Commandery Dig Diary 2005

Tuesday 21 June

The dig begins!!

During the few days before the official start date, diggers came in and cleared off the top soil that was burying the walls and floors of the historic buildings beneath.

(while reading the diary - hold your mouse over the pictures, to read more about each image)

Volunteers began work to clean these first structures.

Once this was finished, the archaeologists
recorded and identifed the walls and floors and discovered
how they fit into the history of the Commandery.

Wednesday 23rd June

The excavation had already produced exciting results.

In the trench nearest to the canal (trench 2), we found sandstone walls belonging to the late medieval hospital.






According to historic maps, the building represented by these
walls extended eastwards into the gardens, then turned
southwards towards the standing buildings, forming a large rectangular courtyard.

Over the next few days, we excavated the deposits inside and outside these walls, and exposed late medieval floors and surfaces.

In the same trench, we also found a Victorian path made of broken roof tiles bordered by low stone walls.

We know from historic maps, and from a geophysical survey in May that the Victorian gardens contained many paths, well as flowerbeds, greenhouses, and sheds.

We excavated this path and the deposits beneath it over the next few days, bringing the trench down to a uniform level.

In the trench next to the existing Commandery buildings (Trench 2), we found a complex set of remains, dating to the 18th or early 19th century (we think).

These included one side of a large stone building (but not the east side of the quadrangle as expected- this must be more deeply buried),
a well-preserved cobbled surface, and a brick drain.

These remains took a lot of careful unpicking, so progress
in this trench was slow, but by the end of the following week we excavated most of them, and exposed whatever lies beneath.

The third trench, in the gardens themselves, has not yet been properly cleaned, but it looks to be just as interesting as the others.

Beneath about 5 feet of imported soil, there were two stone features that might be walls or drains. And beneath these features are deposits of a different character, the earliest of which might be of late medieval date.

As well as all these deposits and features, we found a large amount of medieval and later artefacts – mainly fragments of roof tiles, bricks, pottery and glass vessels as expected, but also some metalwork including a pin and a belt buckle of uncertain (though early) date, and a token produced in Nuremburg in the mid 16th century. There is certainly no lack of material on the site, and much of it is high quality.

All in all, we had a lot to show for only two days work, and there was every sign that much more was to come. .

news from the finds room

Go to Dig Diary 2005 page 2