Last dig of the year.

At Shillington again this weekend digging in an old farmhouse garden. The building dated back to the 15th Century  and in the 18th century was a pub.
The usual format of a 1m square test pit dug in 10cm  contexts. On parade today was Derek, Kevin, Ivor, Nigel & Alison ( Saturday only), we got off to a cracking start and finds were coming up thick and fast, Victorian pottery the ever popular clay pipe stems with one or two part bowls as well, some probable Medieval pot and afew metal nails. It was all bit of a jumble in terms of the mix of periods we were getting, it didn't really prove anything to us but  we did come down onto a very rough surface at 0.3m which was probably a farmyard type surface made up of very rough material, broken tile, various stones. it certainly wasn't well laid like the surface in the previous dig. 
After the third context the finds started to thin out ,it got very stony and one layer had alot of sand in it probably from building work some years ago, we'd got to 0.6m by the end of the day and were now just getting clay ( gault clay).  We repaired to the Musgrave Arms for post dig analysis a very good pint of Banks and Taylor 'Dragon Slayer'  was imbibed here followed by another as Kevin was driving  today, my turn tomorrow!
Day two  yielded more gault clay with very little in it, alittle frustrating  but you just never know what may be just a trowels scrape away. 0.7m  was pretty empty so just a quarter of the next context was taken out just to see. It was deemed to be the natural  layer, untouched by inhabitation so we called it a day and back filled using the newly restored 'Old Thumper' that Derek had put a new handle on. To the Musgrave Arms again for a last beer and that was that. This was our last dig of the year though I'm pleased to say Derek has already lined up three test pits for next year, he hopes to get the pottery from this years & last years excavations  up to pottery expert Paul Blinkhorn for analysis this winter. Another great weekend digging.

General view of the front of the farmhouse and our test pit.

Derek records as Nigel and Kevin sieve the spoil from the pit.

Test pit at 0.1m

Ivor moves 'Old Thumper' to a safe distance as it wouldn't be used until Sunday. 

Alot more stones showing through.

Finds from the first three contexts.