Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Julian, Geoff, Doug, Chloe, Debbie S, Paula, Michael, Millie, Merrill, Gordon, Nick, Jill and Keith 

In Trench 15 Paula, Debbie, Millie and Michael continued excavating the two slots across the surface that were started the previous week, and by the end of the day were starting to see clear delineations in the surfaces revealed. These surfaces were allocated context numbers, recorded on context sheets, planned and photographed. There is still quite a bit of work still to be done to identify and correlate the features seen in this trench, but one again considerable progress was made…

Building on the back of the “heavy lifting” in Trench 16 the previous week, Merrill, Gordon and Geoff set about cleaning the surfaces revealed, focusing on the flint walls of the eastern side of the corn drier/malting shed. Finds discovered within the remaining parts of the surface above these features were carefully collected should they be needed for terminus ante quem dating evidence. Jill spent the day carefully recording the section across the collapsed flue and updating the records of these contexts.

Just at the day’s excavation was drawing to a close Julian discovered a silver denarius serratus close to the corn drier/malting shed in Trench 16. This coin appears to date from around 82BC when it was minted by or in honour of the Praetor Antonius Balbus in Rome. The obverse shows the head of Jupiter (and the “SC” mint mark), and the reverse shows the goddess Victory driving a quadriga while holding a palm leaf. The coin is well worn, suggesting a long “use life” prior to being deposited, but whether we will be able to determine how this Late Roman Republican coin came to be deposited in Wickham remains to be seen. However, this is the earliest find discovered on this site to date, and for this area of West Berkshire is an unusual artefact to be discovered in an archaeological context.

In both Trench 15 and 16 much of the work today was spent recording, planning, sectioning and photographing the newly revealed features – and also completing/correcting/augmenting the records previously made to ensure the data collected is as complete and correct as possible. This consolidation of trench records will continue to be a key focus for both trenches for the next couple of days.

Meanwhile in Trench 17 Doug, Chloe, Nick and Julian continued to excavated the roadside midden deposit revealing bone, pottery and industrial waste. This evidence will be rich source of data to characterise the lives of the inhabitants of this settlement, as well as those travelling along Ermin Street, during the Roman period.

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Julian, Susanne, Celia, Eric, Nigel B, Geoff, Ben A, Carrollanne, Doug, Peter Ca and Peter Cl and Keith 

In Trench 15 Ben A, Carrollanne and Peter Cl continued with the east-west section  across the north end of the trench to identify the extent of the lane (top), the lane’s ditch (mid) and the occupation area (bottom) which can be seen in Figure 1. Initial interpretations suggest that the lane ditch close to its intersection with Ermin Street is also filled with the same deposits of building rubble, which in a nearby section of ditch was dated to the late 4^th Century AD. Now that the area of likely domestic occupation within Building #3 has been identified, excavation in the coming week will focus on revealing the remains of this building, its likely period of use, its function and how it interacted with the nearby lane/road. 

In Trench 16 the muscle-power of Julian, Eric, Nigel B, Peter Ca and Geoff was focused on removing a 3m x 1m section of overburden to reveal the full extent of the wall of the corn drier/malting shed. Having done most of the “heavy lifting” by lunchtime, the team spent the afternoon cleaning the cobbled surface and a further section of flint wall. In the rest of Trench 16, Susanne and Keith brought the plans and context sheets up to date with the help of the GPS device, whilst Celia completed a section drawing of the fill of the furnace pit.

Meanwhile in Trench 17 Doug and Julian continued to investigate the contents of the midden deposit, making some further exciting discoveries. The 1cm diameter bone gaming counter was a particularly nice find, as was the fragment of another bone hairpin. Whilst these finds may be difficult to date beyond the Roman period, they both give insights into the activities and identities of the Romano-British population living in/passing through this roadside settlement 

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Julian, Martin, John H, Tim L, Chloe, Lindsey, Ben, Matthew, Anna, Kai, Susanne, Claire, David, Rod and Keith 

In Trench 15, Martin and team continued to excavate in a number of areas to the north of the Roman road to reveal the expected horizon of Roman occupation in/around Building #3 identified in 2025. Lots of Roman pottery and a 4^th Century AD Roman numus coin were discovered, but as yet we are only getting hints of the archaeological horizon we encountered in the previous season. This Trench promises to be really exciting, so work will continue tomorrow…

