Two for the price of one!

Chris Tripp and Chris Chaney looked at the excavation and interpretation of Stalbridge House today, illustrating the need for developing a partnership between off site and on the ground research to answer some tricky questions about the scale of the house and what elevations are shown on the two drawings that exists from the 18th century. 

   

Courtyard or caught out?

The cobbled surface is within the known footprint of the house.

A major question has been did Stalbridge House have a courtyard? The cobbled floor seemed to suggest that it did and research has unearthed a mention of a courtyard. So the two together makes a convincing case that the house was an open square. Of course, this 'courtyard' in the record could be anywhere, so will have to be confirmed by archaeological excavation. Hopefully next year we will confirm or refute this interpretation on the ground, but it is looking good and would make a major contribution to our knowledge.

Stalbridge Open Day

The Open Day went very well with over 40 people attending. Two talks at the hub on the history and archaeology of Stalbridge House. 

Post talk chat

Special finds table

Doris the Donkey and visitors to the site

On site before the backfill

Med mud?

A small 2m test pit was dug at Weycroft Hall, Axeminster, Devon on Friday. No structures, but some interesting finds.

The grandest archaeological site hut in the UK?

Clay-silt with angular stones and chert.

A possible arrowhead, a blade fragment and a possible prehistoric pot sherd.

Lay down your trowels

The 2019 season has now finished as regards excavation and we have had a fruitful and hard working time. With the exact location of the house now established, the finding of the well, nice small finds and the first floor surface we have had a good year.

After all that we deserve a nice sandwich and cup of tea!

The YB3 floor trench, with the earth bank trench behind and well trench to the right, just.

In YB3 we have had new structures, which we hope to find out more about next year.

We wuz robbed!

The floor trench is now being worked on to try and find out what is cutting what. It seems that the modern intrusion does not touch the robbed out wall trench, seen here in the baulk section (red). More fill may need to come out of this latter feature. We are still awaiting the machine to come free so as to extend this trench to the east.

'So, plastic isn't from the 17th century then?'

As Sir Mortimer Wheeler may have said "archaeology is like a box of chocolates; you never know what yer goin' to get".

It was a great disappointment that the void suggested by the geophysics turned out to be modern and had cut through the cobbled floor. The black cross on the geophysics are robbed out walls. To make more sense of this we will try to get the machine in and strip back the trench where the spoil is in this picture. Hopefully we will then have more floor and perhaps one other.

Some positives are the painted wall plaster and moldings and the fine thimble, which is being looked at by an expert to date it more closely.   

The 'cellar' is, in fact, a modern intrusion, with plastic at the base!