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

Follow the project on our YouTube channel

Attendees: Jules, Chris, Lindsey, Jill, Ruby, Kate, Mike, Martin, Louise, Rod, James P, Tony, Susanne, Julian, Paula and Keith 

With today being the Lecture/Site Tour in the afternoon, the focus was to crack on with the archaeology as quickly as possible to allow time to tidying up the trenches and preparing the “finds tent” in the afternoon. 

After its soaking over the weekend, Trench 17 had finally dried out and just needed some detailing/cleaning to get things ready for the visit. Julian, Rod and Tony soon had things back in order, and were able to mark out the route of the Roman road/lane to enable visitors to place the trenches within the wider archaeological landscape.

Trench 15 was a hive of activity with Jule and Jill continuing to excavate a further slot across the Roman road ditch. Mike and Louise continued to record the new contexts revealed at the north of the trench, whilst Martin, Chris and James focused on defining features possibly related to Building #3 which have still eluded definitive identification…

The focus in Trench 16 was recording, whilst Kate and Ruby carefully cleaned features revealed earlier in the week suggesting possible further extant remains of structures to the east of the trench…

At 3pm work in the trenches stopped, and the team focused on preparing for the site tour and lecture. By 6:00pm over 90 visitors had arrived, and were enjoying drinks and light refreshments provided by our hosts Mr and Mrs D’Arcy. Phyllida had her artwork depicting the excavation on display within the church, and Keith gave a 30minute lecture to a full-house. This lecture was followed by a tour of the site and an opportunity to view some of the finds discovered. Overall this event raised more than £1000 for St Swithun’s church.