Dig Day Sunday 31st October 2010

This is officially the last day of the dig, so I hobbled along on my crutches. It was very frustrating watching people get on with things and me watching them. Main activities were sieving, although that had slowed down, felting over the exposed archaeology and then putting a layer of soil ontop. This will protect the archaeology until next year.


Adrian was practising being a contortionist in the pit at the front of house, which has given up it's secrets in the form of bone and pot, and when I got down to the sieving tent, David showed me the large pieces of tin glaze which had come out of the pit yesterday. All exciting stuff 'cos there's another 3/4 of the pit left to do next year.

As I walked past the knot garden, it was a shock to see it all filled in. Did I imagine it, or did we really find some fascinating stuff in this little part of paradise.
Will the gardeners ever forgive us for digging up part of their treasure? Life goes on as I noticed that they have already planted out the winter pansies etc.

Walking through to the sieving tent, I was again reminded of the dig's final hours. All the equipment, bar a table and a few sieves, have been removed.

And the final team photo (missing D & H who were in sieving tent)...roll on next March....what on earth am I going to do on Sundays now!!!!!

Dig volunteer's Party Tuesday 19th October 2010

Fortunately this event happened before I went into hospital. Having picked up Clayre and Sue on a disgustingly wet night, we arrived at the SBT very wet!!! We were one of the first to arrive and not suprisingly the last to leave, with Clayre on a mission!!
SBT had laid on a veritable feast of tasty sandwiches, snacks,sausage rolls and finger desserts, all washed down with a choice of red/white/rose wine and elderflower sparkly, for the drivers amongst us. I think I can safely say it was a much appreciated gesture.
It was great to see everyone together from Team Sunday, including those who hadn't been able to make it for a while due to other committments. Unfortunately Colin wasn't able to make it and the only other person missing was Will, but the bust of Mr. WS himself in the following piccie, made a pretty good stand-in!!
Below are a selection of photos taken on the night. Note the "rescue" of the unwanted sandwiches in the last photo.........






Hiya Colin. Can you give me your email address so I can tell you when night out is please?

Dig Day Sunday 17th October 2010

This is my last week of working at New Place. Some joker in hospital admissions has booked me in for an op next week....on my birthday!!!!!!!
Never mind. It's a beautiful day, sun shining, blue sky and warm.
Started off backfilling the knot garden. About 40 barrows between myself, Clayre and Will this morning before t-break!!! Not bad going.
Mind you, it doesn't appear to have made an impact on the spoil heap which looks as large as ever!!
After t-break took over from Heather and David who had been playing squares......!!!!
Did some potwashing before catching D & H busy backfilling........

Heather making an angel....
After lunch, Will took pity and put me out front to dig in the section of the large square pit. Found lots of bone, normal for this pit, plus med and late-med pot.

...and then this beautiful sight wafted over the town.....
All good things must come to an end, so it was with great sadness that I had my last scone and ice-cream.

Just a few pictorial memories....

Dig Day Sunday 10th October 2010

A pictorial blog me thinks.........



After sieving and drawing, I actually got to do some digging at the front....


I hope Adrian's wife sees this picture!!!!!!

Dig Day Sunday 3th October 2010

It's amazing how much I've missed coming to Stratford on a Sunday, but I've been out galavanting in Yorkshire, Northumberland and then Scotland. Fantastic!

Team Sunday
So getting up Sunday morning at some ungodly hour was a bit of a shock to the system!Front of site hasn't changed at all, but our knot garden looks completely different. For starters, there's the huge soil ramp reading from the scaffolding down into the excavation area, the huge hole in the middle had been filled in as have numerous other holes. However, futhers sections have been dug and a series of post holes revealed.....but not today because they're full of water!!!



And because of the water falling from the sky we have the pleasure of sieving all day.

Dig Day Sunday 5th September 2010

This post could be a little lacklustre as I can't get the sd card out of my camera! Mind you there is only 1 photo and I'll discuss that later.