In Trench 16, Ben and Matthew got the day off to an exciting start by discovering the return of the robbed out construction trench of the corn-drier (or possible malting house) to the southeast of the flint wall as shown in Figure 2. This discovery suggests that the corn drier is of a “U-shaped” configuration, and work will continue tomorrow to reveal the full outline of this structure so it, and the areas surrounding it, can be analysed in more detail for dating the period when it was in use and who might have been using it…

Elsewhere in Trench 16, Lindsey and Susanne continued with the recording of the furnace pit and flue, whilst Tim L excavated the beam slot at the north end of the trench. With the number of discoveries made in this trench in the past few days there is still plenty of work to be done, but good use was made of the GPS device to accurately position features within the trench on plans being recorded.

Meanwhile in Trench 17, Julian and Chloe spent the morning finalising the records of this trench to ensure all the features revealed had been included. Then they continued to half section the trench to reveal more of the “natural” surface uncovered earlier in the week. This resulted in a really interesting piece of Nene Valley colour coated ware pottery being found by Chloe together with fragments of Samian pottery. The Nene Valley pottery sherds featured relief decoration of a deer or horse suggesting that this was from a “hunt cup” beaker that were being produced in the 2^nd and 3^rd Centuries AD, and hopefully can be more accurately dated by our pottery specialist. This high status tableware is known to have been popular with individuals within the military as well as the rural elite, so may give us further clues to the identities of the occupants of this area of Roman Wickham during the Early Roman period!

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Julian, Geoff, Martin, Jill, John H, Tim L, Chloe, Debbie S, Celia, Roger, Thalia, Lindsey, Malcolm and Keith 

Over the weekend our ever growing spoil heap was kindly reprofiled once again by Mark (the groundsman at Wickham House) with his tractor, which made a huge difference to the team members doing today’s “heavy lifting”. Thanks Mark!

In Trench 15 work continued in the north of the trench to find the archaeological horizon where it is hoped that evidence of the southwest corner of Building #3 is expected to be revealed. The other question to be addressed is the extent of the ditch along the lane and whether it intersects the road ditch. 

In trench 16 the day started with John, Chloe and John H removing part of the berm at the south of the trench which revealed more of the cobbled surface already seen in the main part of this trench. Once this new surface has been planned and recorded, work will continue to see if the return of the flue heading to the southeast continues beneath the cobbled surface – and if so to assess the layout of the corn-drier flue which will help to characterise this part of the site and its likely date of use. In the south of the trench Lindsey continued to work on the furnace pit which she started to half section SW-NE to remove flints/chalk that had slumped into the pit so the cut profile can be seen in full, and further samples gathered for environmental analysis. Martin, Keith and Tim spent the day accurately planning the outline of Trench 15 and Trench 16 with the GPS device and updating the plans of both these trenches to bring them into alignment with the single context plans recorded to date.

Meanwhile in Trench 17, Julian and Roger set about opening a sondage through the lower levels of the roadside midden deposit, and was rewarded by locating the likely natural deposits with a spread of large fragments of possibly dateable pottery lying directly on top.

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Kate, Claire, Julian, James P, Ben C, Geoff, Philip, Phil C, Martin, Stewart, Jill, John H, Phil C, Tim L, Doug, Nigel B and Keith 

We are now 1/3 of the way through this season’s excavation, and looking back we have already made a huge amount of progress. This has been partly due to the excellent weather, which has so far given us a 100% days of good weather for planned survey days – long may it continue! 

In Trench 15 Martin, Claire, Geoff, Stewart, Phil C, John and Nigel B continued to clean back the surfaces to the northeast of where the lane intersects the Roman road. Having reached the archaeological horizon for most of this area, Roman period finds of pottery and CBM quickly began to emerge together with nails and a few pieces of glass. Work will continue next week to better define the surface of the lane, the surface of the fill of the lane ditch, the occupation surfaces – and the southwest corner of the building identified in 2025 a few meters to the northeast.

In Trench 16 some great progress was made by James P, Tim L, Kate and Ben. Having established yesterday that the masonry feature was most likely a flue – probably of a corn drier, Kate continued to clean up the pit at the southwest end of the flue into which the flue had collapsed leaving a deposit of chalk/flint. Meanwhile James cleaned up the section through the flue opened in 2025 to remove the block sample shown in Figure 3 which clearly shows the collapsed mortar upper surface of the flue onto the bed of ash lying beneath. 

