AN OCCASIONAL PROGRESS REPORT
of the 2011 Excavation
by Jeremy Cooper

The views expressed are Jeremy's own and the information is his own understanding - he has been known to get things wrong!

Meet the new rooms!!

As Fred said - it wasn't there at the end of Friday's dig; but it was there at 9am this morning...

Yes, it's a new wall foundation, uncovered by hands unseen and forces unknown during the weekend. It is the eastern end of newcomer Room 9 (pleased to meet you).

It has some nice herring bone structure at a couple of points, as modelled here by Fred's boots (for scale)...

And here it is, lying to the South of the tessellated pavement in Room 5.



In the background you can see Barbara and some of her team working on another newly recognised foundation, marking the eastern side of newcomer Room 8 (welcome). Here it is ...



Meanwhile Tony is exploring the charcoaly area east of BH1...



We started marking out the tessellated pavement today for photography and tracing. Lots of notice-board pins with numbers written on them. Great fun. Nobody has called out "Bingo" yet, but I'm sure it will happen.

And finally...

A rare departure from our keen focus on the site and matters strictly Whitehall...

Margaret C's very excellent Blue won a rosette at the Agility Competition at the East of England Show on Friday. Well done Blue!

Inevitably - no, Tony!

Health and safety










Nick surveys the latest addition to his desirable property

Day 7 of 20: Tuesday 21 June

Sunshine and showers.

I took some shots for the site record. Here's a wide shot of the drain outlet, and the wall north of the tessellated pavement, both in Sandra's area...






... and heres the 'antiquarian? trench' in Tony's area...



But the main action today was at the south east corner of the site where the expansionist quest uncovered more walls. (The room numbers are being revised, so I'll not offer any hostages to fortune.)

Here's the view over the whole area concerned from Northish...

Rick and Norman are (foreground left) are working on the bunters of a wall on the East side of room thingy. We're not sure whether there is any more wall to the East of where they are now.

Here's an end of day shot of the same area from Northish...

The wall just to right of centre at the top of the photo is the one Rick and Norman are were working on above. In the foreground is the wall uncovered (for the most part) today. This clearly ends on the right of frame. It doesn't fully line up with the wall further North - it's a lot wider: and there's a wall lying E-W between them.

Looking westwardsish along the full length of the foregorund wall...



It's not clear whether it runs under the baulk to the South (left).

There is a corner joining this E--W wall with the N-S wall running across the top of frame just above the bucket and below the knee-protected jeans. You can just see in that corner some large stones uncovered right at the end of the afternoon by Wren, Andy and Fred...



...typical of the hefty foundations found at corners (the stones that is, not Wren, Andy and Fred). These have not been robbed out as their equivalents at other corners must have been.

So BH2 continues to evolve and become (even) more complex, and the limits have not been established at all points.

Onwards and outwards!

I spent a jolly hour with the two Lauras photographing the tesselated pavement. Laura 1 held the brolly up to shade the patch I was photographing, while Laura 2 whipped out the central pin between the two shots I took of each patch. We ended up with 124 photos of this ilk...



and 124 identical ones, but with the centre pin removed. As I'll be using just the centre of each image (to avoid lens distortion and minimise parallax) the end product will be a stitched together survey of the whole pavement, with no pins. I hope.

Ruth is working carefully across the surface of the room where new pilae were discovered last week...



Now over to Barbara for some exciting developments in her area:

Nearly 4m of wall exposed in one day! That's the magnificent result of Fred and Jerry's work today as they revealed the south wall of the middle room of the new southern suite of rooms...


Wren (whose back is to us) is kneeling on the corner foundation stones (see yesterday).

It's a very well constructed wall with 2 very large foundation stones at the junction of the middle and easterly rooms (see yesterday's blog) and some nice herringbone in limestone making up most of the length of the wall.

At the east end of the suite of rooms, the bunter pebbles do seem to have petered out in their possible alignment with the east wall of the room east of the mosaic, despite Margaret and team's best efforts to hunt them down...



Have you noticed that I'm not committing myself to room nos.? Well that's deliberate I promise you, as they are all likely to be redesignated in the next couple of days (as Jeremy said yesterday). But don't worry the feature nos. will not change, just our colloquial quick reference names. It's all because there are so many now (10 at last count) and cropping up all over the place.

The digger is back tomorrow to make quite sure that this new suite of rooms is the final lot to the south. But don't hold your breath as tonight Fred showed me a rather fetching foundation-type stone and a few more limestones and bunter pebbles at RIGHT ANGLES to the wall exposed today and heading south, right under Steve's caravan!

