Day 7 – When one trench closes, another opens!

What a stunning day! The weather was beautiful and so were all the volunteers who turned up!

The day stated with a visit from Gwladys Street Community Primarywho had a wonderful reading session in The Calderstones and who gave some excellent feedback on our archaeology.

It was decided that as we had hit bedrock in Trench 3 it would be best to close it down, so all those tonnes of spoil that had been removed had to go back in!

The turf was laid on with expert precision by the archaeologists and in some cases by a ham-fisted yours truly.

...hole? what hole...???

Whilst we were busy shovelling soil the volunteers at Trenches 1 and 2 were getting down to some fabulous archeology.

Trench 2 unearthed a whole collection of flower-pottery and gave the volunteers a great experience of digging out feature sections.

Trench 1 brought up two star finds today: a small fragment of a Masonic Clay Pipe showing a compass and set-square symbol and a fragment of wine/spirit bottle.

Ken with his masonic pipe fragment

The bottle is very interesting as it is hand-blown and doesn’t have any moulding marks on it. This suggests it is quite early and may even pre-date the Mansion House! Volunteers had a great time imagining that perhaps this bottle made its way to a rubbish tip after the foundation stone of the house was laid! Imaginative stuff but you never know…

The bottle found by Peter

Now that Trench 3 has been closed preparation began for Trench 4. This will be in front of the Mansion again but this time up against the Ha-Ha so we can see how it was built and what was placed in it’s backfill.

This is where trench 4 is going.

We hope all of you enjoy your bank holiday!