Day 30: Friday 30th July

After 6 weeks of digging, trowelling, planning and blogging, the Manor Lodge exacavations have come to an end. It has been a brilliant 6 weeks. Lots has been learnt, many friendships have been made, and there has been a whole lot of fun had.

Weather: Grey

Word of the day: Goodbye

Find of the day: Fragments of what could be an early cup/drinking vessel. (Pictured below)

The drain pipe has been taken out of trench 16.

Philippa and Gregg on finds.

Eleanor and Kate spent some time today digging a sondage. They then planned it and photographed it. Eleanor's try before you buy course fees has gone really well. She is almost 87% certain she wants to study Archaeology at university.

Rachel and Caitlin were digging for bedrock today and kept finding loads of charcoal. You can see the colour difference in the soil sample buckets. These samples will be sent off for sampling.

If you look really closely, at the bottom of the wall where Lily and Cherubin are digging a much older part of the wall has been found.

Hutch with his mattock.

Charlie's Beard 1.

Charlie's Beard 2.

Team trench 16. Lily, Hutch, Buttery Jonathan, Kanani and Cherubin.

We also asked a few of the group who had been here for the full six weeks what they had enjoyed most:

Alvaro: When the sun was shining and lots of good working and conscientious people.

Buttery Jonathan: Seeing a squirrel fall out of tree, Learning loads, meeting everyone and working with them.

Hutch: Finding the hoard of saggars.

Cherubin: The amount I've learnt and the friends I've made.

Lily: Finding the drain pipe.

Lauren: Imparting my wisdom to training archaeologists.

Day 29: Thursday 29th July

Weather: Some sun.

Word of the day: Saggar

Find of the day: Around 7 buckets of pieces of saggars were removed from trench 16. (Pictured below are a number of pieces that fit together.)

Buttery Jonathan and Hutch were on saggar duty. Here they are with full circular bases found in the trench.

Shannon was collecting soil samples today to be send for floatation.

Lily and Cherubim spent the day clearing the area around the drain pipe. They had their work cut out for them because the soil was mainly all clay. To conquer this problem they used spades rather than shovels (spades are flat) so they could cut into the clay in order to remove it.

Our brilliant and dedicated tea lady, Charlotte was trowelling in trench 17 today to see if, where they are trowelling is actually a feature.

Blake was sieveing the soil taken from trench 17 to see if there were any finds in it.

Gregg and Charlotte (pictured) , as well as Philippa, Margret and Kanani were on Extreme Finds Processing today. We have one day left of the dig and more finds were coming out of trench 16 today then have been found in trench 18 over the whole dig! They were washing outside in the sun and moved inside later on when the cold winds came.

Kate and Eleanor were planning trench 18 today.

Yesterday, Trench 15 reached bedrock, so today Rachel and Caitlin were also planning.

Charlie's Beard is a digestive.

Day 28: Wednesday 28th July

Weather: Grey.

Word of the day: Drain pipe

Find of the day: The rest of the drain pipe and where it leads. ( Pictured below)

You can see the rest of the drain pipe pictured above. This is the Victorian drainage system from the houses here at the Manor during the 18th/19th century.



This is what we thought was a cellar, but it seems that the pipe is actually leading down into it. Could this actually be where waste was stored? This photograph was taken from the pipe side of the pit.

Lily and Cherubin chasing a pipe dream!

This is the makers mark discovered on friday and breifly written about yesterday. We were sent some brilliant information from Chris Cumberpatch about it. Thankyou Chris. The mark is infact that of the Don Pottery and is dated to the period of the Barker family (1839-1893). It shows 'a circular garter enclosing enclosing a demi-lion holding a plain pennon'. This mark is often accompanied by the initials S.B & S (Samuel Barker & Sons) and is usually found at the bottom of the mark. This pottery comes from Swinton and Mexborough and founded by John Green in 1801. Don Pottery is not uncommon on sites in Sheffield. A large quantity was found on a site in Upper Allen Street. As well as local markets, the pottery had an extensive trade via Hull. For more information, there is a book available at Doncaster Museum by John Griffin about this pottery.

Hutch doing some shovelling and general cleaning up of his section of trench 16 so it is ready for photographs.

Hutch, The King of the spoil heap.

A roof tile that was covering the drain pipe.

Today in trench 18 it was all girls. We renamed it Team G/Trench G. Here are the lovely ladies. Eleanor, Katie, Philppa, Kate and Charlotte.

Charlie has left site. There is no Charlie's Beard today (we forgot) so expect 2 tomorrow. Apologies.

Introducing...

Name: Carrie. Ba Classical and Historical Archaeology.
Likes: Foreign foods and the cinema.

Dislikes: Digging in the rain, spiders and being late.

Favourite Films: Inception, The Mummy films, and The Lady and the Tramp.

Favourite 3 course meal: Nachos for starters, Lamb Rogan Josh for main with all the trimmings and for desert some Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
If I could be involved in any archaeological dig, I'd like to excavate: Mesoamerica.

http://www.theancientweb.com/explore/content.aspx?content_id=19