Part of a series of bulletins from the BAS excavations at Wickham House
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Attendees: James P, Judy, Julian, Nigel B, Lindsey, Carrollanne, Stuart, Andrew H, Gary B, Gary A, Peter C, Paul, Bob, Doug, Thalia, Karen, Tricia, Charlie and Keith

This was the hottest day of the year so far with a sweltering 32⁰C to contend with, so the team took plenty of breaks in the shade to cool off. Not withstanding the hot conditions, good progress continued to be made in all of the trenches being excavated.

Trench 4C continued to offer a range of new discoveries with Thalia finding a nice fragment of patterned Samian ware above what appears to be the first surface at the northern end of the trench. Whilst to the south of the Trench Peter and Julian started to remove the large flint deposits within the ditch the Roman road discovering a small pottery vessel in situ that was carefully removed for further examination.

In Trench 2 Carrollanne, Stuart and Lindsey completed recording  and began work to open a further sondage to investigate what lies before the current cobbled surface. Stuart meanwhile completed the section drawing of the gravel deposits to the north of the Roman road ditch that interact with the cobbled surface seen to the north. In Trench 4B Judy completed the excavation of the pit she had been working on, and James finally encountered what appears to be another cobbled surface beneath the occupation deposits that will be explored further next week.

In Trench 4D Charlie, Karen and Tricia started to section the linear feature and pit revealed earlier in the week as seen in Figure 2. Whilst Gary A, Nigel B and Bob finally revealed the first horizon of archaeology beneath the topsoil in Trench 4E.

We were very lucky to be visited in the afternoon by Professor Mike Fulford and Amanda Clarke who led excavations at Silchester by the University of Reading for many years. Not only were Mike and Amanda able to offer guidance and advice to the BAS team, but were able to catch up  with the many familiar faces taking part in this excavation.