Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House
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Attendees: Tim L, James, Geoff, Tony, Nick, Nigel and Keith
Work on the first trench continued at a good pace in the continued fine weather, and the topsoil was soon removed revealing a layer of pebbles some 25cm beneath the surface as seen in Figure 1. However, the ditch shown in the high definition earth resistance survey thought to run across the is trench was not yet evident. Finds from the topsoil consisted of a small number of pottery sherds, some modern glass fragments, roof tile – and lots of clay pigeon skeet fragments!
The temporary benchmark (TBM) level was established using the GPS total station so that the ‘dumpy’ level could used to accurately measure height above sea level across the site. This allows the relative height of archaeological features and the location of special finds to be accurately recorded.
The topsoil context was recorded and the newly revealed context planned, photographed and levels recorded. Excavation continued at the northly end of the trench continued to assess the depth of this pebble layer and determine what archaeology lay beneath it as shown in Figure 2. This context soon began to reveal a large number of CBM fragments (mostly roof tile) and a number of pottery sherds as shown in Figures 3. Also discovered was a fragment of a glass vessel and a number of hobnails as shown in Figure 4.
The high resolution earth resistance survey suggested that the spread of gravel beneath the first trench extended some meters to the east with a linear edge at 90o to the ditch expected within the initial trench. Having established the depth of this archaeological context, a second trench was opened to locate the edge of the pebble surface and expose the ditch thought to lie across it. Figure 5 shows topsoil from being removed from this 3m x 2m trench.
