Can you help? with Holbeach Clough

I live in Holbeach Clough, South Lincolnshire and have been renovating a house for the last few years, as I started to strip back the layers and dig foundations etc I started to find ‘things’ that said to me that part of the building was a lot older than thought and had been built on some kind of ‘ruin’. I also found whilst digging, areas where fires had been lit that contained small bones and pieces of metalwork were found elsewhere.

After doing a bit of research I believe that where the house sits appears likely to be at the exact position where the Holbeach River outfalled to The Wash at the sea bank (Roman Bank) prior to 1660 when the south holland embankment was built claiming further land. I believe the Anglo-Saxons also settled in this tract of land between Roman Bank and Raven bank to the south.

It appears that the dining room in the house as it is now was originally the whole house, about 4m x 5m, I believe this part was built due to its location next to the outfall but on the location of a previous ruin. There was an external stairs leading to an upstairs with an open fireplace. There is a strange feature in that there is a brick arch at ground level under the front door, water diverted through there possibly?

I read on the drainage board website and other sources that a person called George Carleton (died 1590), who was an early ‘adventurer’ who initiated the drainage of the fens, owned thousands of acres between the Whaplode and Holbeach River and built a ‘drainage engin’ at the outfall of the Holbeach River. Immediately after it was built it was destroyed by the locals believing it would affect their livelyhood’s and it was never rebuilt. I am thinking maybe this is the site of the ‘drainage engin’?

George Carleton was a member of Parliment, member of the Commission for Sewers, a substantial land owner and “a pioneer in the introduction of Dutch methods of mechanical drainage by windmills, ‘engines and devices never known or used before”. He bought the 1578 patent off Peter Morris ‘for draining the fennes and lowe groundes’ as used as the first method of pumping water around London?

I have attached some pictures of items that I have found, the timber was in the wall by the external doorway that leaded to the room upstairs and would be more modern than the metalwork that was found in the ground.

I am also interested in the period prior to 1929 which from newspaper cuttings found in the wall was when the building was converted into a modern dwelling. Before this date the building was some kind of shop as I uncovered an over sized window to the front with a pink tiled sill. I am really hoping to locate some photos of this time which I think may be possible as outside the building would have been the old humpbacked bridge over the Holbeach River and the Three Tuns pub and Black Horse pub across the road of Roman Bank.

It would be superb if some info could be found as I think there is a lot of history to the location and the building.

Below are the finds.