A grey damp misty day, but some very good archaeology made it all worthwhile, though the photo above may suggest otherwise! The complete outside face of the south wall of the cottage has now been excavated down to the original ground surface. The trench was just a shovel’s width, but apparently this is adequate for […]
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The past few dig days have been spent cleaning up the site ready for a hi-res 3-d laser scan from SeSurveying.co.uk. So we were somewhat frustrated to discover that Castle Hill nature reserve’s 15 Exmoor ponies had been partying all over our (almost nearly) clean archaeology! Hopefully our new strategically placed hazard tape will restrict […]
A beautiful sunny day, quality finds, and some interested visitors. A couple of people who missed our official tours got a private tour today. One of them joined us digging and wishes to return as a new volunteer. A walk was taken to visit Castle Hill NNR’s Exmoor ponies. They are mostly a little nervous […]
It was good to get back to digging again after our recent weekend of guided tours. Our current priority is getting the site squeaky clean, ready for a high-resolution 3d-laser scan offered us for free by SeSurveying. With this in mind we have also started further excavation of the outside of the front garden wall […]
It certainly was a busy week since the last blog post. Extra hours during the week were spent getting the site looking at its best for our successful weekend of guided tours. Both the nineteenth century kitchen and the scullery had all of their covering vegetation removed, along with much of their topsoil cover and […]
A very blustery day was spent stripping back the topsoil from within the Newmarket Farm Cottage’s 19th century washhouse. As expected there very few finds; the strangest of which was a hard black plastic screw fitting ‘something’ – a cross between a table lamp light fitting and a fancy hose pipe connector. The surviving terracotta […]
A really good day. Lots of finds, a new feature, and positive feedback on a rehearsal for my guided tour next week. The brick foundation of the cottage’s internal wall was excavated along its complete length, and the division between the two main downstairs rooms can now be clearly seen. As expected, since the 1950’s […]
As you may already know, the Newmarket Farm was located in what is now the top north-west corner of the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve. The reserve is in two halves; the south-eastern part, on the slopes of Castle Hill itself, overlooking the site of the hamlet of Balsdean, which is particularly important for the […]
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 […]
Monday afternoon we took the opportunity of a break in the weather to excavate down through the chalk rubble backfill which formed the foundation for the ~1880 extension’s floor. A sondage dug back in May found a mortared surface under this chalk rubble fill. Because the east end of the extension was lost to the […]
Newmarket Hill 