The Hospital of St Mary was closed following the Dissolution of the Monasteries (c. 1538) and pit digging then also took place in this area, mainly for the quarrying of sand and gravels. Very significant amounts of Late-Medieval and Post-Medieval pottery were recovered from pits dating to this period.

 

During the Reformation, Norwich generally and this parish in particular became home to immigrants from the Low Countries, known locally as Strangers. Many of these people were employed in the cloth trade and evidence for this was recovered in the form of stone and timber-lined pits used as tanks and from a cellar floor containing the macrofossil remains of plants used in the dying process.