A Hole New Area

This week we have opened up Area C which is the porch of the manor house. The digger had already started before 8am! With a toothed bucket!! That could have been a disaster, but once cleaned up all was well. No step structure has been seen so far, but the drain has turned up again, as expected. How this has not been the cause of heavy machines sliding into it we don't know, as it is only a few cm under the top soil. 

  

G1 has raised it head again too. John S. found a new wall where we thought there was only rubble. If we get the chance we could bring in the machine again and have a look under more of this dump. This wall is slightly to the south of our main wall and drain and could be either an older structure or the main wall is a repair or extension to this NE corner of the house.    

We have opened a smaller trench in Area C, which should have been 5m x 5m, but due to the digger doings his own thing it is 8m x 3m. Hopefully we will find the base of the porch steps under this rubbly stuff. 

We are to have an Open Day on the 15th of September in Stalbridge for villagers, members and anyone else in the area. We will have a talk, look at finds and then have a visit to site.

Bones, Buckles & Balls

This bone exhibits a nice example of butchery marks.

This 17th c. pot sherd is very nicely decorated.

A very nice decorated button.

Two pistol shot.

Was this buckle used to fasten Boyle's shoe?

Come fly with me...

 A good shot of the site from on high. The darker green strip next to the walled garden may mean that this stretch of wall has been completely robbed out, thus the grass has grown better here than elsewhere, even during a heatwave. The north west corner trench will prove that, or otherwise. 

Another drawing of our house, as found by John S. Throws up a lot of questions rather than answers, but the drawing has to be taken with a pinch of salt, just like the painting.

Wash day

Processing the finds from G1 today.

The building materials, bone and pottery need washing, but not the metal or glass!

All washed and put out to dry in the heatwave.

Well done Judith and Sheila.

Goodbye G1

Today was the last day in G1. All the walls have been recorded and finds bagged up. 

Pix of finds will be posted as soon as we have processed them.

Thanks to all who worked on G1 in a very hot summer. We now move on to the entrance porch area in August. 

Dig Day VIII - droning on and on...

We were hosting today a very nice guy who has volunteered to take some pix of our site from the air! He is a professional drone photographer in the commercial sector. Of course we had the required paperwork permissions from the tenant. Here the drone takes to the air.

However, the swifts think it is a weird type of buzzard, so try to beat it up. 

The drone comes into base - yes, that small dot in the top right hand corner. 

Meanwhile, we did some recording of the drain foundation stones and walls. 

It is possible that we will finish trench G1 in the following two sessions and after a short break (Chris is off to see his grandsons in London) a new trench will be opened. The drone pix will be posted as soon as they are processed. 

Dig Day VII

This weekend we had the digging machine to take off some of the demolition material and to extend the trench a little to find the corner of the building. It looks like the corner has been taken out, but the drain keeps going. The interior has failed to produce a basement and the walls sit on natural, with no bedding trench found or floors. It looks like all the stratigraphy has been dumped up to the walls and covered the drain. It is just a matter of uncovering the wall material and drain in this corner and recording. We have a drone coming on Wednesday to give us some aerial shots!     

Where has that wall gone? No corner, which is generally some of the best stone, so no surprise they took it.