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Excavations in Womanby Street, Cardiff, 1972 JANET AND PETER WEBSTER (University College, Cardiff) In September 1972 excavations were carried out in the yard of 25 Womanby Street, Cardiff, on behalf of University College Cardiff, Department of Extra-Mural Studies 1. The area lies within the medieval walls of Cardiff (see Fig. 1). Womanby Street has always been considered to be among the oldest parts of the medieval town and has been suggested, on place-name evidence, as the site of a Norse settlement 2. Furthermore, finds made during the construction of the vaults of Lloyd's Bank, High Street, showed that there was Roman occupation within the High Street-Womanby Street block and that the postulated Flavian fort might lie in the vicinity 3. There thus seemed good reason to suppose that the site might add to our knowledge of pre-medieval Cardiff as well as adding to our scanty knowledge of the medieval town. How scanty this is, will be seen from Fig. 1 where the few medieval finds from Cardiff now housed in the National Museum of Wales are marked 4. The site itself (Figs. 1 & 2) is an irregularly shaped yard running back from an arched approach opening onto the east side of Womanby Street. The small area available for excavation was further reduced by the necessity of leaving access for vehicles through the yard and, as it turned out, by the presence of pipes, drains and an unconduited electricity cable at varying depths beneath the surface of the yard. THE EXCAVATION Summary With the exception of a few sherds of Roman pottery the earliest features consisted of 12th-14th century pits, two large and straight-sided, cut directly into the subsoil, and others which were smaller and stone-lined. Post-medieval features consisted of further pits, a cess-pit of possibly pre-19th century date and structural remains of the 19th century. A. Medieval There were no signs of any pre-medieval structures on the site. Roman pottery of 2nd- 4th century date was found in small quantities but in all cases this was from medieval rubbish deposits. There were no finds or structures belonging to the period 5th-11th centuries. The earliest features on the site were medieval pits. At the western end of the site (Area A, see Fig. 2) were two intersecting stone-lined pits (pits a and b). Both were c. 1. 20m wide at the base with their side walls lined with large rounded cobbles (of water-borne? glacial origin). The walls of these pits were not vertical but battered, pit a narrowing from l-35m to 1-20m in a depth of c. 50 cm. Both showed signs of having had a clay lining placed inside the stones. Pit a would appear to have been earlier than b as the latter removed part of the wall of a and incorporated other parts of its lining. However, the finds from the pits suggest that they are not far apart in date. The finds