Upper Aston Field   Upper Aston field lies just over the parish boundary with Elton. James Stinton who farms this land recalled for us his memory of ploughing many years previously and finding a dark patch of soil with many tobacco pipe fragments. He was able to point out exactly where this was and subsequent monitoring of mole activity in the area confirmed the presence of a production site dating to before the Civil War. The early date makes this is hugely important. In 2002 the project commissioned a geophysical survey of the site which confirmed a bank and ditch suspected from surface morphology. An evaluation trench, excavated across these features in April 2003, recovered a large number of tobacco pipe which had been dumped into the ditch. The typological date of these pipes is c.1620 to c.1640. Also recovered was a quantity of fired clay and stone from the kiln structure and a small quantity of domestic pottery. An unexpected bonus came in the form of a pipe clay stamp for marking the pipes picked up from a mole upcast. Related Links: Pipes Other Links: Home About Sites Pipes Kilns Documents Pottery