Dig Day Sunday 13th June 2010

What a beautiful day again. However, Heather put the mockers on the weather by repeating the fact that it never rained on a Sunday morning. It didn't take too long to prove her wrong, although it was just spots of rain..........in the morning!

Will gave us the normal run-down on what had happened during the week. The tops of the brick walls had been removed from trench A to reveal..... more brick walls of the same material from the 18 Century. No Will Shakespeare's foundations here! A pipe bowl looked as though it had been purposely placed on top of one of the walls by one archaeologist, to be found by another over 100 years later. The final toppings of the last brick encasement had not been removed. This will be done with an audience of cameras on Tuesday. Let's hope that James Halliwell-Phillipps left something tantalising for us!



In the Knot Garden we can see that it's all down to one level. A lot of features have been exposed and Will has started to record them...



It was up to us to mattock back the final few inches. Jon and Will manned their mattocks and off they went. Will forged ahead in front, his experience showing....



We all got into a rhythm pretty quickly, with Jon, Will and Colin mattocking, Colin and myself filling the buckets and then passing them to Clayre to fill the barrows. It didn't take too long before we were doing the infamous spoil heap run. Fortunately this week, the spoil heap has moved and it was at ground level.

Stopping for a few minutes, I offered to get David some water for the pot-washing. Wish I hadn't bothered actually, as 2 minutes after filling the bowls, one of them, and me, ended up on the floor! Twisted my ankle didn't I! David was very lucky that he didn't end up with the bowl of water in his face but I managed to throw it to one side as I went down! Foot didn't hurt much, just a twinge so I thought nothing of it. And it was nearly lunch time.

Some twinge. Just hope I'm OK for next Sunday!

After lunch we were back to the drawing board, literally. With pencil and board in one hand and Clayre reading out the measurements, we completed the section drawing of trench B. And then it rained! Not as much as last week though. Cream scones and biscuits were eaten in the house again and Clayre and myself anticipated a visit to the ice-cream barge. Can you believe it, but as we approached said barge they pulled the shutters down....and it wasn't even raining! Oh well there's always next week........