Here I am making public the dates of my forthcoming volunteer dig days! The next three days are: We work on site every Friday and Sunday, 10am-4pm, from April to December 2013. Volunteers and other visitors are most welcome. We meet at the Falmer Road Car Park, Woodingdean (just N of the junction with Bexhill […]
Tag: Dig
Another hurdle has been cleared! Smiths Gore, who manage Brighton & Hove City Council’s farmland portfolio (including Castle Hill Nature Reserve), have obtained formal permission for me to go ahead with my excavation project. There is now only one more permission to be obtained – namely that of being able to dig on a nature […]
Sunday 13th January, 2013 My (nearly) 13 year old niece and my mother, braved the cold to help me find out whether a plan of Newmarket Farm which we had was an accurate representation of the archaeology on the ground. The plan was a copy of the one that was found in documents held in […]
Yesterday I was really pleased to receive a positive reply to my proposal to excavate the site of Newmarket Farm from Natural England’s, Senior Reserves Manager, Malcolm Emery. I wrote my proposal to conduct an archaeological dig shortly before Christmas, and sent a copy to Malcolm Emery, who is responsible for Castle Hill National Nature […]
It all started with my mother pointing out that a pile of demolition rubble over the Downs beyond Woodingdean, hidden by nettles and brambles, was her birth place. So I asked her uncle, Dougie Holland – an artist who had distant memories of the farm – to paint a picture of what it might have […]
Welcome to Newmarket Hill – a South Down Blog!

In 1830, in the heart of the South Downs, a remote farm labourer’s cottage and barns was built. This blog records my efforts to discover some of its many stories.