| AGM 2019 |
The AGM on 3rd April 2019 resolved to retain subscriptions for 2019/20 at £12 for individual membership and £18 for families.
Mike Coles has taken over the role of field officer, but as co-ordinator only: members are encouraged to search out fieldwalking sites. Other officers and committee remain unchanged, Terry Dymott becoming an ordinary committee member. |
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| Another good day at Clopton |
| 17/10/2019 |
Weather gods cheated again!! Another good sunny day at Clopton where we managed to complete walking the field and answered our questions. The pottery gradually diminishes as you move west and more or less stops by the end of New Forest. Finds became polarised - as the photo shows. We had post-medieval glazed ware and a carborundum whetstone at one end and quite a few prehistoric flints at the other, including some fine blades. Medieval finds were still found but in only small numbers.
Our next option is to seek permission to head down hill and find where the southern limit is.
We are going to try and finish the Comberton field this Sunday - weather permitting, of course | |  |
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| Another lost Sunday but joy on Tuesday |
| 15/10/2019 |
Yet another Sunday lost to wet weather - however we cheated the weather gods by going out on a Tuesday to Clopton, near the DMV site. This was a very busy morning and resulted in the collection of 92 bags of mostly medieval pottery. There were other things like a clay pipe, a thick tile (or a thin brick) plus a number of pieces of lava stone. Some items are shown in the photograph here.
The purpose of our investigation is to find how far from the western boundary of the scheduled area this pottery scatter goes. Although the amount of pottery found has decreased, we are still finding material at a distance of about 0.5km from the boundary. | |  |
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| Weather fine so had to go walking |
| 9/10/2019 |
The weather has been fine for a couple of days so it felt we had to go field walking at Comberton on a Wednesday. The conditions were ideal although the surface was partly obscured by straw. There were not many finds, mostly very abraded post-medieval pot. However there was a nice worked flint blade, as shown in the photograph.
We hope to be out at the weekend but yet again the weather forecast is not good - perhaps we need to go out on any day but a Sunday at present. | |  |
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| And still the Sunday rains continue |
| 6/10/2019 |
The Autumn of 2019 is becoming a wash out, especially on Sunday mornings it seems. The weather radar map shown here for 9am this morning shows the extent of the rain clouds and how heavy the rain has been (red = heaviest, of course) over Cambridge. The typical heavy Cambridgeshire clay soils are more or less unwalkable under these conditions.
The long range forecast for next Sunday still indicates more rain is likely, so perhaps we need to choose another day of the week to escape it. Let us keep our fingers crossed and hope for a change in the weather soon. | |  |
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| It's a weather conspiracy!! |
| 30/9/2019 |
| Yet another weekend lost to the inclement weather and a coming weekend that looks very similar. We will try to get to Comberton this coming weekend but the predicted weather is bad. Please contact us before you head out to the site. The parking instructions are the same as before. |
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| First field walking effort a write-off |
| 22/9/2019 |
| We had planned our first field walking exercise at the weekend on land in Comberton, this was to complete sites we had started last year. However, as they say, Man proposes, Mother Nature disposes. The persistent rain both before and on the day made walking on the clay soils too difficult. So we look forward to next weekend when we try again - keep your fingers crossed!! |
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| Some of the interesting finds from our processing |
| 23/8/2019 |
| As we carry on processing the finds we have found only a small number of bricks, mostly a small fragments. However, the photograph shows one of the substantial pieces of brick which is interesting. This brick shows signs pf glaze on the flat top and one of the long sides. Whether the long side glaze is material that has dribbled down from the flat top while being fired is unclear. The brick also has a substantial amount of mortar on the short side and the underside opposite the glazed portion. Dimensions that can be measured are 103.2mm wide and 54mm deep. The glaze looks very medieval in colour. | |  |
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| Processing continues |
| 10/7/2019 |
Our work on the Ickleton material continues. We have now finished sorting and washing the tile and brick. The amount of tile is amazing - 16 bags of tile weighing a total of 46.78 kilos is the total so far but with more to be bagged and weighed. As an example, one bag from context 1902 weighed 5.095k and contained 656 pieces of tile and brick!!
All the other material has been washed but now needs to be catalogued.
UPDATE: The total weight of the tile and brick after processing came to 76.65 kilos. |
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| The mixed finds from all periods |
| 2/7/2019 |
As we work through our finds from Ickleton, so the wide spread of periods becomes more obvious. The photograph shows what appears to be a Roman tegula tile which came from the same levels that were producing post-medieval finds. There is a scheduled Roman villa site some distance to the south of the village of Ickleton, is this the likely source?
