Rye and Winchelsea 17th April 2004
The day started rather cool and windy when we gathered outside the church of St Thomas the Martyr in Winchelsea.  The church is a substantial building, despite that fact that all that remains now is the chancel, which explains its unusual square shape. The question is, how much of the church was actually built? The signs are that it was a bit more than actually survives, but by no means all, unless the major part of it was destroyed during one of the many French raids on the town in the 14th century.  Some of the effigies in the church are thought to have been brought from the old church, which was destroyed, along with the rest of the original town of Winchelsea, in a storm in 1287. The vivid stained glass windows are fairly modern. The new town was built on a rocky hill on which stood the tiny village of Iham. The grid-like pattern of wide streets shows the planned nature of the new settlement. The buildings date from all periods from the 13th century Court Hall onwards. One common feature of many of the buildings are the barrel-vaulted undercrofts which were built to store the wine which was imported through the town. Our guide, Mike Greenhalgh of the Hastings Area Archaeological Research Group, had arranged for us to visit one of the smaller ones, which is now under the front garden of a modern house. The entrances to many of the others (about 50 survive) can be seen around the town. We also visited the site of the long-vanished Saxon church of St Leonard’s, Iham, on the edge of the hill, just outside the present town. A windmill subsequently stood on the spot until it was blown down in the storm of 1987 After a visit to the Strand Gate, where Charlotte disturbed one of the residents… we headed on to Rye for lunch in the Bell Inn … After lunch we headed off on a tour of Rye, losing various members of the party as we went From the end of Watchbell Street there is an excellent view over the Strand Quay towards the old sea cliffs. All this area was once sea. From there we visited the Ypres Tower, once one of the town’s most important defensive positions… …and then via the church to the Landgate… and back via the old Augustinian monastery, with its windows bricked up, but the fine tracery preserved…….which concluded our all too brief, if chilly, visit. Many thanks to our guide Mike for giving up his time to treat us to an excellent tour and for his wealth of local knowledge
report and photos by Ron Strutt

		Saturday 17th July – Week 6 Day 4 [Day 29] Last week of digging National Archaeology Day 1. Thankfully the weather was a bit kinder today and there seemed to be a constant stream of people wanting to see the site. The mock excavation was open for younger punters to “have a go” and, as the “deep room” – that we are recording today – is near the observation platform, I must have heard the words “In 1996, whilst putting in roads for a new housing estate……..” 10 or more times from poor old Pete as he started another site tour off. If it were me, and thank God it wasn’t, I would have been tempted to vary the repertoire somewhat and slipped in:- “This site is an early example of one of the Zogon fleet’s intergalactic refuelling stations, one of the best preserved we have from the period….”

You see, that is why I get on better with children.
I don’t mind explaining to a 7 year old that ”No, we are not actually building here, but digging up something built a long time ago by the Romans”, rather than answer the question from somebody who has had the benefit of a full state education and really should know better :-
“How do you know that this isn’t a hoax placed here by the developers because they ran out of money, my friends girlfriends cousin worked on this site and that’s what he said”

Well there were a couple of things I found difficult to believe: First, that he had a friend: Second, that if he did have a friend, this friend had a girlfriend. Thirdly if the friend did have a girlfriend – why wasn’t she going out with her cousin?

Anyway I brought home a little light reading tonight EH – Centre for Archaeology’s Recording Manual special attention to module 3 “Recording Deposits and Cuts” and within that, getting to grips with controlled vocabulary a bit different from the MoLAS recording stuff.

“Deep Room” Polished to a high gleam
East Wall

Beautifully cleaned for recording
East wall, 2 metre and 1 metre scales

South wall
with evidence of another blocked up feature (check out the line running down through the coursework)

Cleaned for recording
NE shot

Further back

West wall
all cuts, steps etc are all ours for access and safety you can see there is still a lot of infill to remove another year

West Wall
Recording the blocked up doorway/window/niche

Wish me luck

 

Designed by Corinne Mills 2005
email [email protected]

Wednesday 23rd June – Week 3 Day 1 [Day 11]

Conditions – Wet!!!!

The 3rd set of volunteers turn up at 08:30, looking slightly less enthusiastic (and rather more damp) than the previous two lots. There is a delay in the Health and Safety instructions while Dave Hunter (site supervisor) waits for the delivery of snorkels, masks and flippers to arrive on site.

