Newmarket Hill (under construction)

Tag: Excavation

  • Upcoming Events

    Here I am making public the dates of my forthcoming volunteer dig days! The next three days are:

    Location When Summary Description
    Castle Hill car park, Sea View Way, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 6NT, UK 2026-10-20 at 10:30 – 11:30 Castle Hill Healthwalk Castle Hill Healthwalk: Explore this stunning chalk grassland National  Nature Reserve. (When conditions are muddy,  and on the last Tuesday of the month, the walk  follows an alternative route around Bullock Hill,  opposite the reserve.)Meeting Place: Castle Hill National Nature Reserve Car Park, Woodingdean, off  Falmer Road (B2123), just north of the junction with Bexhill Road. …
    Castle Hill car park, Sea View Way, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 6NT, UK 2026-10-27 at 10:30 – 11:30 Castle Hill Healthwalk Castle Hill Healthwalk: Explore this stunning chalk grassland National  Nature Reserve. (When conditions are muddy,  and on the last Tuesday of the month, the walk  follows an alternative route around Bullock Hill,  opposite the reserve.)Meeting Place: Castle Hill National Nature Reserve Car Park, Woodingdean, off  Falmer Road (B2123), just north of the junction with Bexhill Road. …

    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 Rd) but please contact me beforehand in case we have to cancel for any reason.

    David Cuthbertson: scienceinthegreen@yahoo.co.uk

  • Excavation Planning

    Happier now! In my last post (pun not intended!) I realised I needed to read about Project Planning in general. As a result I realised I was trying to put my cart in front of the horse; I was trying to timetable an hypothetical end point of one year, and then working backwards towards how to get there, and getting lost along the way.

    Instead I tried brainstorming each of the outcomes I hope to achieve – one trench at a time – mini project stages in and of themselves – and each following on from the one before.

    And it seems to have worked – apart from the timescale part (I can deal with that later) – and so it is that I now have a provisional list of targets:

    1. Find NE corner of garden boundary wall (1x1m trench on corner & extend if required to max 2x2m)
    2. Find S boundary wall junction; including corner of farmyard & garden & possible gdn structure (1x1m trench on estimated junction & extend if required to 3x2m)
    3. Find SW corner of water tank on boundary wall (1x1m trench & extend if required to 2x2m)
    4. Find NW corner of water tank on boundary wall (1x1m trench & extend if required to 2x2m)
    5. Find SW corner of house on boundary wall (1x1m trench & extend if required to 2x2m)
    6. Find NW corner of house on boundary wall (1x1m trench & extend if required to 2x2m)
    7. Find internal house wall lines on W side of house (three 1x1m trenches increased to 1x3m if required)
    8. Find front door and front garden gate (two 2x1m trench enlarged to 3x1m if required)
    9. Find NE corner of house, including ‘wood-shed’ (2x1m trench enlarged to 3x1m if required)
    10. Find SE corner of ‘wood-shed’ & projection of E side of house, possible back-door & internal house wall (2x2m trench enlarged to 3x3m if required)
    11. Find door in internal wall (2x1m trench enlarged to 3x1m if required)
    12. Find fireplace (2x1m trench enlarged to 3x1m if required)
    13. Clear vegetation on mound of demolition rubble & look for chimney pots
    Newmarket Cottage Trench Plan; January 2013.
    Newmarket Cottage Trench Plan; January 2013. Base plan from ESRO.

    This only provisional – but I have to start somewhere.

  • Project Planning and a hurting head!

    My head hurts! I am new to the formal discipline of Project Planning. I am trying to understand English Heritage’s guidelines on how I might best plan my archaeological excavation. There is so much to get my head around, both regarding the details of Project Planning in general, and the details of my own particular project.

    My Newmarket Farm Excavation Proposal Document was relatively easily to write, because it did not have to go into the small details. It was based on the English Heritage MoRPHE (Management of Research Projects in the Historic Environment) planning guidance. I recently completed a distance learning familiarisation course on the use of MoRPHE, which enabled me to realise that what I had attained was just the tip of the iceberg. Now that the Project Proposal Document has generally been accepted by both Greg Chuter and Malcolm Emery, I need to write the Project Design Document, which is to detail all the stuff that I am not – yet – entirely sure how to do.

    So I sat down and started to learn the subject of Project Management. Oh yes, and I wrote this post.