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 27: Tuesday 27th July

Weather: Grey, chilly but luckily the rain held off.

Word of the day: Soil heap.

Find of the day: A clay pipe bowl with a skull on it. (Pictured below)

On friday's blog we posted a picture of this, a makers mark. We have since found the other half. It is not actually a dog and flag but a lion. We will give you some more information on this tomorrow.

In trench 16 they have discovered a large number of Saggars. You can spot them in the photograph above poping out of the soil. (They are a sort of red/brown colour).

Margret was one of the community volunteers from last week and she enjoyed herself so much that she came back for the day to really get stuck in with the digging. She spent her day working with Carrie, Charlie, and Rachel in Trench 15, mattocking and shovelling down to bedrock.

Cherubin has been busy trying to find the rest of the victorian pipe discovered in trench 16 two weeks ago. He has had his work cut out. There is lots of clay in the soil in this particular part of trench 16.

This is the waste pot found in trench 15 that the school children from yesterday were very interested in. It is like a ceramic bin. Lots of pieces of glass were found in the ruins of the pot. Maybe this is an early version of recycling?

Rachel and Charlie matttocking in trench 15.

Like clay pipe, we have found loads of animal teeth. Today we found part of a cow's jaw in trench 18 with teeth still attached.

Charlie's Beard. Still looks patchy. Charlie has now left site for greener pastures (aka a holiday). So to say goodbye we threw him in the soil heap. Charlie's Beard will still be a feature here though.

Introducing...

Name: Eleanor. Has just finished her AS-levels and is planning to apply to study Archaeology at University. She is here to see if she actually likes it.

Likes: Chocolate, romcoms and swimming.

Dislikes: Spiders, snakes and too much exercise.

Favourite films: The Notebook, There's Something About Mary, and The Hangover.

I can't live without: My Mobile Phone

Weird Fact: Eleanor can touch her nose wirh her tongue.

If I could be involved in any Archaeological excavation, I'd like to excavate: The Necropolis underneath the Vatican.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Necropolis

Day Two: Tuesday 22nd June

Another great day on site. Lots of interesting finds, beautiful weather and buckets of soil. We have removed much of the topsoil and are now down to the subsoil.

Weather: Hot and sunny

Word of the Day: Subsoil

Find of the day: A mysterious jaw bone was discovered. It is from either a bird or animal but is as of yet un-identified. Check back tomorrow for pictures and hopefully the mystery animal will be identified.

Here are some more finds from the second day of the excavation:

A box of ceramic fragments from trench 17.

Saggar fragments uncovered in trench 15. Saggars are fireclay containers made from tough clay which supported and protected the ware from flames, ashes, smoke and kiln gases during the first firing in the kilns. The term 'Saggar' comes from 'Safeguard, refelecting its function. 18th-19th Century.

Pieces of clay pipe.

Pieces of decorated clay pipe from trench 15. One fragment features the name 'William Wild'.

A round game piece discovered in trench 17.

Fragments of blue and white ceramic. 2 of the fragments fit together. These were found by Charlie Hay who is an Masters Archaeology student .