We’re pleased to announce that our post-excavation assessment of the 2015 excavations in Hungerford has just been completed and is available to download.
This report, authored by Dr James Gerrard and Andrew Agate with the assistance of Holly-Ann Carl includes contributions by Don O’Meara, Suzi Richer, David Heslop and Rob Young.
A copy has been submitted to the Somerset Historic Environment Record.
When Hayward and his team dug the villa in the 1940s and 1960s archaeological science was in its infancy. Today we have a whole array of scientific techniques that can be used to shed new light on the villa and its inhabitants.
Above: Hayward’s excavations
The starting point was taking all of our samples over to local archaeological firm GeoFlo. GeoFlo are specialists in wet sieving archaeological soil samples. Over the next few weeks Nigel and Liz will run wet sieve all of our samples – burnt seeds and the like will float (known as the ‘flot‘) and these will be sent to various specialists for analysis. Shells of molluscs and other tiny fragments of fish bone and the like will be caught in sieves with tiny meshes. These tiny fragments will also need to be sent to various archaeological scientists.
Lufton is a long way from the coast and one of the things that we’re quite interested in is determining where all the oysters came from. There are tow logical options: the Dorset coast or the Bristol Channel. Ancient oyster specialist Dr Jessica Winder will look at our oysters and we hope that she’ll be able to shed light on this element of our villa’s inhabitants.
Above: Oyster shells on the tessellated pavement – a late Roman snack?
Finally, we took a soil micromorphology sample from the burnt deposits that Hayley and Co. excavated. This sample, in a kubiena tin, is going to Cambridge University to be prepared and thin sectioned. Newcastle’s Dr Lisa-Marie Shillito will then undertake the analysis of this sample and hopefully tell us how these deposits accumulated.
Above: Burnt deposits in Room 1
It’s been a week since we all returned from Somerset. Most of us (James and Andy included) have been taking it easy after a grueling four weeks in the field and in anticipation of the start of the academic year.
One of the bits of Lufton related work James has been up to is provisionally cataloging the uncleaned coins. Just for interest’s sake the barchart below shows all of the excavated and identifiable (so far!) coins excavated from Lufton (this year and by Hayward) as per mills values by Reece period. As a point of comparison Phillipa Walton‘s British Mean values are included too.
This is a VERY PROVISIONAL analysis but the strength of Lufton in the early to mid fourth century AD is very noticeable. One of the odd aspects of this year’s excavation was our failure to find any coins later than AD364. Late fourth century coins are quite common at villas in the West Country and we’re not sure why ours are missing (especially as Hayward found three coins of the House of Valentinian).
James reckons about 15 coins will need to be cleaned and conserved. This will happen in October. It’ll be interesting to see if they change the above diagram…
James is writing this from the comfort of his home on a rather damp bank holiday Sunday.
The hard work of the excavation ended on Friday when James and Elliot watched the machine backfill the trench and reseeded the area. With the students ferried back to the train station the supervisors and directors retired to the Masons Arms for a fine evening meal. On Saturday they left Somerset early and heading up the motorway at light speed (also known as 62mph) we made it back to Newcastle (dropping Hayley at Wetherby Services on the way) in record time.
A hideous couple of hours followed and James, Andy and Elliot struggled to get all the finds and equipment properly stored at the University. By 7pm we were all home, back amidst our respective families and coming to grips with such innovations as walls and meals that involve rice.
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It’s been our most successful season. We’ve achieved more than we imagined we could and revolutionized our understanding of the Lufton Roman villa. The long process of post-excavation analysis follows, so make sure you stay tuned to the blog for updates.
We’d like to thank the excavation team for all their hardwork in sometimes difficult and trying conditions. We’d also like to thank the local community for their interest, patience and generosity.
Particular thanks go to: Maggie and Colin Baker (our hosts), James and Carol Pullen (landowners), Liz Glaisher and Peter Seib (Brympton), Ski, SSARG, Historic England, YALHS, Roman Research Trust and the Somerset Archaeological Society. Ian Hodder, our digger driver from G. Crook, made the work possible, as did YHC and Wessex Water. We have undoubtedly missed someone off this list. If it’s you, then please accept our thanks and know that the omission is through forgetfulness rather than carelessness.
We do hope to return next year. Such a return largely depends on whether significant funding can be raised. Excavation is an expensive business and to run another season will cost somewhere in the region of £35K. If you, or your business / organisation are interested in supporting the project next year then please contact James G.