At the north end of the Trench 16, Tim was focusing on defining the possible beam slot on the same alignment as the flue to assess whether this was part of the corn drier built on top of the flue, or whether this feature was part of an unrelated building. The north end of the flue does not appear to have the commonly seen “T shape” of many Roman period corn drier flues, so Ben was exploring a possible return to the southeast to assess whether this flue has the “U shaped” morphology…

In Trench 17, having lifted the deposit of flints to reveal a midden deposit beneath, Julian continued with a sondage to establish how far below the surface of the midden natural can be found and to establish whether the anomalies seen on the Ground Penetrating Radar at a depth of 0.80m to 1.00m could be located. So far the bottom of the midden has not been located, but continued to reveal many items of pottery dating to the 2^nd-3^rd centuries AD, animal bone and slag.

It was the final day of the geophysics survey for this summer season at Wickham House, but Philip will continue working behind the scenes to process the huge amount of data that has been collected by “team geophys” and identifying further targets for us to investigate as we close in on our research objectives. The final day collected a highly respectable 14 grid squares, and the draft results are shown below in Figure 7.  Once again, the geophys surveys have proved invaluable in homing us in straight onto interesting archaeology – and it will be interesting to reflect on the additional benefits that Ground Penetrating Radar might add to the BAS geophys armoury moving forward…

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Stuart, Julian, James P, Ben C, Gill, Emily, Sofia, Geoff, Carrollanne, Lindsey, Philip, Phil C, Martin, Andrew R, Peter and Keith 

In Trench 15 Martin, Keith and Geoff focussed on extending the horizon of archaeology across the northern end of the trench where the southwest corner of a Roman period timber framed building is projected to extend. The northeast corner of this building was discovered nearby in 2025,  and a key objective for this season is to understand the relationship between this building and the intersection of the lane/Roman road. Not only did this involve several hours of hard mattocking, but cleaning the surface revealed and sieving using a trowel. 

The volume of spoil created from Trench 15 also kept Julian busy during the breaks keeping up his regular “patrol” of the spoil heap looking for metal artefacts overlooked! Back in Trench 17 Julian and Carrollanne manged to removed the layer of flints lying on top of a deposit of “dark earth” containing Roman pottery, bone and slag. Tomorrow the plan is to remove the “dark earth” in spits to assess whether there further archaeology lying beneath as predicted by the Ground Penetrating Radar…

Today was a busy day in Trench 16! Ben completed recording the pebble layer revealed the day before and began a sondage to explore the deposits beneath the pebbles to assess how far features seen to the west of Trench 16 extended to the east. 

Stuart and Lindsey continued to explore the area of possible burning at the southwest end of the masonry structure, whilst James cleaned up the slot across the masonry structure excavated in 2025. Whilst the presence of a furnace in the southwest has still to be confirmed, James and Stuary revealed evidence of the collapsed flue in the section which now strongly suggests that the masonry structure revealed is part of a flue. The flint shown in Figure 5 not only has been exposed to heat but has a layer of plaster and a thick covering of ash – and may have been part of the now collapsed roof of the flue.

Emily and Sofia cleaned up the surface to the north of Trench 16 revealing a linear cut of a possible construction trench aligned with the masonry flue, whilst Phil C explored a possible return of the flue to the northeast.

To the southeast of the excavation site, Philip, Andrew R, Gill and Peter continued with the high resolution (0.5m) earth resistance geophysics survey to assess the extent of roadside settlement to the southeast along Ermin Street.

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Stuart, Julian, Thalia, Millie, Ben, Kira, Jean, Jill, Malcolm, Geoff, Carrollanne, Lindsey, Philip, Phil C, Martin, Debbie C, Jill, Tim L, Tim H and Keith 

In Trench 15 work again focussed on removing topsoil from the north end of the trench to reveal the occupation surfaces west of the lane. The mattocking/wheelbarrowing proved a useful means of keeping warm in the strong northerly wind! Keith and Martin updated the plans and context sheets so that the trench records were up to date, and Carrollanne discovered a beautiful Roman melon bead AND part of a Roman copper-alloy nail cleaner as seen in Figure 2. Both these finds are amazing – melon beads are particularly associated with military sites as they are believed to have been worn by soldiers as tokens of ‘good luck’. These finds not only emphasis the role of Ermin Street as a military supply route from Silchester to Carleon, but the nail cleaner also speaks to the large number of finds from the local civilian population of Roman Wickham.

