Wickham House 2026 – Day #16 Blog (5th May)

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!

Figure 1. The newly reprofiled spoil heap

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. 

Figure 2. Martin, Debbie S, Celia, Jill, Malcolm and Thalia working in Trench 15

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.

Figure 3, Lindsey, Tim L, Chloe, Geoff and John at work in Trench 16
Figure 4. Lindsey preparing to half section the flint/chalk fill of the furnace pit

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.

Figure 5. Roger and Julian excavating the sondage in Trench 17