Day Four: Thursday 24th June

Weather: Cool

Word of the Day: Mattock

Find of the Day: Fragments of a small canine.

Today saw cooler weather then days gone by, plenty of mattocking and a collection of bones from a small canine. We also had a lecture in the afternoon led by Jill Campbell, a PhD graduate student from Queen's University Belfast. It explored 'Were Medieval Buildings and Landscapes designed?'. Jill used examples from her own research and study. This proved very interesting and relevant to the current excavations taking place at Manor Lodge.


Did you know? For 18 days in November 1530, Cardinal Wolsey was held captive at Manor Lodge. It was whilst Wolsey was awaiting an escort to deliver him into the custody of Henry VIII in London.

Above are the canine bones found in Trench 18. The students were incredibly pleased to finally find something interesting.

Here is Masters student Charlie Hay using his artistic talents to plan every feature of Trench 15 onto the Site Plan.



Becky Hankinson is officially entered into the Best Hat Competition. If we spy a good hat on site we will post a picture here. Eventually we will have a winner. Becky is sporting a very fetching tweed flat cap.

In Trench 18 a piece of pottery was found that looks remarkably like a segment of party food favourite, the party ring.

Tom Barnard, a BSc Archaeology student from Sheffield University was busy digging down to the base of an evaluation trench built in the 1970s

Each day students keep field diaries. These are logs of what was found, the location of these finds, how they dealt with the finds...etc. Above is Charlie Hay and Jonathan Buttery hard at work recording their day on site.