School of Rock

Had a visit from a school group today. The F word was used (Fossil), so had to disabuse them.

 They had a look at some of our finds.

Meanwhile, we have continued to reduce the external layers to find more courses of stone.

We have also been reducing the interior layers and are hoping for that cellar to appear.

Cellar?

After a good clean the stone walls were coming up very clear and after some recording we started to reduce the dump material up against the them.

Inside the walls most of the later dumped material is now off and the original dump from the demolition is now coming up. This will be recorded and then reduced. Hopefully this may show up the bedding trenches for the walls and drain. When they are recorded we can start to reduce what we hope will be the fill of the basement, which should be in this corner of the building. Look at the painting in earlier posts and the small window can be seen at this point, letting light in to the underground cellar.   

We are also reducing the outside material to expose the courses of this wall to the east of the drain.

Meanwhile the material against the western wall is also being reduced. 

We have a school coming on Wednesday to see what we have been finding.

Stone me!

The third day on site was taken up with recording, including drawing plans and sections, taking levels, paperwork and photography. 

Hugh drawing a section of the drain.

John drawing a plan of one of the walls. 

Nice office on a sunny day.

Scrafitto my back...

The nice piece of pottery top right is considered to be early 17th century by one of the archaeologists working for the National Trust, so that would be correct for the manor house. 

Draining work

After cleaning the site last week we explored the drain and the wall next to it to find their extent. 

We found the base of the drain and followed that to see how much survived.

Quite a few finds came up (a lot more than this) and will need processing, so more pix later. 

Yet another nice find.

Colin continues to pick up metal finds that have been missed by the stripping process. 

Trench G1 stripping

Expectations were high when we started stripping the northern end of Trench G1 today and at first we were not disappointed.

In situ stone started to come up and it looked like we were in the right place and finding the foundations of the manor house, still in good condition.

We even found some nice stone work that could lead to a possible basement, or perhaps an internal wall. However, it is probably a drain, all-be-it a very well made one.

  Then - nothing. Stripping to the south uncovered rubble. Taking off the rubble - nothing. No house. No foundations.

However, we did find this nice decorated stone. We will now clean and record what we have and then open another trench, hoping to find that the whole of the manor house has not been totally destroyed and that at least a part of it remains.   

Doing the donkey work

We arrived on site after a meeting with Stalbridge History members to set out the first trench in our work on the manor house. New member Doris the Donkey was there to say Nay or Bray.

Our first trench is numbered 1G, the first of many, we hope. 

The trenches will be sited between the bank on the left and the cows on the right.

The trench is situated on the top right corner just to the right of the blue line (trough), so we hope to find evidence of the structure there. 

Stripping will be done on 2nd June.