Well the dig is officially over and we've been relegated to 5 volunteers per session by Chloe. Not that many people knew that! Clayre and myself have been relegated to Sunday pm, so it was very strange getting up and then having nothing to do (so to speak) until I went to pick her up at 12.30. It was very strange arriving at 1pm 'cos all our normal crew were already there. They had wondered where we were.

Bob was on his own this week, and by the sounds of it there will be no-one in from B'ham Arch unit Monday or Tuesday! but we are only sieving and recording. Actually Jade and Adrian and Peter got to do some digging in the front on a 1m square trench, and the amount of stuff that was coming out from that small area was pretty phenominal. Mainly bone with a lovely bit of green pot.

Adrian and Clayre in the most exciting hole of the day.....

Started in the sieving tent. This week we had a lot of interested adults, as well as children, who wanted to have a go at sieving. It's very rewarding.

The Mulberry tree behind the kitchen has now become dangerous and only a member of BAU can go and get spoil, so that means that Bob has been very busy over the last couple of days and now he's on his own today.........so I suggested that if he fills the barrows and wheels them to past the Mulberry tree, myself and someone else can wheel them to the temporary spoil heap from where people can then take it to the tent. It was was going swimmingly, then I decided to speed up the process, donned hard hat, grabbed spade and ran under the tree to the spoil heap, where I stayed and helped fill up barrows. I let Bob wheel them past the tree. Speeded up the process somewhat.

After a much need coffee, I returned to the sieving tent once more, and that was it until 5pm. Not even any scones today as the tourists had eat them all! We just had to make do with our ice-cream.

So not a very exciting day really, but that's not what archaeology is all about. It's the taking part, meeting lots of new people, learning new skills and generally having a great time.

Dig Day Sunday 29th August 2010

We're at Burford for the Bank holiday weekend so although I didn't have to pick Clayre up, it was still an early start for the 1hr journey to Stratford.
Day started dull and windy and remained so for the rest of the morning.

Will took us on a site tour as usual. Because of the rain, some nice features have appeared in trench A.


Will put me in the greenhouse to sort out the 50+ finds trays! All had been washed, but they needed sorting and bagging. Firstly I removed all the trays which were labeled U/S (Unstratified) sieving, and then sorted them into find type, e.g. glass, pot, clay pipe, bone, metal etc), then bagged them. This done I started on the rest by sorting them into 1000, 2000 and 3000 contexts. Then I took the 1000's and amalgamated trays where I could, i.e. there were 5 trays labelled 1011. Then I took each tray, sorted it into find types and bagged them.

Some nice pot.

It was really interesting work in the fact that I actually haven't found a great deal over the last 19 weeks so it was nice to see what had been found. What stood out for me where 4 shards of pot (couldn't tell you what date!) with nice bits of decoration on. Then there was the metal "sequin", a 3 x 0.4cm piece of lead which had been decorated and a piece of handle from an enourmous storage jar.

At 12.45 the heavens opened as they had been promising all morning!. I chuckled to myself as I busied aroung the dry greenhouse, that is until I found it leaked!
Pottered round tidying the rest of the green house up before having my lunch.

Finished lunch and the sky was blue and the sun shining. Lovely-jubbley!

Will put me in the knot garden, in the kiln trench. Aim was to clean the sides and make them straight, and remove the "bridge" from between the clay lump and the side of the excavation. That done, he asked me to remove the clay lump (which ir wasn't. Just compact soil), and trowel down to the sandy layer of the kiln flue floor. I didn't finish this last bit but left it clean and tidy for tomorrow.


Big excitement in the sieving tent as news of a star find reached us. A little girl had found a silver coin whilst sieving! Excitement didn't last long as it was identified as being a toy coin the children are given as they walk through the house.
Got us all going....for 2 secs!

Dig Day Sunday 22nd August

Can you believe it. 6 days of rain and yet it's another glorious Sunday! I wonder who the Patron Saint of Archaeology is? Anyone out there know?

