End of Season #1 at Stalbridge

This years digging has been a great success, with many new diggers and many questions answered as to the structural features of Stalbridge House, especially the discovery of the Great Drain. Lets hope that the 'Great Seller' will be found next season.

We have had some lovely finds (see below) and visits from local schools, the Open Day and plans for more talks open to all villagers and people in the area.

As for other projects in West Dorset, we have started geophiz surveys at Symondsbury and look forward to doing the same at the Fleet site soon. Keep looking in for those results. 

More special finds

Nice wooden button

Lovely fragment of glass, probably a goblet and 17th c. 

Fragment of architrave as seen on the painting between the floor levels.

Profile of the architrave.

Special find

Nice find came up this week on the Stalbridge site. Some letters can be discerned. 

Open Day pix

Members visit the site.

Chris explains the wall sequence that proves the refurbishment of the house.

Members see the corner of the house in trench G1 

The pony takes an interest too.

Chris going through the seasons digging and some of the finds.

Open Day

The Open Day for members of DDCAG & SHS went very well, with c. 30 people coming to the talks and visiting the site. A general open day for non-members and Stalbridge villagers will be organized later. We may have pix to show later too.

Jamb yesterday

Some new features came up this week. More walls, heading SE led to a possible door jamb with a nice in situ floor surface. Our digger John suggests that this is internal and 90 degrees to the outside entrance. Interesting. That is the thing with archaeology - new diggers can come up with ideas just like any old lag and help to make sense of complicated sites.   

Possible wall outside the drain

The 'door jamb'

Getting back to base-ics

As we carried on with Trench C3 yesterday we extended the trench slightly to the north east to follow some nice plastered wall, to see how far it stretched.

We came across what looked like a base, which was also plastered. The corners were reinforced with substantial corner stones and stone infill.   

As can be seen, the plaster follows the base and wall very neatly. This must have been exposed and probably painted. 

As this is the area of the NW facing entrance it could have functioned as a base for the stone columns, the bases for these being found earlier and which are mentioned in the literature itemizing the demolition materials.   

The trench is now looking good for the Open Day. Meanwhile we will be looking to reduce more of the material inside the drain limits. It does look to be that they laid a substantial amount of stone as a base for the house walls, for we have dug down to this material in the space at the bottom of the picture. A small test pit inside the drain area indicates that it too has a stone level under a sandy level and a clay level. The drain follows the wall, as in Trench G1 and the gap between the two is filled with mortar. The parch mark we thought was the porch remains is in fact the shape of the drain in this area. Why they built it in a rectangle may be because they followed the shape of the porch above.  

It's Saturday and getting plastered.

On Saturday we continued to reduce dump layersand we lifted a drain stone cover and measured the length of the drains. We discussed the drains and reckon that they are primarily there for roof drainage and thus follow the walls of the house (and the NW porch) with internal drainpipes. Their construction is significant – were they built at the same time the foundations were laid? It seems the foundations don’t sit in a trench but are laid on a base. We then tidied up some of the trench walls.

Plastered walls

The angles indicate the shape

Colin and John found the remains of a plastered wall, on the outside face of wall (013) but potentially above the steps. We moved the spoil heap and excavated in a North Easterly direction to attempt to find the NE termination of the porch – this revealed more plastered wall and a possible chalk floor (or mortar base for the steps) within the porch. We found some finely carved stone, as if to provide a recess for a circular column, and a finely worked section of architrave, potentially from the pediment/lintel/portico (see old engraving of house).

Feeling drained...

Nice piece of roof tile came up today. Green glazed.

We now have a new drain. The original one ran E-W, then N-S and now into another drain heading E-W continuing under the baulk. This is a massive structure for this mansion house and must have taken a large work force and a long time to build. A big addition to the history of Stalbridge House. 

Slab Saturday

Two worked stones that could be the top corners of a doorway. 

The drain turns at a right angle and heads south. Capping stones are still in situ.

This Saturday the drain was confirmed as turning to the south and thus not on the same alignment as in G1. Unless it kinks yet again at some point further east. Finds included a grooved glass bottle neck and carved plaster moulding decorated with spirals.  

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.