Yesterday was a busy day with about 400 visitors being shown around site and another 100 attending the evening talk. We were all pretty exhausted and shell shocked by the end. We were pleased to enjoy a lie in before working a half day in the afternoon.

In the morning Andy and James G bought supplies for the week and the team wolfed down some sandwiches before lunch and a productive afternoon of archaeology.

An old friend – Woofton – joined us in the afternoon. Woofton’s been a companion and mascot for the dig since 2014 and he enjoyed sunning himself in the hypocaust!

Lucy and Becca were tasked with drawing a huge plan of the apsidal room, its joining hypocaust room and the connecting stoke hole channel.

While that was going on, James G, Matt and Freddie discovered that what we thought were capstones of a water pipe in the south east corner of the trench turned out to be the south end of the water pipe channel.

Meanwhile, Doug, James B and Tom were working on the burnt patch that Hayward identified as a squatter hearth. After Josh, Tilly, Jeff and Frankie had finished their work in Room 4 they came as back up to help Doug and co clean up their context for Andy to photograph it.

Elliot spent the day working all over the trench doing bits of recording and helping out the rest of the team. Hayley was tasked with taking out the rubble from the wall on the back of Room 2, revealing another water pipe channel.

At the end of the day, the team ordered pizzas for tea. Andy, James G and Elliot went to collect the leaning tower of pizza and brought back the team’s rations.

We’re entering the final week of excavation tomorrow – it’s the last stretch of work for the team and we need to make every minute on site count!

Today most of the team were rained off and it was up to James G, Andy, Elliot, Hayley and Pete to work on site.

At the start of the day, Elliot and Hayley were tasked with drawing the southern limit of excavation in its entirety. After entering the mirror world and accidentally drawing it backwards they managed to rectify it.

Meanwhile Andy was struggling with the GPS and the Total Station which both thought they were still in Greece!

While everyone else was working hard, James G and Pete started excavating a hypocausted room connected to the apsidal room in the north end of the trench.

At lunch time, the van was struck with tragedy as it found its back wheel in a ditch. After several (unsuccessful) attempts at problem solving, the team had to ask the landowner, James Pullen to pull the van out of a ditch with his tractor. James saved the day and pulled the van out of the hole to allow us to continue our work.

James G, Elliot and Pete continued to work hard all afternoon until Doug arrived with Hayley and Andy to provide some back up for the end of the day.

After Jeff decided to over salt the chilli, the team went to the Airfield Tavern for their tea.

The team are all looking forward to the open day tomorrow and continuing the excavation!

At the start of the day, Elliot and Doug were tasked with cleaning up what Elliot began working on yesterday – an unexcavated room in the Northern end of the trench.

After cleaning up the feature, Andy took some photographs and Doug was reassigned with working through the trench, filling out various masonry context sheets for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, Andy led his team of Jeff, Freddie, Becca, Frankie and Matt in diving deeper into Room 4.  Although the team worked hard, they failed to turn up any mosaics in the room. Indeed, it would appear that any mosaics here are long gone. Removed by the excavations of the 1950s and 1960s.

Hayley, meanwhile worked with Lucy to continue to excavate their oven on the East side of the trench, before moving on to more mosaic hunting in the South-East corner of the trench (again to no avail). They did, however, identify the line of the stone channel for the waterpipe.

James G, Elliot and Pete returned to their room to peel back the newly recorded context…

… to reveal some exciting archaeology.  They discovered a channel bordered by two giant burnt hamstones, which may have been used as a stoke hole for the heated flooring of the villa.

At the end of the day, the team returned home to see that James B had been working hard processing finds, as Josh prepared our tea of Spaghetti Bolognese.

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!