New member - Doug

This is our new member, Doug. He will be helping us to educate older children and young adults in the complexities and reasons for excavating grave sites as well as the differing rituals that have taken place at different periods of our island story.  

Symondsbury Project

Went with Alison and Vaughan to see Sir Philip Colfox at the Symondsbury estate this morning. We had a hair-raising ride in his Landrover around the estate looking at possible places where we can do fieldwalking, watching briefs (non-commercial works on the estate) and geophysics with the possibility of excavation if we find anything of interest. One of the fields has a 'lost' mediaeval village located on it. Sir Philip is sending us an estate map and we can look into possible location for various fields to work on. If we can do some long-term work on the estate we would be able to tie-in projects with the local people, schools and visitors, as we have done elsewhere, but on a larger scale. This is an opportunity to get involved in: fieldwalking, research (history of the estate), geophiz, watching briefs and excavation. This will be BIG! We will have more information soon after the committee meeting occurs. Keep looking in.

Eton visit

Chris, Colin, Caroline and Hugh went to Eton College to find documentation on Yenston priory, known as Endston in the 15th century. No location was found in the documents, but lots of legal references that established a good timeline. So, it's back to the archaeology.  

Anyone understand Latin?

Eton Mess?

DDCAG members and local Yenston researchers are visiting Eton College on the 21st to look for clues as to the location of the priory in their archive, as they bought the land after the Reformation. If we can find evidence of the rough location we can use our geophiz survey better and save a lot of time and money when we open our next trench. Report to follow, so keep looking in.

[update: we are now looking to go later after the Waterloo works have been completed]

Not so lucky Three Leaf Clover

Some unstrat. finds included this metal object, too light to be lead.

Also this very nice, high quality, thumb print decorated pottery rim with glaze on the inside. 

This must be medieval. [20/02/2018 - no, it is 18th c., which is why we have pot experts!] 

Field of broken dreams.

Trench 1, Field 1 has now been dug and recorded and also back filled. Initial interpretation is that the features are prehistoric, but the finds will be looked at soon. The priory remains lost, but we are carrying on.

A small Trench 2 was dug to see what might come up in another corner of Field 1, but only hit bedrock, so this field is now being abandoned and all efforts are to be concentrated in Field 2. 

Geophysics is now being carried out in Field 2 and the results will be published soon. Fingers crossed that the priory will be found!

Trench 1

Day 1 found us digging the features brought up by the machine stripping last weekend. None of the features had any depth to them and very little in the way of finds. So we will record them and then do some more geophiz in the adjoining fields hoping to find the priory and some more features. This field has been impacted by modern intrusions and dumping of materials, but we had to check the first geophiz results (which did look promising) and record any features, which we are doing. Thanks to all who came this week and David will be on hand this coming Saturday to help people record what we have dug.