Fifty Second Dig Day – Wednesday 23rd October 2013

A mid-week unofficial half day’s digging to help get the site ready for our dig tour. The east end of the 1880(-ish) extension to the south of the cottage was further excavated and cleaned up. The relatively few finds were expected since they would only be spillage from from the 1950’s bulldozer cut. This had completely removed both the west and east walls, including their foundations, and all of the floor of this room. The finds included some undecorated 19th century clay tobacco pipe stem fragments.

In photo above, both the south wall of the cottage and the north boundary wall of the site can clearly be seen. Both of these walls clearly show the double struck pointing between the courses of flints. These lines are more or less horizontal on the south cottage wall, but on the north boundary garden wall they – more or less – follow the slope of the ground surface. On the ground surface of the garden, yard & paths between the cottage and this latter wall, the rain had washed out a few more finds. These included;

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  a medium sized shard of a very beautifully designed black and white plate;

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  Our third coin – a farthing – dated 1927. It is interesting to note that this and the 2 halfpennies found earlier, all dated from the reign of George V. His reign was for about a quarter of the cottage’s time of occupation.