We started August preparing for a very busy last week. We were planning to stage our last 3rd series of Excavation and Finds Handing Training days, our last Open Day and organise and lead a village medieval walk. This was in addition to ensuring we completed and closed out our excavation work which now extended to 7 trenches and host around 20 volunteers a day who were generating an awful lots of finds on this highly productive site.
 The medieval wall with ruts in Trench 2. Watch the large stones on the right morph into a wall. |  Aaron and Chris trowelling back to clean the Trench after removal of some of the loose stones. Can you see a ridge of embedded stones starting to appear? |
We thought it would be busy and were not disappointed. The Trainees came and were soon discovering medieval pottery and lots of bones including an entire dog skull!
The week long, Medieval Festival, jointly organised by St Wilfrid’s and the Time Team, proved to be a great success. Over 600 people visiting the church and almost 100, who split into 4 groups and guided by Time Team members, visited the Dig site as part of the medieval walk for a 15 minute medieval bits only whirlwind tour.
Later in the week, we again hosted over 100 people on the last open day which meant that 4 volunteer guides were fully engaged all day explaining the site history and archaeology and by this time included our last surprising discovery – a monastic wall which had been incorporated into the structure of the newest medieval road surface in Trench 2.
As the Trench 2 road excavation team started to remove the surface of the medieval road by removing ‘looser’ stones first they soon came across some stones which offered considerable resistance and moved on.
The week long, Medieval Festival, jointly organised by St Wilfrid’s and the Time Team, proved to be a great success. Over 600 people visiting the church and almost 100, who split into 4 groups and guided by Time Team members, visited the Dig site as part of the medieval walk for a 15 minute medieval bits only whirlwind tour.
Later in the week, we again hosted over 100 people on the last open day which meant that 4 volunteer guides were fully engaged all day explaining the site history and archaeology and by this time included our last surprising discovery – a monastic wall which had been incorporated into the structure of the newest medieval road surface in Trench 2.
As the Trench 2 road excavation team started to remove the surface of the medieval road by removing ‘looser’ stones first they soon came across some stones which offered considerable resistance and moved on.
 A better view of the discovery of the wall with Arron and Chris working (?) on the excavation. |  The monastic wall after our volunteers had done their stuff! |
Later as the team progressed along the trench, trowelling back and probing the loose material left behind after the loose stones had been removed, it became obvious that the stones which resisted might be some sort of structure. Simon Tomson, the Site Director of Archaeology, deployed a second team to work on the stones which not only morphed into a substantial double faced wall but had a road surface butting up to it on both sides and another earlier road surface underneath it.
Bingo! On this very productive excavation we had discovered a bit more of our village heritage being an unrecorded structure from the Monastic period.
Bingo! On this very productive excavation we had discovered a bit more of our village heritage being an unrecorded structure from the Monastic period.
RSS Feed