From The Independent: 600-year-old ‘suburb’ is found on building site.
Posted on February 22, 2004 04:44 PM. Filed under: history & archaeology.Scotland's first, purpose-built "suburb", constructed more than 600 years ago, may have been discovered on the site of a 21st-century development.
The new luxury housing estate in Dreghorn, Ayrshire, has been suspended while archaeologists uncover the remains of the medieval settlement as well as a stone age, or neolithic, hamlet.
The find sheds new light on rural life in medieval Scotland. Dreghorn, between the river Irvine and Annick Water, rose to prominence in the 19th century as a coal-mining and brick-making centre. But it had been a thriving medieval village hundreds of years earlier and had supported rural life in the area in neolithic times, before 2000BC.
A team of up to 30 experts have been excavating two acres of a five-acre site adjacent to Station Brae in Dreghorn since December, after the discovery of aerial photographs taken in the 1940s revealed the possible location of ancient remains. [continue]