York Historic Environment Record

Seven trenches were dug in an effort to evaluate the archaeological deposits at the churchyard of St Margarets, Walmgate. What these trenches revealed was that the boundaries of this churchyard had moved on a number of occaisions in the past. This was indicated by the discovery of human remains outside the present churchyard wall. During these excavations the depth of individual burials were by no means uniform with some bodies being found at the depth of only 1 metre from the surface.In trench 1, evidence of pre-burial soil activity was recovered; this was tentatively identified as dumping. Evidence was also recovered relating to the construction of the churchyard wall. Trench 2 saw the excavation of 13 burials which were all found to be intercutting in quite a complex sequence of deposits. Above these layers the deposits were strongly suggestive of the work carried out in the 1850’s when the church was extensively reconstructed. In trench 6 the material recovered saw a sequence of deposits dating from the later medieval to the post medieval periods and was discovered to be secular in nature being deposits of typical background activities. Trench 7 revealed burials outside outside the present limits of the churchyard boundary giving rise to the theory that this boundary has been quite fluid in the past. RCHME Microfilm Index Number 6680 The work followed on from an earlier evaluation, undertaken earlier in 1998 (see NRHE UID 1195441).