Site record MDR23142 - Crop Drying Kiln, Former Outseats Farm, Northeast of Henry Crescent, Alfreton

Crop drying kiln, former Outseats Farm, Northeast of Henry Crescent, Alfreton, of unknown date. The structure was found during a strip, map and record programme carried out in 2018: '...was situated to the northwest of Enclosure 4 and was 5.20m in length, 2.0m in width and 0.50m in depth. The kiln group was keyhole-shaped in plan and comprised vertical sandstone walls and floor set in a construction cut. A rake-out pit truncated two earlier pits. Materials from kiln 363 had been removed by a robber trench. It is likely that kiln 363 was an agricultural crop-drying kiln. The chronology of kiln 363 is uncertain. The only potentially dateable artefact recovered was a grindstone built into the floor of the structure. The precise function and chronology of the grindstone are unknown. The kiln walls were made from rough sandstone with grey clay as bonding agent. Between these two walls, at the centre of the kiln, was the floor which comprised three courses of sandstone flags with a total depth of 0.2m, in a dark brown silty clay matrix on a foundation of mid-brown sandy clay. The bottom course of the floor incorporated worked stone object 102 in its construction.' (1)