase, dating possibly as late as the early nineteenth century, comprised the remains of two brick-built furnaces and an ancillary building and surfaces, all of which were sealed by modern overburden. The specific industrial activity undertaken on the site could not be confirmed by archaeological evidence, although documentary and cartographic research has emphasised the significance of cloth-working and dyeing in this part of Exeter during the post-medieval period. A number of eighteenth and nineteenth-century occupants of Frog Street properties have been identified, and their involvement with dyeing and cloth-working activities confirmed.