A bit thin on the ground today due to holidays, but a new lady did start.

Just to show the enormity of the spoil heap! That's David on top....

As promised in last weeks blog, if asked I would draw and I did. Me and Clayre, assigned to dran the South facing elevation of the long brick built thing that Halliwell put up to protect the foundations. So bloomin' long was the wall that instead of a nice clear 1:10 scale, we had to use 1:20 in order to fit it onto the permatrace. Boo-hiss!


It took us ages to set things up: the line level, the tape and then trying to decide how to tackle it. It didn't help that when we did get started, we hadn't realised that the wall was over 3m long, so I had started with 1:10 scale! Aaaargh

I think we managed 1 row of bricks before lunch!

After lunch, well no prizes for guessing what we were up to!. Back to the wall.
I have to say we did get progressively faster as the afternoon went on, but it was very uncomfortable for both of us. I was drawing so therefore sitting for most of the afternoon, so got bum ache and Clayre was measuring therefore her knees got the brunt of this activity.

Simon did pop over and made some such noise on the lines of "haven't you finished it yet?" We still don't know if he was joking or not!. I'll tell you something for nowt, it was bloomin' hard brain work and we were both wrecked at the end of the day.

Did we finish the wall? Of the 7 layers we did 3 and a half, and the 2 most important things we learnt that day was that we work well together....and we don't want to be drawing any more brick walls!!!!

It was a very beautiful and detailed drawing in our eyes.......
Ice-cream couldn't have been more welcome, and we were serenaded by a great violinist.

Dig Day Sunday 15th August 2010

After a week in the sun (Norfolk) whilst Coventry basked in rain, and then returning to rain I fully expected to be swimming in the Knot Garden. I packed waterproofs for the inevitable soaking...which never came. It has to have been one of the hottest Sundays we've had!!!

It's also one of the most multi-cultural days we've had with Kendra and Michelle from America and Annie from France.

Started in the sieving tent this morning. Quite quiet so after a barrow or 2, I took sieved stuff to dump on the mountain. Took a spade as well because the path has been obliterated by people dumping barrows half way up. Got path clear and then started on clearing the space at the top so there's a turning bit before the final path to the top. I'm certainly going to feel the extra spade work in a couple of days!! Fortunately I was taken pity on by Adrian, who came and finished off. Thanks Ade.

So, what next? Will gave me a choice...digging or drawing. Not much choice really...digging! Later, I did feel a little guilty though so I offered to draw in the afternoon, but there's nothing pressing at the moment. I WILL DRAW NEXT WEEK FOR HIM IF ASKED. You are all my witnesses to that!

So I ended up in the Knot Garden, in a trench by the walkway and gate. I can't believe how much has changed in 2 weeks. The big pit has been excavated and it looks even bigger. It is massive. David and Clayre were taking it in turns to excavate the sandy layer. Dave was also trying to have a sandcastle competition!





My little trench was sandy and gravely. My task was to trowel back the dry soil and try to identify the different features in it. There was a circular dark feature with orange patches, a square biscuit colour feature and something else in the bottom RH of trench. But all that would have to wait until after lunch.


It's Annie's last day and she treated us to trifle and cheesecake with mulberries from the garden. She's back off to France now until next year's season. See you then Annie.

After lunch I was back in my hole. Having cleared back the main trench, it has defined the circular feature which appears to extend towards the next pit. Will asked me to start clearing back the top of the un-excavated area to see if this feature will show in the upper layers.

It was so hot that I had to keep having shade breaks....

...and then got somewhat side-tracked by the arrival of scones and biscuits, but after Anny's goodies at lunch I just couldn't do them justice. Still got my ice-cream to look forward to! I can just see what Will's thinking in this picture "Not another break! We'll never get anything finished at this rate. It's not a holiday camp" and other such thoughts. Either that or he's just looked at my last drawing and is clasping his head in despair as a result!