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.

As the first team of diggers left Lufton throughout the day, it was up to Hayley, Elliot, James G, Andy, Sally, Min and Pete to do some last minute work on site before the weekend and the arrival of the second team.

The day started with everyone recording some contexts and drawing some plans,while Andy used the Total Station and the GPS to double check all the grid points on the site.

Meanwhile, Sally and James G got the planning frames out to draw some complex masonry and deposits on the Eastern and the Northern end of the site.

Towards the end of the day we did a bit of gentle digging to excavate a robber trench for the corridor’s external wall. Close to home time Dan, James I and Chris dropped by site before heading off back to the north east to say goodbye and Andy treated the team to some ice lollies before we packed up for the weekend.

Everyone is looking forward to catching up on some sleep and getting some R&R over the weekend before the digging resumes on Monday.

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!

Today was the end of the first week of excavation at Lufton Roman Villa.

The team struggled with the heat today, but despite the weather they managed to be incredibly productive throughout the whole day.

The team was also joined on site today by Sue from SSARG.

Andy spent the day surveying the trench using the GPS and Total Station equipment (below) to set up the site grid.

James G spent most of the day directing the action and trying to wrestle with all of the exposed contexts, he did find tie to start recording the building (below).

Elliot led James I, Henry and Sue in exploring some difficult archaeology in the North-Eastern Corner of the trench. This mainly seems to be backfill from Hayward’s excavation overlying earlier Roman deposits.

Meanwhile, Hayley was in charge of Dan and Kevin as they searched the South-Eastern corner for the villa’s corn dryer. We didn’t find the corn dryer (the trench may just be a little too far north) but did determine the edges of some of the trenches from the earlier excavation.

Situated between those two teams, Holly-Ann directed Charlotte and Chris in attempting to resolve the stratigraphy of the newly christened wall 111. They added about 4m of length to the wall by removing the fill of a robber cut (identified yesterday) to expose the wall’s lower courses. An important discovery was what is almost certainly the line of the waterpipe discovered in the earlier excavation. This is further evidence that the trench has been located in the right place to answer our questions.

Although the day yielded little in way of finds, at the end of the day the entire team was proud of how much work they had achieved across their first week.

We returned to camp to enjoy cheesy pasta prepared by Imogen and Antonia.

Everyone is looking forward to a day off tomorrow that should hopefully start with a nice lie in!