Stringing it out.

DDCAG doing geophysics at Tumbledown Farm, Weymouth.

 

Facebook

 Hi, keep in touch with our projects through our Facebook page (put in Dorset Diggers and it will come up). During this difficult time we are still doing small projects (evaluations; test pitting; geophysics) ready for the time when we can return to excavations. 

Grave Concerns

These six famous sites give us a unique insight into the deep past and its peoples.

The Amesbury Archer gave us the earliest example of gold use; the Wetwang Slack chariot burial helped to show how these vehicles were made and used; The Spitalfield Roman has unique glass wares; The Prittlewell tomb is on the cusp of pagan and Christian burial rituals; The Sutton Hoo ship burial is the richest ever found in England; The Mary Rose shipwreck opened a window on Tudor life at sea for the ordinary sailor.

Facing the Past

Face the Past

DISCOVER THE STORIES OF PAST LIVES, WONDERFUL TREASURES

& ANCIENT CULTURES FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

MODERN SCIENCE ALLOWS US TO COME FACE TO FACE WITH OUR ANCESTORS

& LOOK THEM IN THE EYE.

See below for contact details and fee. Starting 12th & 14th May @ 2pm for half hour sessions and then for the next two weeks.  

Archaeology Courses

Archaeology courses can now be accessed online through Zoom. Contact Chris: tripp.chris60@gmail.com or on Twitter: @ChrisTr19220801 for details.  

Robert Boyle

Here is a short biography of the owner of Stalbridge House in the 17th century.  

Robert Boyle FRS was born on 25^th January 1627 and died on 31^st December 1691. He  was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist and inventor.

Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method.

He is best known for Boyle's law, describing the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist, is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry. He was a devout and pious Anglican and is noted for his writings in theology.

Boyle was born at Lismore Castle, in County Waterford, Ireland, the seventh son and fourteenth child of The 1st Earl of Cork ('the Great Earl of Cork') and Catherine Fenton. Lord Cork, then known simply as Richard Boyle, had arrived in Dublin from England in 1588 during the Tudor plantations of Ireland and obtained an appointment as a deputy escheator. He had amassed enormous wealth and landholdings by the time Robert was born and had been created Earl of Cork in October 1620. Catherine Fenton, Countess of Cork, was the daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, the former Secretary of State for Ireland, who was born in Dublin in 1539 and Alice Weston, the daughter of Robert Weston, who was born in Lismore in 1541.

As a child, Boyle was fostered to a local family, as were his elder brothers. Boyle received private tutoring in Latin, Greek, and French and when he was eight years old, following the death of his mother, he was sent to Eton College in England. His father's friend, Sir Henry Wotton, was then the provost of the college. After spending over three years at Eton, Robert travelled abroad with a French tutor. They visited Italy in 1641 and remained in Florence during the winter of that year studying the "paradoxes of the great star-gazer" Galileo Galilei, who was elderly but still living in 1641.

Robert returned to England from continental Europe in mid-1644 with a keen interest in scientific research. His father, Lord Cork, had died the previous year and had left him the manor of Stalbridge in Dorset as well as substantial estates in County Limerick in Ireland. Robert then made his residence at Stalbridge House, between 1644 and 1652, and conducted many experiments there. From that time, Robert devoted his life to scientific research and soon took a prominent place in the band of enquirers, known as the "Invisible College", who devoted themselves to the cultivation of the "new philosophy". They met frequently in London, often at Gresham College, and some of the members also had meetings at Oxford.

Having made several visits to his Irish estates beginning in 1647, Robert moved to Ireland in 1652 but became frustrated at his inability to make progress in his chemical work. In 1654, Boyle left Ireland for Oxford to pursue his work more successfully. An inscription can be found on the wall of University College, Oxford, the High Street at Oxford (now the location of the Shelley Memorial), marking the spot where Cross Hall stood until the early 19th century. It was here that Boyle rented rooms from the wealthy apothecary who owned the Hall.