To be truthful the site needed this rain. The geology is an underlying bedrock of Upper Corallian Coral Rag capped with Red Down and Oxford Clays. And these clays have been drying and shrinking in the previous couple of weeks of extremely fine weather – making the excavation hard going.

On site, Dave is discussing with me the presumed layout of the building, which again he admits is speculative at the moment, but evidence is emerging of many alterations and additions, exactly the way it is taught in the lecture rooms — a farmstead/homestead improved and added to as the owners get more wealthy/gain status.

As well as walls and rooms as additions, he says that there is evidence of a deliberately removed wall, a sort of “robber trench” that isn’t really a robber trench – but a wall taken out to make a room bigger or make two rooms into one. He says he might keep this feature back for me to excavate next week depending on how the dig progresses and what more features are uncovered. (Ohhh, Go on, Go on, go on!!).

Dawn Irving (EH Community Outreach and Education Officer) has had to cancel and rearrange the first of the primary school mock excavations, she was a bit wary of finding the limp, lifeless body of Little Jimmy Smith lying face down in a puddle of mud, his stubby, little fingers locked around the handle of his “safety” trowel, with the rest of his class asking if they can do “a practical” and bury him in the mock trench to see how long it takes for his flesh to rot from his bones. Got to be careful these days with litigation.

In addition today, there were lots of EH brass about, basically seeing if this sort of community archaeology is something they want to pursue in the future. Let’s hope they see it as a worthwhile project and utilise this, and other initiatives, to raise both their profile and the profile of all our local, historic environments. One thing is for sure, after being taken round by Pete , somebody high up is going to make sure that another somebody lower down – someone in the IT department – is going to need a rather soft cushion to sit on tomorrow.

As a condition of Scheduled Monument Consent, the Groundwell Site must be returned to the condition it was in.

I can say it was. Although I can’t say the same for the bodies at the “end of dig” party.

I’m going to miss those lovely people who took my water, used my internet connection, parked on my drive, made me laugh, taught me a lot – so here are the pictures for the last week.

Anna, taking levels
Anna, I did 30 levels for you not 2 days ago?? What are you surveying or am I crap??

Cat surveying
different person, different spelling. In collusion with Anna

Claire
Depressed by section. Or should it be Sectioned by depression. 🙂

Big Yellow Putter Backer

Big Yellow Putter Backer II

Big Yellow Putter Backer III

The Mysterious Swindinivm Stone

Precision stuff
“Deep room” being back filled.

Deep Room
YES. I watched this room being back filled – all the way.

Geoff and Neil
Site supervisor says last rights over Neil, one of the Heroes of “Deep Room”

Boots
An honour to serve with you, Neil

Ohh!!
Where’s it gone ???

Saturday 12th June – Day 4

It appeared that not a lot happened yesterday but cleaning of a possible mortared floor and a possible “decorated” floor surface seemingly slowed down the spectacular progress. Small finds are turning up and the first coin of this years dig is still waiting to be identified.

David Hunter, site supervisor, collared me. Needs to transfer some money to his wife for nursery fees and book a flight to Edinburgh for an interview (and they say there is no money in Archaeology ) So he needs to use the internet and can he pop over. Well I ain’t going to say no, am I?

But I started thinking (yes, I know it’s dangerous ) it’s is getting scary how reliant we, as a whole, are on technology. When your working base is a portacabin – and there are no BT land lines because we all use mobile phones now, and in these temporary structures the “bean counters” have decided that there is no need for internet connections to be easily (or relatively cheaply) available – you seem to be divorced from “civilization”.

Ask yourself the question how did we cope 10 years ago. Without internet access, “portable” mobile phones, online banking, online booking, online everything. Well, the truth is very well actually. But it seems – as technology evolves we humans forget how we ever did without it.

But then again, not every establishment is consumed by the white heat of technological revolution.

