Wickham House Blog – Day #22 (13th May 2025)

Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House

Follow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Martin, James P, Zoe, Katharine, Peter C, Philip, Carrollanne, Gordon, Merrill,  Gabby, Jill, James C, Vaughn, Nick and Keith

With fine weather once again work continued in trench 1A with Jill, Gordon and Merril to complete recording. Plans and sections were started and should be finalised tomorrow. James also spent the day recording features excavated in trench 1B where the complex stratigraphy is starting to make more sense.

Figure 1. Jill, Gordon and Merrill drawing a section in Trench 1A.
Figure 2. James recording features in Trench 1B.

In Trench 2A Peter  continued to excavate features explored by Tim the previous week and caught up with the in progress recording activities before starting to excavate the next context. At the south end of Trench 2A Carrollanne and Katherine excavated the dark organic context revealed last week beneath the deposit of large flints. Bulk and spot samples of this dark deposit were taken for post-ex analysis and work will continue to tomorrow to explore the stratigraphy beneath this feature.

Figure 3. Peter planning a new context revealed in Trench 2A.
Figure 4. Carrollanne and Katharine working in Trench 2A whilst Philip and Joe undertake more geophys surveying in the background.

In Trench 2B Gabby and Martin were also catching up on the recording by plotting section of the two ditches revealed within these gravel deposits. The next challenge in this end of Trench 2 is to remove the overburden of the extension to the trench that will join 2A with 2B where it is hoped that the transition from dark organic deposits in the north to orange gravel deposits in the south can be explored in more detail.

A new trench (Trench 3) was opened today by James C, Vaughn and Nick as seen in Figure 6. This trench spans high earth resistance rectilinear features aligned with the Roman road seen in the geophysics survey carried out last week.

Figure 5. Gabby and Martin record a construction trench cut in section in Trench 2B.
Figure 6. Nick, Vaughn and James removing overburden from Trench 3.