The last stage of earthmoving this week marks a notable milestone as we strip beneath a former hedgerow. As we conclude, the full scope of our collective efforts can be seen across the site, with hundreds of hand-dug interventions now dotting the site. A sense of achievement is joined with relief, and with satisfaction of the deeply enriching experience felt across the team.
Our explorations have yielded a steady flow of evidence supporting stock rearing, some possible cultivation, and dairy-related activities. Throughout the site animal bone, coarseware pottery and fine tablewares have been found that have been almost exclusively Roman with perhaps occasional residual late Iron Age. The freshly cleared expanse beneath the hedgerow links features to its west with those to its east and in so doing it has provided a glimpse of a rectangular lozenge-shaped gully. This revelation prompts the intriguing notion that we might have chanced upon a potential narrow timber sill-beamed structure nestled beneath the hedge. The date is unclear, but it appears to cut across some of the earlier ditch fills, suggesting that it may post-date the Roman activity or lies within its latest sequence. Might it be Anglo-Saxon we wonder?