Jolly fine boating weather...

 

Although the weather has been very wet and the underlying material is clay, we have found that there is a linear feature cutting the pink clay material and may be a surviving part of the surrounding ditches that were dug to make the house platforms to keep them above the wetter ground. 

However, when we turned up on site last Wednesday the trench had turned into a swimming pool! The forecast is for more wet weather for the next several days, so we may have to wait until the following week to return to work. 

First Features

At last! We have started excavating the non-scheduled DMV. However, the geology is clay, the archaeologists Nemesis. When dry it turns to concrete and when wet it can turn the trench into something from WW1. However, we can't choose to just work on nice soft stratigraphy, so on we go. A possible linear feature turned out to be a dud, but the orange clay and dark features are looking interesting. Once these features are excavated, interpreted and recorded we will expand the trench to 10m x 10m. Keep looking in for more news on this rare opportunity to research a DMV.  

 

DMV update

 

At the DMV site today we opened up a 2m x 5m trench and pottery started to come up very quickly, along with some features. 

So we then expanded the trench to 5m x 5m.

We then cleaned the base of the trench to highlight the features, these being a possible linear feature, two burnt clay areas and a dark semi-circular patch with concentrated charcoal inclusions. 

Considering that this is primarily supposed to be a medieval site these pottery examples look very early, but we will let an expert have a look and finalise the dates for all the fragments we found.   

There are now features to be dug and we will be back on site soon. 

 

Stone me!

 

We were looking for a possible Roman road on the high ground above the village, part of helping the Charmouth History Society in their researches. This is part of a project that will include small excavations in the village next year. However, as with much of archaeological research, nothing was found other than made up ground. Even so, local members were happy with their hours digging and being part of the project and both Groups are now going to plan The Big Garden Dig over the winter. This partnership will work to add more information to the story of this ancient settlement on the coast of Dorset.     

If at first you don't succeed...

After the disappointment of the first field at our DMV site on the Purbecks revealing that no archaeology existed there, we have now moved on to the next field and undertaken some more geophysics. This has proven to be more fruitful and some features have been identified.

A darker T-shaped signal may indicate the two house platforms that are located outside the scheduled area of the DMV and next week we are now going to excavate a trial trench to locate these features. We shall report our finding here. Fingers crossed.   

 

Pole position on the Grid

 

The Deserted Medieval Village (DMV) site on the Purbecks has had it's grid set out. The surviving house platforms are a scheduled monument, but we are looking at the area nearby to see if any sign of structures can be had in non-scheduled parts of the field.   

One interesting sign of activity are blocks of worked stone that are not natural to the area. Why are they here? Hopefully they are the remains of a building that once stood on the site, perhaps a chapel, as the common dwellings would have been of wood. 

We are planning to start work on the site a.s.a.p., so stay tuned.   

There we was, digging this 'ol...

Sherborne Bridewell

Three teams worked on the Sherborne Bridewell over three weekends looking for any structures that may have been connected to this early workhouse. Originally, the area was dominated by the Sherborne Monastery and the building we were investigating may have been a vicarage or priest's house for the church of St Andrew (long gone). It was turned into a 'Bridewell' which held various vagrants and people that would have been helped before the closing down of the the many religious establishments in the 16th century. The original was built in the parish of St Brides in London. It became a private house in 1794.

We undertook a geophysical survey in the gardens of the buildings (two dwellings) and a small survey in the garden fronting the buildings. Being a small area the results were not that clear. But we decided that two test trenches may bring up something of interest.

The first trench helped us to understand that the area was made up of 600mm of made-up ground and homogenous from top to bottom. The second trench in the next garden was also made-up ground and also 600mm deep. Plenty of small finds of various materials were turning up, but the only artefact of any age was a nice 17th century pipe bowel. The rest were either 19th or 20th century. The material in the second trench did prove to be sitting on a layer with plaster inclusions, but we could not excavate 600mm of dirt in such a small garden; the spoil heap would have been quite large and we did not want to do damage to the rest of the garden. 

As always with archaeology, you never know what is under the grass until you dig it!