Reading in 1657 of Otto von Guericke's air pump, he set himself, with the assistance of Robert Hooke, to devise improvements in its construction, and with the result, the "machina Boyleana" or "Pneumatical Engine", finished in 1659, he began a series of experiments on the properties of air. An account of Boyle's work with the air pump was published in 1660 under the title New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects.

Among the critics of the views put forward in this book was a Jesuit, Francis Line (1595–1675) and it was while answering his objections that Boyle made his first mention of the law that the volume of a gas varies inversely to the pressure of the gas, which among English-speaking people is usually called Boyle's Law after his name. The person who originally formulated the hypothesis was Henry Power in 1661. Boyle in 1662 included a reference to a paper written by Power, but mistakenly attributed it to Richard Towneley. In continental Europe the hypothesis is sometimes attributed to Edme Mariotte, although he did not publish it until 1676 and was likely aware of Boyle's work at the time.

In 1663 the Invisible College became The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and the charter of incorporation granted by Charles II of England named Boyle a member of the council. In 1680 he was elected president of the society, but declined the honour from a scruple about oaths.

He made a "wish list" of 24 possible inventions which included:

Ø  "the prolongation of life"

Ø  the "art of flying"

Ø  "perpetual light"

Ø  "making armour light and extremely hard"

Ø  "a ship to sail with all winds, and a ship not to be sunk"

Ø  "practicable and certain way of finding longitudes"

Ø  "potent drugs to alter or exalt imagination, waking, memory and other functions and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams, etc."

They are extraordinary because all but a few of the 24 have come true.

In 1668 he left Oxford for London where he resided at the house of his elder sister Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, in Pall Mall. He experimented in the laboratory she had in her home and attended her salon of intellectuals interested in the sciences. The siblings maintained "a lifelong intellectual partnership, where brother and sister shared medical remedies, promoted each other’s scientific ideas, and edited each other’s manuscripts." His contemporaries widely acknowledged Katherine's influence on his work, but later historiographers dropped discussion of her accomplishments and relationship to her brother from their histories.

In 1669 his health, never very strong, began to fail seriously and he gradually withdrew from his public engagements, ceasing his communications to the Royal Society. In the leisure thus gained he wished to "recruit his spirits, range his papers", and prepare some important chemical investigations which he proposed to leave "as a kind of Hermetic legacy to the studious disciples of that art", but of which he did not make known the nature. His health became still worse in 1691, and he died on 31 December that year, just a week after the death of his sister, Katherine, in whose home he had lived and with whom he had shared scientific pursuits for more than twenty years. Boyle died from paralysis. He was buried in the churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields, his funeral sermon being preached by his friend, Bishop Gilbert Burnet. In his will, Boyle endowed a series of lectures that came to be known as the Boyle Lecture.

'A Digger's Life: a load of rubbish'

The monthly meeting of the group saw Chris Tripp talk about how he got into archaeology and some of the sites he has dug over the last 30 years. From Bronze Age trackways, Roman warehouses and Iron Age settlements to Anglo-Saxon graves and Medieval cess pits. David Northam also talked through the possible project at Tumbledown Farm.

Possible new site.

A new site has been looked at by members of the group at Weymouth. This area has been settled due to the river and access to the sea at this point. Good for trading and setting up mills. Roman and medieval features have been found around here. 

Our Chairman David Northam showing us the site. 

One area to investigate.

A second area to look at.

Some buildings that will be useful for storage and post excavation work.

Plans are afoot to do some geophysics surveying and the results will be published here soon.   

Saw point

On his orders, Stalbridge House was taken down by the Earl of Uxbridge. This is the actual saw used to amputate the Earl of Uxbridge’s leg at the battle of Waterloo. Plus the bloody gloves used by his surgeon. The earl sounds like a cool customer, he merely remarked that the saw was ‘somewhat blunt’!

2020 AGM

At the AGM we went through the work we did last year at Stalbridge and the plan for this years work. 

Projects for the future are: Cerne Abbas, Tumbledown Farm, Hinton St Mary mosaic return from the British Museum and Weycroft Hall.