Easter and June-July 2008

A whole hearth and home

This was the most extensive season of activity on the site so far, which has among other things, completely exposed the building that was discovered in our first trench back in 2003. During the Easter period a geophysical survey was carried out across the village and the battlefield by Winchester MA students Emma Ashley and Rachel Nicholls. Some finds processing, survey and buildings recording was carried out. The mosaic cobble pavement was fully recorded, and the rectangular feature at the rear was excavated but was found to not be a pond.

20 square metres were opened on the battlefield supervised by Rachel Nicholls, test pits and extended units, targeting geophysical anomalies. However, all ran to natural very quickly and there were few finds, mostly Victorian pottery at north end of the battlefield.

The further work on building 3 in Melorn village which was first discovered in 2003 has lead to its near complete excavation. The work continued on the main building studying the relationship with the square enclosure and the removal of roof collapse to show more of the flooring, and a larder structure at the north-east corner of the building with a drainage gully and shelving either side. This in addition to the hearth and steps to an upper storey found last year is now enough to get a sense of the building as a whole. The rooms at the east have clearly been added later. The finds from this season on this building include more glazed ware which is being re-assembled and some corroded iron.

Our 2008 team were: Niall Finneran (Winchester University), Geoffrey Tassie (UCL), Anthea Harris (Birmingham University), Beth Compton (USA) Tom
Thear, Pete Vellet, Nick Cokes, Rachel Nicholls, Chris Johnson, Matt
Fenn, Jennie Cronin, Sophie Wood, Robin Mann, Martin Phelps, Dave Grant,
Rose Dear, Bex Groves, Jamie Lewis (all Winchester), also our former SOAS student digger Soraya Hoppe, plus local volunteers David Ashton and Malcolm Wright. (Unfortunately I, Nick Hanks couldn’t make it on site at all that year, hence the delay in this posting).