To end with a score card of the excavations:
Extra building phases found: 3
Roman coins discovered by metal detector: 45
Roman coins discovered by eye: 5
Tessellated pavements found: 1
Roman hairpins: 1
Complete pots: 1
Visitors to site: 500+
TV appearances: 2
National Newspaper articles: 3
Rubbers / pencil erasers lost: 60
Custard creams consumed by Andy: 134,567
Trips to Asda: 34500
Meals ruined by Jeff: 1
Dig trousers worn by James G: 1
Trowels lost: 3
Pairs of steel toecapped boots ruined: 3
Times the hire company emptied the Portaloo: 2
The Open Day is this SATURDAY (20th August). We’ll be happy to show you the excavations – please note that tours will be on the hour from 10am to 4pm.
In the evening there will be a talk given by James G at Abbey Manor Community Centre in Yeovil, starting at 7.30pm (although you might want to get there a little early).
For more details have a look at this Brympton Parish Council’s website, which carries full details of the event.
Today was the first day on site for our second team of diggers and was a trial by fire for the new team.
The day kicked off with Elliot drawing plans of an in situ pottery deposit as well as the squatter wall in Room 4. After giving Jeff and James B a crash course in how to take levels, he finished off that little job and moved on to lifting the deposits and hunting for more of the squatter wall (unfortunately to no avail).
Meanwhile, Hayley worked with Becca and Sue in order to investigate Hayward’s excavation of the partition wall between Rooms 3 and 4.
Doug and Frankie were working on the extremely exciting apsidal heated room on the north side of the trench, cleaning it and following the cut of the room around to see where it leads. By the end of the day, and with a bit of help from Elliot, the apsidal room was sparkling clean, ready for its photo shoot with Andy.
Tilly and Lucy were working hard all day on the hunt for colour change in Room 4, and were lucky enough to have the star find of the day – what appears to be some mid fourth to fifth century pottery (on which James G has written a few words in his time)!
Josh and Freddie were reverse roofers today, and engaged in hard work removing the large roof slate deposit.
Elsewhere in Room 4, Jeff, James B and Pete were searching for the areas of the room which remain unexcavated by Hayward.
James G continued his mission, recruiting Tom and Matt to his service in the North-Eastern corner of the trench, investigating the robber trench connected to a wall and perhaps a conduit for a waterpipe.
At the end of a hard day’s work, the team returned home to a delicious meal of cheesy pasta prepared by Tom and Matt.
There’s not much to report this weekend. Most of the team left for Newcastle yesterday, leaving just the James, Andy, Hayley and Elliot to hold the fort and await the second team’s arrival tomorrow.
We spent a quiet day relaxing. Hayley and Elliot went to Bridport, Andy enjoyed the hospitality of the Masons Arms and James caught up with family in Yeovil.
Barbara Sutton (Leonard and Nora Hayward’s daughter) has kindly lent us some photos of the excavations. This is one of the 1961 team with Leonard Hayward in the hat.
Today we had the pleasure of a visit from Barbara Sutton – no other than Leonard Hayward’s daughter, who told us about her memories of the excavation from her childhood. It was great to meet Barbara and to have a connection with the previous excavator!
Elsewhere in the trench, Elliot and Antonia took levels for the plan Antonia had made yesterday while Hayley commanded Kevin, James I, James S, Henry and Imogen with an iron fist to clean up the northern side of the trench.
Meanwhile, Holly worked hard to define and clean up a section of the villa’s wall. This involved removing some of Hayward’s backfill and discovering – wait for it – a plastic cup and a glass bottle. Neither were Roman… but rubbish left over from the previous digging team (!).
Later in the day, Elliot was tasked with clearing away some of the brown rubble layer from the South-Western end of the trench and was able to discover a clear cut feature – almost certainly the visible remains of one of Hayward’s trenches.
On the North side of the trench the team made a huge discovery – genuine, bona fide Roman hypocaust and floor within what appears to be an apsidal shaped room with heated flooring. It wasn’t long after that Hawkeye Hayley spotted another tiny coin in the ground only a couple of metres away.
James I was then teamed up with Pete to do some drawing and take some levels of the western side of the trench.
