Measuring just over a metre in length and less than half a metre wide, it is the kind of feature that most road users would never think to imagine beneath the tarmac, yet its modest dimensions conceal a genuinely open question about what people were doing at this spot long before any road existed.

The pit was uncovered during excavation by archaeologist Ellen O'Carroll as part of the N11 road improvement scheme, and what made it worth recording was not its size but its contents and condition. It was subrectangular in shape, with three distinct layers of fill, and contained a considerable quantity of charcoal. The natural clay at the base had been fire-reddened, confirming that burning had taken place inside the pit itself rather than material being deposited there after the fact. Two interpretations sit alongside each other without either being definitively ruled out. The charcoal may be the remnant of an oak plank that was laid across the pit, perhaps as a working surface or structural element connected to some activity now impossible to specify. Alternatively, the pit may have functioned as a charcoal-burning feature in its own right, a small and isolated installation used to produce charcoal in a controlled, smothered burn. Charcoal production of this kind, which requires limiting the oxygen available to the fire, often leaves behind exactly the kind of reddened, carbon-rich deposit found here. Without associated finds or datable material mentioned in the record, the precise period of use remains unknown.