Meanwhile in Trench 16 Stuart and Lindsey continued the excavation of the pit at the southwest end of the masonry wall to investigate if could have been an a area of burning that might indicate a possible industrial function of the masonry wall, however further areas of the chalk mortar were revealed together with Roman colour-coated pottery and a fragment of a shale bracelet – so further work is required to explain this complex series of deposits. 

At the north end of Trench 16 Jean and Tim L were looking for features identified on the GPR survey. At the other end of the trench Kira and Ben revealed a new horizon of archaeology that it is also hoped will shed further light on the structures being revealed in this trench…

In Trench 17 Millie, Thalia and Julian started to remove the upper layer of the flint deposits revealed last week, that now appears to have been sitting directly on top of the deposits of ‘dark earth’ rich in pottery/bone artefacts seen on the west side of this trench. Work stopped to record, photograph and take levels – and will continue tomorrow to identify archaeological features beneath to assess whether they correlate with the GPR anomaly seen at this depth and location when surveyed at the start of this season’s excavation. Millie also found her first Roman coin in context – an eroded 4^th Century AD numus! 

The geophysics phase of the project entered its final week of data collection. Today Philip, Malcolm, Tim H, Phil C and Jill captured an impressive 12 grid squares of data. Today’s results show the Roman road start to fade from view as it heads northwest, but there are further hints of new rectilinear roadside features emerging that will add new insights into the extent and possible functions of this roadside settlement…

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Stuart, Julian, Lindsey, Philip, Doug, Nigel B, James P, Martin, Debbie, Carol, Phil U, Jill, Nick, Rod, Tim H and Keith 

In Trench 15 Debbie, James P and Martin  put in a huge amount of work, with Debbie patiently building on the work started the previous week to define the intersection of the Roman road with the lane branching to the north. By the end of the day the delineation between the two surfaces had been defined, with a clear interruption of the roadside ditch filled with building rubble seen to the southeast as seen in Figure 1. Nearby also in Trench 15, Martin and James P removed a significant amount of overburden in a quest to locate the surface of the lane to the northeast of where Debbie was working. By the end of the day this had been accomplished, and they were rewarded with the discovery of a (possibly “barbarous”) copper-alloy numus coin as seen in Figure 2. Having defined the Roman road/ditch and the lane, work will continue next week to determine if the lane ditch seen in 2025 extends to the south – and then to locate the horizon of occupation for the building discovered in this area in 2025…

In Trench 16 Stuart and Lindsey carried on with the first of the projects in this area to excavate a slot across a dark deposit discovered at the south end of the masonry wall. Their objective was to see if this was an area of burning that might suggest that the masonry structure was part of a corn drier or furnace. By the end of the day it was clear that this deposit was shallow, and further areas of chalk and large flints were discovered beneath – however work will continue in this area early next week to explore the newly revealed contexts in more detail…

Elsewhere in Trench 16 Tim H and Rod, and Susan, Phil U, Doug and Carol worked on opening up two new areas to investigate features as yet only partially revealed. Both areas were down to the archaeological horizon by the end of the day with many finds being discovered, mostly from the Roman period.

In Trench 17 Nick and Julian were excavating two contexts of “dark earth” rich in Roman period pottery and bone deposits as seen in Figure 5. So far the large flints seen in the trench appear to be placed directly onto the “dark earth”, whereas the Ground Penetrating Radar  is predicting a rectilinear feature some 0.2m beneath the current limit of excavation… Work next week will hopefully reveal the archaeology  and hopefully correlate with the geophysics anomaly identified in this location. 

At the end of week #4 of the excavation the size of the spoil heap in Figure 6 speaks of the progress made so far in each of the three trenches opened, and the research objectives for this season’s excavation are already being addressed. The earth resistance survey to the southeast of the excavation also continues to make great progress as shown in Figure 7, where Philip, Nigel B, Geoff and Jill added a further 11 squares to the survey grid.  So far rectilinear features can be seen on both sides of the Roman road adding considerably to our knowledge of the extent and morphology of this roadside settlement.

