A programme of coring was undertaken at land off the Great North Road in Newark, next to the cattle market. Two borehole transects, each of five boreholes, were laid across the proposed development area, their location based in part upon the results of an earlier geotechnical survey of the site. The coring was undertaken using a Dando Terrier rig (Fig. 1) with the borehole cased so that cores of 100mm diameter in plastic sleeves could be recovered for the full depth of the core. Cores were taken to ‘natural’ sands and gravels in each borehole. In one or two boreholes the final core was taken in a reduced diameter plastic sleeve because rising sands could potentially seize up the coring equipment and further casing was deemed problematic. From both an archaeological and a palaeoenvironmental point of view the site has limited potential. The absence of any organic deposits that would allow the radiocarbon dating of the silts and clayey silts means that despite the possibility that pollen will have survived in thesesediments with no means of dating the deposits no palaeoenvironmental work can be recommended. There are indications of a former river channel on the south east side of the site but its date could be any period from the late glacial to historic times. The pollen evidence (if present) in the silts could broadly resolve this (the major late glacial and post-glacial vegetation changes can be recognised in the pollen spectra without the need for radiocarbon dating) but the results would have limited archaeological relevance. Much of the site appears to have been destroyed by excavations in the 19th century, probably to obtain the alluvial clays for the construction of the embankments upon which the railway and its sidings were built, and subsequently backfilled, probably by town, industrial and railway rubbish. There is no clear indication of a palaeosol horizon in or beneath the alluvium on the western and eastern edges of the site that could contain prehistoric archaeology and the only landsurfaces recognised relate to the period immediately preceding the construction of the lorry park and 20th century development on the northern carpark area. While it cannot be ruled out that features earlier than the post-medieval period may survive in these areas the fact that they lie on the floodplain of the River Trent and would have been subject to intermittent flooding suggests any extensive activity is very unlikely.