Sunday 15 July 2012

Thursday 12th July 2012


For some members of UWHG today was the first day of this year’s dig at Chapel House Wood. We arrived to find some volunteers had already been set to work the previous couple of days or so and already set up the tents, done some backfilling of the old DF trench, and had started work on the first of the new trenches.
Roger began the day by giving the newbies a guided tour of the surrounding landscape, showing them some of the other features nearby, which gave us the time to catch up on some gossip & open up the tents.


On the arrival of everyone else, Roger gleefully explained that no one was going to escape the dreaded task of backfilling this year – the first half hour of every day was to be spent backfilling DF – thus it will be done little by little, and with much less pain. So we all set to with great vigour.


The rest of the morning was spent de-turfing – not an easy task when the soil is so full of stones & boulders so near the surface. But we have a good, cheerful bunch of workers and eventually a neat chequerboard effect was produced under the polytunnel.


A warm welcome by the way to the students who hail from various universities around the country, to Lisa V who has been working on the Stanbury Hill project, and to the ladies of the 3D Archaeological Society from Harrogate who have joined the dig this week.


We enjoyed a relaxing lunch break in the sunshine before getting down to removing the topsoil in the afternoon – a long, fiddly job because of the high density of stones.


In the absence of any finds, and without Bob the total station being available this year, Our Finds Team for the next 3 days, Ann and Lynn, spent most of today trying to figure out all the fixed ref points using the tried and tested method with tape measure and theodolite, which they’ve nicknamed Lucy.


Jane Lunnon, UWHG Archivist


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