Today I think I’ll investigate Trench 7.

bowl Kat reveals nicely shaped bowl

bowl 2

bowl 3

rim

Official EH update for Week 1 – Day 4

Although we have made good progress today, yesterday I was perhaps a little optimistic regarding the completion of machining in Trench 6. We have got most of the infill of the 1996 road-scrape out, but we will need a machine for a little longer to finish clearing the road, tidy up the eastern edge of the trench and spoil heap. Dave Hunter has volunteered to work on Monday (part of our ‘site-weekend’) to complete the machining – Thank you Dave! In Trench 6 we have started to clean back by hand from the Roman wall we have exposed in the south-western corner of the trench, but it is already obvious that we are going to be faced with the same problems that we had last year with the site drying out and all soil-colours turning to grey! Large sheets of polythene may be the answer. In the south-eastern corner we again speculating that we may have the western part of Bernard and Bryn’s trial trench from 1997.

Trench 7 is looking good, small patches of gravel on the surface of the mound that we think may represent the road suggest that the interpretation may be correct. Interestingly in the road mound, or agger, we can see quantities of burnt clay, or possibly daub from the walls of demolished timber buildings, although we have no evidence of structures in the trench

Friday 16th July – Week 6 Day 3 [Day 28] Last week of digging

Typical, site polished to a high gleam yesterday, heaving it down with rain today . Even after a few minutes work the site was resembling The Somme.
“Dr Wilson will blow the whistle and we go over the top for the big push, lads” quipped Dave Hunter in a clipped accent.

The clay around the site sticks like a News of the World innuendo and although we have taken the “deep room” back and beautifully exposed and cleaned the plaster no-one can see it because it is under thick plastic sheet to protect it from the rain.
English Heritage chief archaeologist David Miles is doing the press interviews and the site is being celebrated as “one of the most important Roman sites in England”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/3900845.stm

Anyway the press have departed and the councillors, dignitaries and VIP’s are gone (why doesn’t somebody say that high heels are not the ideal footwear for a soggy archaeological site, and that was just the male members of Swindon Borough Council and we get down to cleaning up for recording the room when…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

we find ANOTHER floor joist…..

while chasing down the plaster on the walls.
Pete Wilson, when told, shakes his head, shakes me by the throat and tells us the only thing we know he is going to tell us. Leave it, shoot an EDM co-ord, note it on the plan and forget it.
Aaaaaarrrrgggghhh.

		Sunday 18th July – Week 6 Day 5 [Day 30] LAST DAY OF EXCAVATION National Archaeology Day 2. Weather again excellent. Again streams of people turning up for tours of the site, mock excavations, view the finds etc. Bryn Walters and around 60-70 member of the Association for Roman Archaeology (Association for Roman Archaeology, 75 York Road, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN1 2JU, for membership ) turned up for the second site tour of the day. Neil, who was discussing soil particle size analysis, and not being able to choose the colour of a soil type from the Munsell colour charts he quipped he was having a “Munsell moment” that was when …. “In 1996, whilst putting in roads for a new housing estate……..” boomed out from Pete. : Well, after yesterday’s relentless repetition of the above words, Neil’s eyes clouded over and he went quietly insane. “I don’t want to do this anymore”, he said, with a slight madness flickering in his eyes “I don’t want to be an archaeologist anymore. I want to be the King of Confectionery and create the best sweets in the world. No longer will people queue to buy Quality Street and Roses for Christmas. They will be drawn inexorably toward the pinnacle of the confectionery world – ……and these delicious morsels will be known as “Munsell Moments” ……..and each sweet will be wrapped in a colour chart with which you have to match with the coating of the sweet.”

Well, that gave us a laugh and helped us through the 8 other site tours.

Key
A late find on our last day of recording!!

The two National Archaeology Days seemed a great success and a fitting culmination to the six weeks excavation and recording – to the highest standards – of part of a scheduled monument, the volunteer program, the schools education program, the trainee archaeologist program, the community program, the visitors able to ask from the viewing platform the working archaeologists what it was all about. It all worked. And again I would like to thank EH and SBC for their innovative use of this rich and rewarding resource (which I’m sure will have raised a few eyebrows in the archaeological world),Kat and Neil for being in “deep room” with me, the rest of the bunch for being great fun and Dr. Pete Wilson for all thoses site tours that we had to overhear

And for those of you who are, quite rightly, interested in the reports for excavations can I pass on that although the schedule for Post-excavation still being finalised, it is hoped that Assessment be completed by March 2005, and Analysis by March 2006.

