In two very short days of excavation, there has been a
substantial number of developments. This is directly linked to Hugh and Pete’s
decision on Friday lunchtime to close down Trenches R, S and T by the middle of
next week as they appeared to have little left to excavate within them. Within
half an hour, two of those trenches produced results which proved how wrong
they could be! Work on N and P has also carried on apace, with large amount of
rubble being removed from both to reveal the structures beneath.
Trench N
The majority of rubble has now been removed at the eastern
end of the trench, uncovering the east end of the church in all its glory,
although the mystery of why this wall has survived whilst its two adjoining
walls have been robbed entirely remains. Despite several theories being put
forward to explain this, including sheer laziness on the part of the robbers or
a post-Dissolution building reusing some walls rather than others, none have
been particularly satisfactory. However, it is almost certain that the hospital
was reused in the post-medieval period, as two substantial stones inside the
building, one of which is surrounded by tiles, are above the medieval floor
level and “float” on a context similar in appearance to topsoil which was
probably laid during the period when the building fell out of use.
Trench P
Trench P has also had a substantial amount of rubble
removed, particularly from the western end of the trench where a brick building
adjoined the stone structure of the hospital. This has revealed several courses
of bricks as well as the doorway to the building. In the eastern end,
excavation alongside the north wall of the hospital church has revealed
extensive foundations which perfectly match those found in Trench N. This has
also disproved the theory of the projecting staircase which we were speculating
about a few days ago (see blog entry for 17th July), although it has
uncovered later medieval repairs to the limestone wall of the church. This was
caused by the quality of the limestone itself, which in places below the repair
has been heavily damaged by water action. Further investigations within the
church itself will take place over the next few days.
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| Trench R has a building! |
Trench R
Half an hour after lunchtime on Friday, the character of
Trench R changed dramatically. Far from being empty, it instead contains a
building of some form. Three stones which had been visible when we removed a
spit of apparently barren soil have transformed themselves into the corner of a
series of chalk blocks, on the inside of which are further fragments of chalk
combined with broken tile. The fact that these blocks are on the same alignment
as our robber trench suggests that we may not have completely excavated the
robber cut for the walls, and as a result we are currently concentrating on
achieving this. Although failing to fully excavate a feature may sound odd, the
sandy nature of the soil within Trench R makes defining features extremely
difficult, so our mistake is understandable. However, we are also considering
that, far from being a chalk interior for a building, it is instead a platform
on which a building was erected; therefore, there is no robber cut to find.
Whilst this theory is indeed plausible, much more excavation is required before
we can decide which hypothesis is correct. Despite this, one thing is for sure;
Trench R is empty no more!
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| Yet more walls in Trench S |
Trench S
Hard as it is to believe this, Trench S has yet more walls. In
the western end of the trench, is another wall which appears to run under the
east-west chalk wall within the trench. This is on a perfect alignment with the
chalk wall in the east of the trench, suggesting that the two were once
related. It may also be related with the east-west wall, although as there are
no stones joining the two walls together this is still uncertain. Indeed, the
relationship between almost all the walls is extremely uncertain and it may be
that we can never fully resolve this. In the past few days, several postholes
have been excavated which suggest further structures within the trench, perhaps
they may have been posts to support the roofs on the various structures which
were built here. However, we are increasingly living up the reality that,
insanely complex as this small trench is, it may never be possible to fully
understand the building sequence within it.
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| The brick kiln in all its glory |
Trench T
At lunchtime on Friday, Trench T was facing imminent
closure. Half an hour later, it was being extended. The reason for this is that
we realised what the vaulted structure within it was. Far from being a bridge
or a drain, it is instead the flue for a very large brick kiln. Examination of
rubble to the north of the structure revealed large amounts of burnt material
and, having consulted the magnetometry survey conducted several years ago, it
was discovered that there was a large spike in the readings over this area,
indicative of burning in the past. Having decided the structure was highly
likely to be a kiln, the next question was what was being fired or processed in
it. This required a little detective work and a realisation that any firing
process involving ceramics produces large amounts of wasters; artefacts which
have been destroyed or become distorted within the kiln. A likely dumping site
was quickly located just to the west of the site in the form of several
suspicious earthworks lying adjacent to the monastic precinct wall. A quick
investigation of this area revealed that not only was it composed entirely of
clay lumps but that many of these were overfired bricks, which were far lighter
than those you would normally expect to see in a structure. As a result, Trench
T has been extended to excavate more of the kiln’s interior. Given the scale of
this task, it will be another day at least until we can start to investigate
the final contents of the kiln but, nevertheless, this is an extremely exciting
find which we hope will yield further results in the coming days.
As you can see, there is an ever increasing amount of work
for our archaeologists to do. However, we have definitely learnt at least one
thing from the past few days; never threaten to close a trench, the archaeology
doesn’t like it!
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