With a couple of the diggers absent due to illness on the Monday and extremely wet weather on the Tuesday, digging got off to a slow start on the second week.  Five of us braved the rain on Tuesday and Wednesday but we were kept entertained by the Dig dogs.  We were even treated to a tin of shortbread biscuits by Roger who came up to help and took pity on us poor wet souls!

Despite the rain Neil spent the day recording the trench while a small group of us beavered away trowelling the last of the subsoil down to the natural.  Neil then dug down further to determine the context of the enclosure wall.  Meanwhile the trench was extended at the opposite end where the iron slag had been found.  No further finds were made.

The weather was dry at the beginning of week 3 and the sun came out for a short time!  Two of us laid out a test trench over the ditch of a second circular feature and were beginning to dig when Neil ran over to bring us news from the landowner.  Apparently the area had been used in the recent past to train horses and the circular indent had been produced by horses’ hooves!  Our archaeology confirmed that the ‘ditch’ was indeed just a depression in the topsoil.

Satisfied that we had completed our investigations the group decided to begin the backfilling progress.  This involved shovelling and barrowing two large piles of soil back into the trench and flattening it down ready for returfing.  I’m sure we must have looked a sight tramping up and down the trench as though performing some kind of Irish jig!

With 9 of us up on site, backfilling and returfing was finished off on Tuesday.

A big thank you to Neil for his ever-present enthusiasm, to Louise who has been cleaning the finds and who came up to help with the backfilling and to all the dedicated diggers who made our first archaeological dig such a success.

Watch this space for further news about the 2024 Dig and What’s New for 2025.