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.
