Showells Farm in Crawley (centred SP 342 134) was built between 1767 and 1816 as an isolated field barn; it developed into a farmhouse with a detached cottage in the late nineteenth century, and acquired an extra free-standing house in the mid twentieth. The site is distinctive topographically, but has not hitherto been noted as archaeologically significant. In 2019, however, Len Jackman, a metal-detectorist based in Hailey, reported finding Roman coins and brooches on the hill-crest north-east of the farm. The complexion of this material suggested the possibility of ritual deposition. The interesting fact was then noted that the place-name is of a well-known type meaning ‘seven springs’, suggesting that the springs at the foot of the hill had sacred or ritual associations in the Anglo-Saxon period. Investigations in 2020, including a geophysical survey (magnetometry) and a small exploratory excavation (Trench I), confirmed a Romano-British date for a group of dug features, and found evidence of settlement.

That would have been the end of the project if ground-clearance in 2021 by a new tenant, Kevin Edginton, had not uncovered a stone-built drain below the spring-line. A Roman date for this seemed possible, so a further geophysical survey (resistivity) was undertaken to locate the source of the drain. This revealed something unexpected: a large, and in places clearly rectilinear, high-resistance anomaly aligned on the south-east-facing slope of the spur.