Street Tales: The History of Halifax Place

illustration: Eva Brudenell

In 1979/80, Graham Black, the City Council’s Assistant Archaeologist, led a major excavation in a Victorian warehouse in Halifax Place, located in the Lace Market.

Work on the site revealed post holes that stood out clearly in the sandstone, and it was also in that area that the archaeologists found one of the deep cesspits dating from the Viking Age. Other finds were a bronze belt decoration and head of a staff, and a large Viking building, thought to be over 40ft long – therefore owned by some very important people.

Scott Lomax is a researcher and archaeologist who has been studying the archaeology of Halifax Place for the last seven years. He commented, “There is a lot of interesting archaeology from the site from the Saxon, high medieval and post medieval periods. Substantial buildings, which I believe to be of high status, covered several phases of occupation. There were eight or nine medieval corn drying ovens, and a probable iron smelting furnace found. There was also evidence of pottery production on the site.

Of the post-medieval period a large pit was found containing nationally significant pottery of the eighteenth century, and a gold ring inscribed with a simple message was thought to be a christening present for a baby during the seventeenth century. The site was certainly very important and I have a lot of theories about it”.

Nottingham is rich in Anglo-Saxon and Viking history; Snott and his Angles founded the earliest incarnation of our city. The Great Heathen Army captured Nottingham in 867. Alfred – who would later become king – tried, and failed, to besiege Nottingham with his brother.

Eventually, Nottingham, and the East Midlands and East Anglia, was recaptured by Alfred’s children, Edward and Aethelflaed, from the Danes in 917. Following his sister’s death, Edward’s rule was extended to the areas of Essex, Mercia and East Anglia. He recovered the five boroughs of the Danelaw – Lincoln, Derby, Nottingham, Stamford and Leicester, strengthened Nottingham’s defensive walls and built a bridge over the River Trent.

Earlier excavations of Halifax Place have shown evidence for possible Iron Age occupation: cylindrical pits were discovered cut into the rock, and a small amount of late Iron Age pottery shards were found within the fills of one of the pits. One interpretation is that they were part of a Late Iron Age farmstead, used for grain storage. If there was Iron Age occupation in Halifax Place, it increases the importance of an already significant site, with constant occupation right up until 1350 when the site became a garden, and remained so until the eighteenth century.

For more on Nottingham history, check out the Nottingham Hidden History website.

Nottingham Hidden History website