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Each year since 1990 Bedfordshire County Archaeology Service has carried out work within the Stratton Residential Development Area. During that time four large scale open area excavations have been undertaken. The first was jointly funded by EH and Bedfordshire County Council and investigated around 5ha of the former rural settlement of Stratton, occupied from the Saxon to the early post-medieval periods. In subsequent years a further 4ha of the settlement were excavated under the aegis of PPG-16, with a similarly sized area still to be examined in the near future. The results of each phase of excavation have been integrated into the MAP2 analytical framework established after the initial episode of fieldwork.
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There is little evidence for occupation of the excavated area beyond the first half of the seventeenth century when the township of Stratton was partially emparked. In addition to the sheer scale of this project, which has allowed it to examine the process of rural settlement development over a period of some 1,100 years. The results suggest that the settlement was established at the beginning of the seventh century AD within a relict Roman field system. In subsequent centuries it was repeatedly remodelled and shifted eastwards across the landscape, with the early habitation areas becoming incorporated into the field system of the medieval settlement. A number of important individual discoveries have been made, including two small separate, middle-Saxon inhumation cemeteries, two middle-Saxon wells with waterlogged wattle linings, and two late-medieval cob-built dovecotes.