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

Attendees: Nigel R, Janet R, Gill, Tony, Stuart, Julian, Philip, Ben, Tess, Alessa, Paula, Jean, Kate, James P and Keith 

With rain forecast for the afternoon, work in the trenches got off to a brisk start. In Trench 15 Paula, Kate, Jean and Janet continued to define the fill of the Roman road ditch, and by the end of the day appeared to have identified the intersection of the lane adjoining the Roman road from the north as shown in Figure 1.

In Trench 16 James excavated the northern extent of the masonry wall that has so far been revealed, and in the process discovered a copper alloy ‘barbarous radiate’ coin. Keith started the detailed planning of this horizon of archaeology, which will be completed tomorrow with levels and photographs once James’ area has been cleaned. At the northern end of Trench 16 Stuart and Tess continued to explore the ‘dark earth’ deposits where the masonry wall is no longer to be seen, and in the process discovered a nice sherd of Central Gaul Samian pottery featuring a leaf motif.

Philip, Ben, Tony and Gill carried on with the high resolution earth resistance geophysics survey of the far southeast of the pasture where it is hoped new light will be shed on the extent of roadside settlement to the southeast of where excavations are taking place. In Trench 17 Alessa, Julian and Nigel continued to explore the archaeology of a rectilinear geophysics anomaly identified by GPR a couple of weeks ago. So far this has revealed a horizon of large flints that today was cleaned, recorded and photographed.