In the afternoon we also had a visit from Brian and Moira, representatives of the Yeovil Archaeological and Local History Society. They were given a guided tour of the site by James. Moira also revealed why Leonard Hayward was nicknamed ‘Polly’. Apparently it was because he started every grammar school archaeological society meeting with ‘Put the kettle on’… Hence ‘Polly put the kettle on’.
The team returned home to corned beef hash prepared by Dan and Chris and are looking forward to a visit from Historic England tomorrow!
Elliot would like to begin with his daily dose of Lufton excavation humour…
I used to work in a clock factory. The job was great but after a couple of months I was fired. I never found out why, but it might have had something to do with all the extra hours I was putting in…
Today on site, we were joined by James’s family, who helped James to do some levels and some drawings of the site while the rest of the team were occupied with a large section of the trench on the north side.
At the start of the day, Elliot was tasked with supervising Charlotte and Imogen in trying to define the deposit of collapsed rooftiles on the western side of the trench. They were partially successful in this mission but things got a bit complicated. Charlotte even found a neolithic flint
Henry was occupied during the morning with the important task of creating a route for wheelbarrows to be pushed onto the top of the spoil heap.
We were also joined by Ski in the morning who was able to turn up some more interesting finds for us, including a few more coins! James G did, however, manage to find a coin without Ski’s aid. Dig team 2; Ski c.26.
Meanwhile, Hayley supervised Dan, Chris, Henry and James S in removing a thick brown deposit. This is basically (115) but seems much thicker in the northern end of the trench. Under it are elusive, yellow mortary deposits.
It was touch and go for a while, yet thankfully back up arrived in the form of James I, who joined us after lunch, as well as Elliot’s team who joined in after they had finished with their rooftile related activities.
Antonia meanwhile was trained in how to draw plans and helped by Pete from SSARG went about the task of drawing the demolition rubble to the west of the building.
With only minutes before the end of the day, however, Hayley made a huge discovery, in the form of a what appears to be a giant tile (or possibly tiles). Quite what this will be remains to be seen but James G thinks it’s probably part of one of the buildings walls.
The day ended with the team returning to camp to enjoy fajitas prepared by Holly-Ann and Kevin.
Tomorrow the team is looking forward to cleaning up the features on site, in preparation for Historic England visiting on Thursday, as the end of the first two week session approaches rapidly.
Elliot (who is writing this blog with James G) has received a request to make the blog funnier, so he wants to begin with an anecdote from his childhood:
When I was a young lad, I had a pet snail. I wanted to make it go faster, so I took its shell off, but it only made it more sluggish.
Elliot (aka Spannerman) at the rear of this photo. He writes blogs, researches late Roman and symmetrical archaeology and occasionally wins open mic competitions.
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After a few deliberations over the weekend James G decided that the day should kick off with the removal of the remnants of the mixed rubble / backfill deposit that fills the building. We started by numbering this deposit (115) and proceeded with the whole team to mattock it off of the interior of Room 4.
One of the aims of this task was to reveal a partition or cross wall excavated by Hayward. Holly and Pete (newly joining us from SSARG) found the line of this wall, although there is far less of it than Hayward’s report suggests. We also found what might be the late ‘squatter’ partition wall in Room 4. If our interpretation is correct then this feature is further south than we might have thought.
There was good news on the finds front. For the first time we’ve discovered large, fresh sherds of BB1 pottery. One impressive chunk comes from a jar and other finds were made by hawkeye Hayley who spotted a coin! We also showed these finds to Carol, the landowner, who visited us today.
Due to our pre-emptive sun dancing, the sun was kind enough to stay behind clouds for the majority of the day. Unfortunately for our team, however, the fields in which we are working were being harvested, and although everyone was excited to see a combine harvester in action, the dust and pollen kicked up by the machine caused intense break-outs of sneezing across the trench.
Meanwhile, Elliot picked up where Hayley left off in the South-Eastern corner of the trench, searching for the corn dryer mentioned in Hayward’s original report. Despite his best efforts, Elliot was unsuccessful in his quest, ultimately concluding that the corn dryer is either outside of the trench, or had been removed entirely by Hayward’s team.
All the while, Hayley supervised Dan, Chris, James I, Charlotte, Antonia, Imogen and Kevin in the big mattocking exercise.
The end of the day saw James G’s family join him for the week from Newcastle.
The team returned home to spaghetti Bolognese, expertly prepared by James S and Henry. This could only be topped by our TV interview being broadcast on BBC Points West!