Anyway that’s the dig over with, and I am released from the curse of the Dig Diary I hope you enjoyed the reports as much as I enjoyed working on the site.

 

Designed by Corinne Mills 2005
email [email protected]

Friday 9th July – Week 5 Day 3 [Day 23]

Last night my family took a vote. I am now officially “sad” and the word “wood” is now banned from use for a 7 day period. After I tried to cheat, another vote was taken and the word “would” has also been banned. . This is making for some interesting conversations and is making the kids think a bit more about vocabulary. I think I might ban some other words in the future just to get them to think of synoyms. Anyway back to the action……

I have another class from the local primary school today and I concentrate on landscape surveying the roman road with them. Or as me and the schoolkids call it the “uppy-downy game”.

This-is-how-you-play!!!

Yer basic roman road ditch—-agger—ditch agreed?

Right — line up 5 kids abreast as if they were going to cross the road. Tell them to take small steps, shuffles almost, and say out loud what they feel the ground is doing under their feet i.e. up, up, down, down

So for our roman road you should get level,down,down,down,up,up,up,level,up,up,up,up,up,up,up,level, down,down,down,down,down,down,down,level,down,down,down,up,up,up,level.

Simple but effective. . Then you get them to look at what they’ve just walked and – hey presto – they can “see” it. Next get them to mark out the ditches with bright yellow bean bags (colour optional ) , and the same with the top of the agger, and there it is. A section of roman road planned and marked out by 9 year-old total amateurs. And they love the “uppy-downy game”

Give me thirty kids who know the uppy-downy game, a medieval ridge and furrow field, and a pub in close proximity and I guarantee a peaceful afternoon for myself

Anyway that’s enough of Chris’s ABC of Archaeology for Kids back to the w**d, the experts are on site and it is decided that this is a good candidate for dating and a section is cut and sent to Sheffield (I think) for dendrochonology. All we can do now is wait for the result. Decisions on what to do next with “room 1” will be taken overnight and tomorrow. I am back in the action tomorrow while the Living History weekend takes place around us.

Gathering at the Hyde Heritage Centre.

Earnest discussions!

Winchester Public Library, formerly the Corn Exchange

 Looking towards the High Street which, as Graham explained, was carved by traffic into a holloway in ancient times.

Outside the Westgate

The Great Hall

 Remains of the Roman fort and the Norman castle.

The Round Table inside the Great Hall

Inside the Great Hall. Nish attempting to give substance to one of the figures in Antony Gormley’s Domain Field.

Other views inside the Great Hall

Inside the Westgate. Grafitti carved by prisoners.

View from the roof of the Westgate

On the site of Charles II’s proposed palace (it was never completed and burned down in 1894). The pediment is from the palace.

The truncated west front of the cathedral.

Cathedral north side.

Off for lunch.

City Mill on the diverted river.

 Last bit of the Roman Wall.

 Kingsgate with St Swithun’s Church above.

St Swithun’s Gate (?) into the Cathedral Close.

 Cathedral Close

 Saxon-era drainage system below the cathedral grounds.

Panoramic view of Chesters fort from the West Gate

An unexpected trip to Yorkshire for a family funeral in mid-September left me with yet another cross-country journey, and time on my hands. I decided that the best use of the day was to retrace my steps along the route of the Wall and try to visit some of the sites I had missed in May.  My chief target was Chesters, which I had ducked out of the last time due to the appalling weather. On this occasion I was rewarded with mild and dry conditions, though no sunshine – I really do wonder what a Roman soldier from any of the Mediterranean countries, would have thought of our climate!

Chesters (Cilurnum) is the largest surviving Roman cavalry fort in Britain and was built to house a detachment of 500 protecting the point at which the Wall crossed the North Tyne. The bridge abutments on the fort side of the river have disappeared, but the eye can follow the line of the Wall down to the water’s edge and see where the Wall begins again at the other side. But that is getting ahead of myself!

