Shillington

On another dig this weekend, this time it lasted both days. Usual suspects on parade, me , Kevin, Ivor, Nigel with Derek I/C with the addition of Alison in between the Italian Grand Prix warm up and race! 

Again, looking at how the village grew and where there was occupation here, this test pit being nearer the church.

First really good feature we got was a nice cobbled surface at about 30cm down, only took up half of our test pit, could have been more going under where we hadn't dug of course, probably Victorian that's the pottery we were finding.  It was interesting to ponder who might have walked over this surface when it was in use.

Some nice pottery finds coming up including the ever popular blue & white Victorian wares & some sherds of probable Hertfordshire  grey ware.

We were happily digging when at 60cm we hit a field drain again!( prob Victorian) We were rained off not long after this so repaired to The Crown for post dig analysis & during a very nice pint of Doombar we decided to extend the trench the following day, we didn't have alot of room to play with but thought we could probably get another half metre.

Day Two. No rain forecast which was good though it was overcast all day. We got cracking on the new half of trench to bring it down to the 60cm level of the field drain and then took out more from the extended half so keeping away from the drain.   

Taking it down another context to 70cm I found  a nice piece of Hertfordshire grey ware & in higher levels animal bones, probably pig & sheep. After that it was decided to take out a quarter of the trench to see what was happening as finds were drying up. General consensus was that it was looking like natural ground at this point so we called it a day and began the task of back filling. I really do think we should ask whether the householders would like the pit left as a feature to their garden!

Another session of post dig analysis with another dig in a couple of weeks and potentially another one for October.

A great couple of days.

Dig commences.

Derek gets stuck in with the mattock.

Cobbled surface is revealed.

General view of the chaos of a dig in a 1m test pit!

Cobbled surface.

Now cleaned up and measured.

The digging A Team of Kevin,Ivor,Nigel and Derek.

Selfie with glasses.

Selfie without glasses.

Finds from the last context. 

Cleaning up for final recording and phot.

Tree root in bottom right corner with field drain above next to measure.