Tuesday 22 July 2014

22 July 2014, Hickleton Hall POW Project Day 2

The team were greeted by another beautiful day today, the sun was shining again, all great weather for some great archaeology! The day began with clearing off the concrete of the hut base from yesterday.


It didn't take long before all the topsoil was removed and we could start to see the full extents of the concreted base.


The base is ringed by post holes, like this rectangular one that Ant found:


So the team sat down to clearing out each and everyone of them! There are over twenty in total, some of them had the remains of the wooden posts and nails still in situ.


The cleaning still wasn't finished, however, and it was then time to trowel clean the top of the base, this removes all the small clods of earth that have been trampled onto the concrete by us working on it.


This cleaning didn't take long and the hut base was so clean that you could almost eat your dinner off it!


The the site photos were taken of the base, these will be put into the report when all the work is finished. The scales are one meter long.


Another reason for the cleaning is that small features may be missed, such as these wavy lines, created by corrugated iron sheets being pressed into the concrete when it was wet. You can just make them out as faint lines below the scale rod and above the lip of the concrete.


Meanwhile, we turned our attention to the remains of the Summer House, to the south of the camp. This has fallen into a bad state of repair, so we are going to record it as part of the project. Here Martin and Ant begin cleaning the floor surface, so it can be drawn and recorded fully.


It didn't take long before they came down onto a set of flag stones that were still in good condition. Philip will record this structure, as he has a background in architecture!


Back at the base, Helen and Vince began excavated a small trench, known as a sondage, to attempt to understand the way in which the base was constructed. This small trench will save us digging a larger trench around the entire base and will answer the questions we are asking.


Very quickly they hit a set of bricks that had been used as an entrance step and a clinker surface, very similar to the paths that we encountered last year on the site. The entrance is exactly where we thought it might be, but was not visible on the previous hut base we excavated last year.


It was from the clinker layer that the find of the day was recovered; this British army shirt button! It was right on top of the path level and was probably swept out of the hut after falling off a soldier's shirt!


So, a busy day all in all, with lots of great results and lots of work done. There is more to come from this exciting project and we will be updating this blog daily, also check out our Twitter and Facebook for more updates on Elmet and what we are up to!

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