CLASP Annual Report 2018

Google Earth has a new series of satellite shots from 08/2017 included, it might be worth having a look to see if you can establish anything new in your area.

If you do find anything please keep us posted via the general enquiries email on the Contact Page of this website.

The excavation scheduled for the week commencing 17th September 2018 at the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Nether Heyford has been changed to a further week at Thrupp, on the north side of the Daventry to Long Buckby Road. This has been caused by the farmer having to plant an earlier crop than anticipated, we do intend to return there in 2019 however.

Archaeology – Back To Our Roots

This article was published in the spring 2018 edition of Gridline, a publication for National Grid’s grantors and landowners.

The Organising Committee has now been able to finalize the dates for our programme of excavations for this summer.

As with all of these events we are very dependent on the farmer’s harvesting and ploughing activities to be able to fix precise dates for some of our work, we are therefore providing windows for two sites and a fixed date for the third. These are as follows:-

All dates are inclusive!

August 16th until August 22nd – this includes the weekend:

The dig will be sited at Thrupp on the B4036, about two miles from Daventry.

September 3rd until September 14th

This is a ‘window’: the dig will be for a five day week during this period but not including the weekend – again this will at Thrupp, potentially on a Romano-British site.

September 17th until September 28th

Again a window for a five day excavation, not including the weekend. The excavation originally scheduled for this week – at the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Nether Heyford – has been changed to a further week at Thrupp, on the north side of the Daventry to Long Buckby Road. This has been caused by the farmer having to plant an earlier crop than anticipated, we do intend to return there in 2019 however.

Please put these dates in your diaries now, get your annual leave booked and trowels polished!

CLASP excavations are available only to our members. The membership fee is £10 per annum. We charge a contribution to dig expenses of £5 for each dig attended, or part thereof.  Please look at Membership page for a membership application form.

An invitation to register your interest to ‘dig’ will be issued in the next couple of weeks –  keep your eyes out for it.

A message from Dave Hayward:

“Personal Injury Insurance

Members, Individual and Associate, aged seventy-five years and older should note that they are not covered by the personal injury clause of the CLASP insurance policy, they are however still covered by the public liability clause. This latter cover would therefore provide protection if a member was injured and liability could be shown against CLASP itself.”

The archaeological research by CLASP at Harpole has been an important contributor to CLASP’s  Local People Local Past project across west Northamptonshire. The villa excavated at Harpole is the only double-courtyard villa in the area and is relatively rare. The overall complex was huge. Further research work will hopefully be agreed in the future. In the meantime this case study  provides an initial interpretation of this site.

Click here for the pdf. file