{"id":13610,"date":"2026-04-24T13:32:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/?p=13610"},"modified":"2026-05-14T09:01:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:01:01","slug":"wickham-house-2026-day-10-blog-21st-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/wickham-house-2026-day-10-blog-21st-april\/","title":{"rendered":"Wickham House 2026 \u2013 Day #10 Blog (21st April)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Part of a series of bulletins from the\u00a0BAS excavations at Wickham House<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow the project on our\u00a0YouTube channel<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attendees:<\/strong> Stuart, Julian, Lindsey, Paula, Chloe, Jill, Malcolm, John H, Geoff, Philip, Millie, Thalia, and Keith <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Trench 15 it is looking like the fill of the Roman road ditch with large flints\/building rubble underlies the entire length of the intersection of the area where the lane joins the road from the north. This rubble is covered by a thin layer of gravel. This suggests that the lane was constructed in the 4th<\/sup> century AD as in 2025 a coin of Magentius (AD351-351) was found beneath this rubble fill. This prompted a change in strategy, so Paula, Millie and Malcolm moved to the north end of the Trench 15 to clean up the cobbled surface, record it and get ready to excavate a slot across it to evaluate how the southern end of the lane relates to the slot across the lane excavated in 2025. Good progress was made, but there is still plenty to do later in the week as seen in Figure 1.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 1 Paula, Milie and Malcolm cleaning the cobbled surface at the north end of Trench 15<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In Trench 16 the focus for today was to define the northern end of the masonry wall discovered in week #1 which was undertaken by Lindsey, Geoff and John H whilst Stuart completed the recording of contexts excavated  to date in this trench. Good progress was made in the defining and cleaning this feature as well as finds of glass from a storage bottle, a small fragment of glass from a fine vessel, pottery and a small piece of wall plaster. However it is still not clear whether this a a \u2018return\u2019 of the wall heading to the southeast or just the \u2018end\u2019 of the substantial masonry structure to the south of Trench 16. Figure 2 shows the progress made by the end of the day, but again more work is needed to before a comprehensive interpretation can be made.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 2 John, Geoff and Lindsey excavating in Trench 16 whilst Stuart completes the recording<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Figure 3 Progress made by the end of Day #10 and Geoff showing  a large fragment of pottery found in Trench 16<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Trench 17 again got off to an exciting start with Thalia discovering a Roman coin as seen in Figure 4. Early comparisons suggest that this coin is a copper-alloy numus showing an \u201cEmperor standing with globe\u2019 (SPES REI PUBLICE) on the reverse which probably dates to the mid-4th<\/sup> Century AD. The focus in Trench 17 was cleaning the surface of flint\/sarsen rubble ready for recording, which also revealed an area rich in pottery and bone deposits in the west of the trench. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 4 Thalia and Julian having a busy day in Trench 17\u2026<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Figure 5 \u2026and defining a deposit of pottery and bone ready for recoding tomorrow.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

To the southeast of the excavation site, the earth resistance geophysics survey continued with Philip, Jill, Chloe and John H. The results from today\u2019s work reveals further details of the roadside building identified last week on the north side of the Roman road. Work will continue to complete this survey grid during by the end of this week.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 6 Jill and Chloe collecting earth resistance data\u2026<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Figure 7 Geophysics results from day #10 processed by Philip<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of a series of bulletins from the\u00a0BAS excavations at Wickham House Follow the project on our\u00a0YouTube channel Attendees: Stuart, Julian, Lindsey, Paula, Chloe, Jill, Malcolm, John H, Geoff, Philip, Millie, Thalia, and Keith  In Trench 15 it is looking like the fill of the Roman road ditch with large flints\/building rubble underlies the entire … Continue reading Wickham House 2026 \u2013 Day #10 Blog (21st April)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-upcoming-event"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13610"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13801,"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13610\/revisions\/13801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berksarch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}