York Historic Environment Record

This archaeological desktop assessment has been prepared at the request of Octopus Healthcare Development Ltd to provide information regarding the archaeological potential of the site of the Former Care Home, Fordlands Road, Fulford, York. The site lies in an area with a potential to contain archaeological deposits although there is no definitive evidence to support the putative location of the Battle of Fulford of 1066 in the vicinity of Germany Beck and in 2007 the Government's Planning Inspector concluded that "there is no archaeological evidence to show that the application site contains the location of the Battle of Fulford" . Extensive archaeological investigations have been carried out, and are ongoing, on the adjacent Germany Beck site. These have produced some archaeological evidence, especially for Iron Age and Romano-British periods. The archaeological potential of the former care home site has been principally assessed in the light of the currently available results of those investigations. The site contains buildings of the former care home will have caused a degree of damage to any archaeology, together with areas of soft landscaping and hard surface car parks. It is currently not known to what extent the construction of the existing care home has damaged archaeological deposits within these landscaped and car park areas. Archaeological evaluation trenches placed immediately to the east of the care home site encountered evidence for a 20th century rubbish tip, which was believed to extend into the site. To ascertain if archaeological deposits are present, and assess the degree of 20th century disturbance, caused by both the rubbish tip and the care home construction, a programme of archaeological evaluation trenching would be necessary. The requirement for, and scale of, any such evaluation will need to be agreed with City of York Council Archaeologist.