The Fox Hotel, 1 and 1a Market Place, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire: Tree-ring analysis and radiocarbon wiggle-matching of oak timbers

Abstract

Tree-ring analysis was undertaken on the ring-width series from fourteen of the fifteen timbers sampled from The Fox Hotel and the neighbouring building to the east, 1 and 1A Market Place. Cross-matching allowed three site master chronologies to be formed, two from the Fox Hotel, and one from 1 and 1A Market Place, which contained three, two, and three timbers respectively. Neither Fox Hotel chronologies could be dated by dendrochronology. The moulded beams in 1 and 1A Market Place, however, were converted from trees most likely felled in the second quarter of the fifteenth century AD. Radiocarbon dating was undertaken on eight single-ring samples from cnfox05, the longest tree-ring series in the undated site sequence cnfox542m. Wiggle-matching of these results, taking account of the missing sapwood rings on the samples, indicates that the three cross-matched coeval timbers from the roof of the Fox Hotel were felled in the last quarter of the sixteenth century AD