Wickham House 2026 – Day #21 Blog (14th May)

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

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Attendees: Julian, Geoff, Merrill, Gordon, Gill, Jill, Margaret, Debbie C, Peter Ca, Peter Cl, Fiona, Chloe, Doug, Ben C, Matthew, Phyllida, Lindsey and Keith 

Once again the weather today was a bit “hit and miss”, but we managed to achieve a full day of excavation with only short bursts of heavy rain forcing us to retreat to the cars for a few minutes. In Trench 15 work continued apace to extend the archaeological horizon revealed earlier in the week. A sondage excavated by Peter showed another cobbled surface some 25cm below the current surface shown in Figure 1 and just above natural. At present there is no clear evidence of the building discovered in 2025 a few metres to the north of Trench 15 but it is possible that the remains of its beam slot foundations will be revealed in the coming days… The spoil removed from each context was carefully sifted by Margaret and Debbie as seen in Figure 2, who found pottery, iron objects and glass fragments dating to the Roman period.  

Figure 1. Merrill, Jill and Peter defining the newly revealed surface in Trench 15 
Figure 2. Margaret and Debbie sieving spoil from Trench 15

Today’s focus in Trench16 was cleaning and recording, with Gill and Lindsey completing the section drawings across the furnace pit and flue, and defining the masonry of the flue. Meanwhile Geoff cleaned a spread of rubble to the east that also included a chalk deposit suggesting a second flue. This interpretation was further hardened by Ben and Matthew who focused on planning a possible second furnace pit.

Figure 3. Lindsey and Gill stretching after defining the masonry flue wall in Trench 16
Figure 4. Ben and Matthew planning new features revealed in Trench 16

We were very lucky to have Phyllida Shelley with us on site today, an artist based in Cookham who has spent a number of years capturing different aspects of archaeology (and archaeologists) in her highly creative work. Figure 5 shows Phyllida capturing the subtle colours of the flue section being cleaned and recorded by Gill and Lindsey.

Figure 5. Phyllida capturing activity on site through an artists’ eye

In Trench 17 Fiona and Chloe revealed new features at the bottom of the roadside midden deposit including additional large discarded pots. Around the pottery were large amounts of bone and slag, which together will help to characterise nearby occupation of this site. The large pottery fragments will be left in situ for the time being, but will be lifted at the end of the project to be identified by our pottery specialist and hopefully dated to indicate the time frame of these midden deposits.

Figure 6. Fiona and Chloe cleaning the large pottery fragments at the bottom of the midden deposit within Trench 17

Having removed the turf for Trench 18, Gordon, Peter Ca and Julian continued to remove the overburden. However the first hints of deposits of large flints were soon discovered in the area indicated by the earth resistance geophysics surface, with a cobbled surface to the south and more friable soil where the roadside ditch is expected to lie. These positive indications will be examined further next week as the overburden is removed.

Figure 7. Promising early results from Trench 18

Whilst the excavation was taking place in Wickham the team of volunteers in Marcham led by Simon continued to clean and sort the finds from this year’s excavation. Much tea and many biscuits were consumed, and lots of progress made – and we are looking forward to examining the assemblage of finds from this year’s excavation in more detail during the post-ex phase of the project over the coming months…

Figure 8. Volunteers in Marcham processing finds from this year’s excavation