The stonework of the Wall can be seen continuing beyond the North Tyne

The entry to Chesters is through a pleasant tree-ringed car park with picnic tables that would be very attractive in better weather. The fort is protected by English Heritage and tickets are purchased in the usual style of gift shop/kiosk. Beyond, however, lies the world of John Clayton, the early 20th century Town Clerk of Newcastle who, above any other, was responsible for the preservation of the central Wall sections as we see them today. His family’s lands once included the forts of Chesters, Carrawburgh, Housesteads, Vindolanda and Carvoran, and he devoted much of his time and energy in sparing the stonework from further depredations. The first thing the visitor to Chesters encounters is the small museum built at the beginning of the 20th century to house the Clayton collection of sculptured and inscribed stones gathered from many of the sites along the Wall.

A small part of the collection of inscribed stones in the Clayton Museum.
Statue of Juno Dolichenus, a goddess of a cult originating in Syria. The base of the corresponding Jupiter figure can be seen to the rear left	Altar to the divine power of the Emperor and the genius of the first cohort of Vardullians by their tribune Flavius Titianus during the           governorship of Antistitus Adventus c. AD173-6.

The site itself is accessed via a fenced pathway leading into a sheep meadow in which the surviving stonework is itself fenced to keep the ovine population out – it doesn’t always work!

West Gate complete with ovine marauder

The splendour of the East Gateway can be estimated from these remains.

The barrack block

The headquarters building. The well is seen in the right foreground and the raised stonework rear left conceals the unit’s strongroom.

The strongroom housed the unit’s military insignia, as well as the soldiers’ wages

This turret stood at the southeast corner of the fort. Looking carefully you can see the curve of the outside wall forming the traditional “playing card” shape of the fortifications

The fort is approached close to the original north gateway, the first of the upstanding remains. From there one can enter each of the fenced areas in turn to explore the gateways, the barrack blocks, the headquarters building, the outer defences, and the Commanding Officer’s house, where the pillars of the hypocaust system showed that life on the Wall wasn‘t cold and miserable for everyone.

This hypocaust would have kept the commanding officer and his family warm.

But for perhaps the most spectacular aspect of the remains at Chesters, one has to venture outside the confines of the fort walls. At the edge of the river, in a beautiful setting, stands the bathhouse, said to be one of the best preserved anywhere in the Roman Empire. The hot, warm and cold rooms are clearly defined, as are the niches (in which it was believed the clothes and belongings were left while bathing), and the stoke hole for the furnace.

The bathhouse on the riverbank. The furnace stokehole can be seen in the left foreground

The caldarium, or hot room, of the bathhouse

One amusing aspect of this visit happened whilst walking to the bathhouse. Suddenly all the sheep on the site took it into their heads that they had to move from one field to another, and they ran in single file directly across the path. They came to a dead halt when a couple with a dog on a lead came along the path. They resumed their headlong rush, seemingly with gratitude, only when the dog moved on!

 The wall niches of the bathhouse changing room, and the sheepy rush hour in the background

Having viewed the site thoroughly I had a bite to eat and resumed my journey along the Wall. I again passed all the sites we had visited back in May, but this time did not stop as I had a second venue in mind. Another site maintained by English Heritage, but very different from the Roman architecture of the Wall. Towards the western end of the Wall stands Lanercost Priory, built in 1166 by Augustinian monks. The interest of Lanercost to this story is that it was built using stones quarried from the Wall. Like all other priories and monasteries, Lanercost was closed during the reign of Henry VIII, but in the 18th century the Nave was restored to form a parish church for the local population. Today the church is open free of charge for any visitors, and houses a small, but interesting exhibition on the history of the site put together by members of the congregation. However to the south of the church, one can pass into the original cloister garth and on payment of a small fee, can explore with the assistance of an audio guide. Among the highlights pointed out by the guide are the undercrofts, with their many masons marks on the stonework, carved tombs of the Dacre family and their successors the Howards, owners of the Priory after the Dissolution.

The undercroft of Lanercost Priory

In addition the Prior’s house which was a converted Pele tower, stands to an impressive three story height, and at various points the audio guide directs the attention to inscribed Roman stones rebuilt into the walls.

The right-hand stone above the doorway lintel is a re-used inscribed stone mentioning the name of a Roman centurion

A highlight that the guide didn’t mention was to sit at ease in the cloister with swallows darting around, so close you feel that you could stretch out and touch them!

Having completed the tour, I returned my guide and left Lanercost, and the Wall, bidding a reluctant farewell to this wonderful monument to the Roman Empire. I don’t think it will be too long before I’m back for another visit – there are still bits I haven’t done!