Sheepfolds Road, timber yard

Timber yard depicted on the first edition OS map of 1859. Appears in its final layout on the fourth edition of 1942. Aerial photographs from 1945 show that it was damaged by German bomber raids. It may have been demolished after this time. Two smaller timber yards are shown on the first edition map west of Sheepfolds Pottery and Bridge Foundry. They served the shipyards on the River Wear and included saw pits, smithies and boilers for preparing wood for ship building. In 2018 an archaeological trench was excavated across the timber yard. The tops of demolished sandstone walls of a building were exposed at 0.4m below ground level. Two substantial north-south stone walls were identified forming the east and west sides of a structure shown on the first edition map. They survived to two courses high and were 0.55m high and 0.4m wide. An east to west partition wall had subsequently been built in brick between the two, and the stone walls were lined with a brick skin. Inside the walls of the building a pale greyish yellow clay included a small number of 18th century pottery sherds and clay tobacco pipe. The building was backfilled by dumped layers of sand and flint and chalk rubble (probably derived from ships ballast) and red brick rubble. The foundation of a less substantial wall was located parallel to and east of the stone building. It consisted of a single course of grey granite. A square posthole 0.25m deep was recorded cut through a thin surface of pale grey sand in the timber yard.