Not only is work continuing apace in the three trenches and the geophysics survey, but our trusty team of volunteers from Marcham have started work cleaning and sorting the finds made in the first four weeks of excavation. This team have many years of experience of post-excavation analysis of the Roman settlement at Frilsham, so it is a privilege to have them working with us (albeit remotely) on the excavation at Wickham. Figure 8 shows Sheila, Ricky, Carol, Simon and Murray hard at work cleaning and sorting our finds, and Figure 9 shows a number of the finds made to date post cleaning. The team will be sorting finds by context/type ready for post-excavation analysis to begin in earnest later in the year…

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Stuart, Julian, Lindsey, Philip, Ben, Doug, Mark, Sofia, Nigel B, Nigel S, Emily, Tim L, James P, Thalia, Carrollanne, Jean and Keith 

In Trench 15 Tim L and James focused on bringing the plan up to date, whilst Jean and Sofia continued to excavate the slot at the north of the trench to see if the northerly extent of the lane (predicted to be visible by the geophys) could be revealed. Jean quickly discovered a small fragment of the rim of a fine Roman glass vessel which was very much the “find of the day” and will be of much interest to our glass specialist…

In Trench 16 Stuart and Lindsey started work to excavate a slot across the dark deposit at the south of the masonry wall to investigate whether this could be an area of burning. The objective of this slot is to test whether this masonry structure could be a flue of a possible corn drier or furnace? Also in Trench 16 Emily excavated and recorded a posthole, whilst Ben, Nigel B, Mark and Doug opened a new area of the trench over another anomaly identified by the Ground Penetrating Radar geophysics survey in the first week of the excavation which it is hoped will provide further clues to the function of the features exposed to date in this area of the site…

In Trench 17 much of the day was also spent recording a detail plan of the deposit of large flints, pottery and bone revealed earlier in the week, completing context sheets and photographing. However Thalia’s and Julian’s patience was rewarded with the discovered of a radiate coin as shown in Figure 5.

The geophysics survey to the southeast of the excavation continued with Philip, Carrollanne, Nigel S, Nigel B and Mark with a respectable eleven new grid squares being added during the course of the day. The survey image now shows clear evidence of rectilinear structures along the Roman road in this area demonstrating the extent of the roadside settlement.

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham HouseFollow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Stuart, Julian, Lindsey, Paula, Chloe, Jill, Malcolm, John H, Geoff, Philip, Millie, Thalia, and Keith 

In Trench 15 it is looking like the fill of the Roman road ditch with large flints/building rubble underlies the entire length of the intersection of the area where the lane joins the road from the north. This rubble is covered by a thin layer of gravel. This suggests that the lane was constructed in the 4^th century AD as in 2025 a coin of Magentius (AD351-351) was found beneath this rubble fill. This prompted a change in strategy, so Paula, Millie and Malcolm moved to the north end of the Trench 15 to clean up the cobbled surface, record it and get ready to excavate a slot across it to evaluate how the southern end of the lane relates to the slot across the lane excavated in 2025. Good progress was made, but there is still plenty to do later in the week as seen in Figure 1.

In Trench 16 the focus for today was to define the northern end of the masonry wall discovered in week #1 which was undertaken by Lindsey, Geoff and John H whilst Stuart completed the recording of contexts excavated  to date in this trench. Good progress was made in the defining and cleaning this feature as well as finds of glass from a storage bottle, a small fragment of glass from a fine vessel, pottery and a small piece of wall plaster. However it is still not clear whether this a a ‘return’ of the wall heading to the southeast or just the ‘end’ of the substantial masonry structure to the south of Trench 16. Figure 2 shows the progress made by the end of the day, but again more work is needed to before a comprehensive interpretation can be made.

Trench 17 again got off to an exciting start with Thalia discovering a Roman coin as seen in Figure 4. Early comparisons suggest that this coin is a copper-alloy numus showing an “Emperor standing with globe’ (SPES REI PUBLICE) on the reverse which probably dates to the mid-4^th Century AD. The focus in Trench 17 was cleaning the surface of flint/sarsen rubble ready for recording, which also revealed an area rich in pottery and bone deposits in the west of the trench. 

To the southeast of the excavation site, the earth resistance geophysics survey continued with Philip, Jill, Chloe and John H. The results from today’s work reveals further details of the roadside building identified last week on the north side of the Roman road. Work will continue to complete this survey grid during by the end of this week.