15 Jul 2015

Festival Of Archaeology 2015 - Forty Hall - Day 2


the site

A glorious day in Forty Hall, spoiled only slightly by misbehaving archaeology. The archaeology of Elsyng Palace has been notoriously unpredictable ever since we first opened a trench here in 1963, and so it came as no great surprise when we recorded and lifted the line of rubble we thought yesterday was lying over a wall, to find it was only the fill of a very shallow linear cut.

As we noted yesterday, the rubble line was substantially thinner than the wall we were expecting, despite the fact that it was in exactly the position and alignment we had predicted. We extended the trench, as planned, to the north to make sure there is no sign of an interior building floor, and to be sure the wall had not changed direction slightly, but after a hard day's mattocking we were rewarded only with a skim of ubiquitous demolition rubble.

no wall in this trench
the disappearing wall...

Compared to last year's trench, there is very little rubble -- another sign that we are some distance from any demolished structure. As we said yesterday, this may require a radical rethink in strategy. Tomorrow we may extend the trench south to double-check the line of the ornamental moat runs where we predicted, before changing tack -- because the site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument any radical change in the dig plans will need to be sanctioned by Historic England. Luckily, they're planning on visiting the site tomorrow, so we'll be able to discuss it in person.

It's early enough in the dig not to cause panic yet, but we'll need to get a grip on the archaeology tomorrow, so that we're not rushing to catch up with ourselves at the weekend -- we'd also quite like to have something interesting to show the public on Sunday!


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