The stratigraphy of our site is totally mixed up, with Roman finds near Anglo-Saxon near medieval near post-medieval - and all in the top 30cm or so of the trench. As yet we have no idea where this mixed-up back-fill material came from - were there dumps on the farmhouse area itself or was the material imported from elsewhere. Time will, hopefully, tell. | |  |
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| More from the Ickleton pottery finds |
| 30/6/2019 |
As mentioned before, we have found quite a lot of Staffordshire combed ware, some of which is shown in the photograph. How many vessels it represents is hard to tell.
As processing goes on we have also found several pieces of early slip wares, all in the upper layers above the cobbled surface we have uncovered.
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Along with the late 17th/early 18th C Staffordshire wares we have a medieval jug handle with stabbed decoration, shown here. The proximity of the two sorts of finds is further evidence for the backfill of this area being done with material from several different, and widely separated in time, sources of waste.
The latest news on the iron dress pin featured earlier is very interesting. Our favourite expert Helen has confirmed that it is most likely to be Middle Anglo-Saxon in date, i.e. from the period 8th - 9th century. This, plus the early glazed floor tiles, is a tantalising clue to the priory we were seeking. | |  |
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| Further finds from our processing of Ickleton material |
| 25/6/2019 |
Sorry for the lack of recent posts - computer issues meant nothing could be entered on the website until yesterday.
As we continue to process material from Ickleton we have seen some very interesting pottery like the colourful slipware shown in the photograph. As well as the Bellarmine pottery mentioned before we have recovered quite a few pieces of Staffordshire slipware with combed patterns - not enough to make a complete vessel but some pieces we can join together.
The broken tile (mostly) and brick are a weighty mass of material - one relatively medium sized bag alone produced over 10lbs (4.6kg) of tile. We still have a lot of material to process and other interesting finds will undoubtedly come to light. Keep watching the website for more information as it emerges. | |  |
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| Another interesting find |
| 15/6/2019 |
| When field walking and metal detecting Roman sites it is not unusual to find metal pins with decorated heads and made in bronze. However, this find looks like a typical Roman pin but is made in iron. It has a fluted design on the head. We cannot find an equivalent mentioned in the literature but we will carry on looking. | |  |
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| Getting closer to the Priory? |
| 15/6/2019 |
As we work through the finds we are uncovering some interesting pieces. The photograph shows a partially glazed floor tile, measuring 5" (longest edge), 4.5" (other main edge) and 1" thick. I use inches as this medieval tile would have been made with those measurements. The glaze is greenish in colour and quite worn. The glaze only covers the top of the tile but glaze has dribbled down the edges.
This tile most probably came from an important medieval building, like a Priory, on account of its age. We have so far retrieved three similar tiles, but this is the largest piece found. | |  |
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| Ickleton dig proceeds |
| 7/6/2019 |
Our dig at Ickleton is proceeding, but at a slow pace due to the difficulties of digging through a layer of compacted cobbles that lies just below the topsoil. We have potentially found a wall, probably robbed out at the dissolution of the Priory. Also a mortar/clunch floor surface has been uncovered which may lie inside (or possibly outside) the structure.
The cobble layer still produces masses of 19th C tile and some brick. The quantity of nails increases by the moment, some of them large hand-made timber nails. Pottery comes from a wide range of periods - lots of Staffordshire combed ware and glazed redware in abundance. | |  |
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| Some of the pottery does come from the medieval period, like the piece shown in the photograph. This is called a "bunghole cistern". The drawing from Oswestry shows some forms recovered there, most are jugs with straight sides like the upper example but others are well rounded jugs like the second example and ours. The surrounding edge of the bunghole is often decorated by thumbing, like ours. This is an interesting piece because we have not seen its like before. There are some more interesting pieces to show at a later date. | |  |
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| Our first day at Ickleton |
| 1/6/2019 |
What luxury - the turf taken off by a turf cutter and the top 10cm of soil removed by a digger. It certainly saves time.
We came dowm straightaway on to a level of cobbles which correspond very well with the feature shown in the geophysics plot. | |  |
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| From the upper layers we have already retrieved some interesting find, like these three pieces from a Bellarmine jug. This is a type of decorated salt-glazed stoneware that was manufactured in Germany and Holland throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. They incorporated a stamped image of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621). He was notorious as a bitter opponent of the Dutch Reformed Church and Protestants who disliked him used to smash the jugs.
They were also used as "witch bottles" where people filled the jug with certain articles, sealed it and buried it in order to deflect a witch's curse. | |  |
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| Geophys at our Ickleton site |
| 15/5/2019 |
As the date of our proposed excavation at Ickleton draws closer, the plot shown here is the resistivity plot for the area with our intended trench line. The red(high res) areas of the plot delineate the shape of a roughly square structure? with a much lower res (blue) interior. Our intention is to sample the line across the possible structure to take in both the possible wall and the centre.
We have already laid out a 10m x 2m trench, the next step is immediately before our excavation to get the turf removed with a turf cutter and the topsoil removed by a digger. We will observe both these steps to see any features that may appear. | |  |
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