The development site is located in the central area of the village, and on land off Willow Drive. It is approximately 0.4 hectares in extent, and is surrounded by other residential developments to the east, south and west and to the north by pastoral land. The site had previously been partially levelled: as it sloped slightly from south to north, the topsoil was reduced to a remnant on the south site edge, while grass roots were still visible on the northern edge. House plots 1-3 had already been excavated and concreted, and only the upper portions of the trenches, which were already weathered, could be inspected. House plot 4 was excavated on 1st June, 2006. The area of the house plot was further levelled by roughly 0.5m, removing all remaining topsoil and a portion of the subsoil.The foundation trenches were then dug using a wheeled 180º excavator, fitted with a 0.5m bucket with small, flared teeth for the exterior trenches, and a 0.45m bucket with fewer and smaller teeth for the interior trenches. Spoil was piled on the site. The excavation of house plot 7, which took place on 7th-8th June 2006, was similar, but the levelling strip for this house plot was much shallower, no more than 0.1m deep. As no archaeological material had been encountered during the excavation of house plots 4 and 7, which were considered to represent an adequate sample of the area under development, the watching brief was discontinued after consultation with the Planning Archaeologist for Nottinghamshire County Council. A previous geophysical survey observed marked striations running roughly east-west across the site: these were initially interpreted as the sub-surface remnants of medieval ridge-and-furrow ploughing. The excavation of house plots at the eastern and western ends of the site showed the geophysical anomalies to be caused by natural irregularities in the water-lain geological gravels.