Westbourne Park and Royal Oak Stations (Crossrail XSI10)

A series or archaeological investigations were undertaken on land comprising sites at Westbourne Park and Royal Oak Portal. The work consisted of an intermittent watching brief program, with two main phases; the initial works for the guide / diaphragm walls, which took place between July-September 2010; and subsequently, the ground reduction works, which occured between February and June 2011. Oxford Archaeology/Gifford (OAG) carried out the fieldwork on behalf of Crossrail. The investigations revealed only minimal survival of significant archaeological remains. At the Royal Oak Portal site the main findings were of a scour or channel feature, identified during the watching brief along the Royal Oak Cutting, cut through the London Clay and infilled with a series of cold climate Pleistocene deposits and a possible warm climate interglacial deposit. A channel cut, filled with gleyed silt clay deposits, was identified within upper part of the sequence possible representing a former later channel of the river Westbourne. The upper sequence has been truncated by Brunel's railway cutting. At Westbourne Park the brick remains of Alfred Villa were excavated and the majority of the building basements and foundations were seen to be preserved to a level just below the ground floor level. The building measured approximately 16.7m by 10.4m and was aligned north-west/south-east, with the front of the building on the south-west side. There are two main phases of construction that could be discerned. The first was the original build dated to about 1855-69, while the second visible phase was a number of alterations that took place later in the history of the property, dated to the around 1875 onwards.