York Historic Environment Record

On the 3rd July 2017 a watching brief took place monitoring the excavations for the foundations of a new house on land located to the north-west of 41 and 43 Park Avenue, New Earswick, York. The abrupt interface between the topsoil and the natural clay is indicative of previous activity on the site. This could have been caused by ploughing (the local presence of medieval ridge and furrow makes this plausible) but seems more likely to be the result of a sequence of development, expansion and abandonment all within the 20th century. The evidence for this 20th century activity includes residual finds material encountered during the watching brief and the OS maps. The first evidence for development in this area on the OS maps dates to 1930 and indicates that Park Lane existed as an access track for a septic tank (probably for a row of houses fronting on to Haxby Road). Between 1936 and 1938 the track was established as Park Avenue and had buildings built along its north and south sides. At this point the septic tank has an associated filter bed. This arrangement appears to exist until 1959-1960 when the septic tank is replaced by a "works" (probably still for sewage) which occupies most of the development area. The row of garages adjacent to the development site has appeared on this map. The "works" has disappeared on the 1967-1968 OS map and the development area has an trees drawn within its northern half. Nothing significantly changes on the OS mapping from this point onwards which indicates that the development area has existed as overgrown scrubland for approximately 50 years.