The weather in the morning was a little windy with rainy intervals.

Day 13: ThursdayĪfter a wet wash out day on Wednesday and everyone retired early, but Jan manged to carry with some (soggy) plan drawing, we had to pump out the trench on Thursday morning before we could attempt to carry on.

The white tags on the grass outside the trench lower left and right show the line of the drain (using Dowsing). Now that the digging is over the pulling together of the recording begins. A stone lined and capped drain ducting surface water away from the structure (which still flows with water as witnessed on the very wet days of digging). Note that we have uncovered: two significantly built parallel walls with a connecting curved wall linking them a sill of flat flag stone inside the curved and straight walls flagged, cobbled and clay floors interior walls straight and curved. Until we have some analysis completed with dates returned and a little more research the typology of the site is a mystery. A thorough clean made the site presentable for a last set of photos before all the tags were removed and made ready for backfill on Sunday with the help of Alistair and his tractor/digger. A potentially Roman sandstone tile was recovered from within a small interior wall with charcoal beneath, and another from cleaning the trench edge. Lastly thanks to: the crew that came to fill in the trench and return the land to the farmer, especially Alistair and hos digger, as well as to David Knipe who allowed us to undertake a further dig on his land.ĭuring Friday and Saturday we continued to try and resolve the site with sections through the revetment which revealed that it is both a well-built wall and helow as fill behind connecting it to the third cruder wall. It seemed that the spoil heap wouldn’t diminish in size when the numerous barrow loads of earth were being returned to the trench.Ī Big Thank You to all the diggers who’s care, and effort allowed Jan and Bob to record their efforts and the revealed archaeology. Well didn’t all the diggers move a tremendous amount of earth and stones. It was sometimes so wet that Bob tried fishing instead. Some days the trenches needed pumping out. Over the course of the dig the intrepid diggers faced everything from risk of sunstroke to risk of frostbite.

Download the dig 2018