Tony H having a dig, and finding...


...a nail - not the first.

Day 10 of 20: Friday 24 June

What a difference a day made! As Barbara said during the end-of-week tour, walls had been uncovered at a rate of 4 metres per day this week.

But before summarising the site tour, here's some heroic action that has been going on all day yesterday and today...

Laura (on the right) has been joined by several others (here by Jo) to trace the tesellated pavement. Yes, that's right, they're tracing it. Mmmmm...



With huge rolls of paper they are producing the Bayeux Tapestry of Whitehall, but with fewer Normans and no arrows in the eye. Although since yesterday Dave might think that a mattock handle in the ***** has a similar impact.

On to the site tour...

Here's the South frontier of the site (looking East)...



It's a foundation of pretty consistent (if mixed) construction along its full length. So it was probably built all in one go. There are three rooms running off it, each about 4 x4 metres. The foundations are pretty wide and would have supported high walls. The current interpretation is that this side of the bath house was a very impressive, southern main entrance to a suite of rooms preceeding the hot rooms beyond to the North.


The entrance was about here (?)

Bearing in mind that the villa itself is modest and to the West of the bath house, it seems that the bath house was not intended (only) for the people living on site. Was this bath house connected to the wider landscape and larger villas nearby, and used in connection with a special activity or occasion? All consistent with the hypothesis that this was a hare hunting centre with visitors camped around and using the bath house after the day's exertions.

Ruth and Malcolm cleared out another segment of the late-18th/early-19th century drain that has been found running N-S right across the site to the East of the tessellated pavement.



The drain was dated by the pottery found in it. There has been very little Roman pottery found this year - indeed, very few finds apart from building materials. It seems the parts of the site being worked on were well cleared when they were robbed out to build BH1 just up the hill.

Barbara pointed out a feature running diagonally across the easternmost of the three rooms...



It's not clear yet what it is - possibly just an accidental alignment when the adjacent wall fell (or was pushed) down.

And this is current state of the eastern frontier (looking North). Cleaning up the area Ollie dug out yesterday, it looks as though the archaeology just peters out...



And where it peters out, Tony explains, so does the 'antiquarian trench' that runs diagonally across the site from NW to SE, marked here by strings...



Tony will be finding out next week just how deep it is.

Sandra talked about room 7...


Looking Southish

(The room numbers have now almost been firmed up and Fred has given each room it's own vertical, giant-sized marker to avoid all possible confusion. Until they ch.... no I won't say that)... Anyway, here's room 7, which had proper photos (including black and white film) taken today...


Looking North

It looks as though room 7 may end up as 7a and 7b, part heated and part not. They'll be taking the levels down here and in the area to the East of room 7 (right in the photo) next week to see what lies underneath.

At the northern end of the site, Tony's area has been languishing a bit due to lack of person-power...



So far nothing much has emerged in this enigmatic, charcoaly area to the East of BH1. More digging is needed, especially to see what is going on in that stony area to Tony's left...



...where there may be an cornerish alignment in the stones. But the digging is likely to be complicated by the spring water running down (as it ever did) from underneath BH1.

But to start week 3 (already!!) there will much planning to do at the South end of the site.

HALF WAY!
_____________________
The following received on Sunday - with thanks - from Tony H about his area:

During the second week of excavation work continued in trying to establish if there was a link in the structures between Bath House 1 and Barth House 2. Having established that the blue/grey clay layer was common to both a section was cleared at both sides of the large stone layers at the North west end where there is a gap. A foundation trench for the stones was found in direct alignment indicating that this layer of foundation stones was continuous before it was robbed out. This means that there was substantial stone wall running from Bath House 1 to Bath House 2 and was terraced in a number of steps between the two. It's purpose is still to be decided.

During the this part of the excavation it became clear that there was the outline of a trench which had been cut through the stones and the underlying structure, evidence of which can be seen in a straight line running right through the different rooms and structures in Bath House 2. During the excavation of Room 7 it was found and there remained a section of the fill, this is the only place where part of the trench remains. This was in turn removed but there was no material which gave an indication of it's date. Various sections of the trench were examined in particular where it cut through structures and it appears to end just outside of Room 8. The purpose of the trench is not clear. It is not a drainage ditch and it was not used to remove stone and there are no other associated cuts or trenches. There is the possibility that it may be an antiquarian excavation which was not recorded, as it post dates everything else in it's locality. Word has it there was a vicar with an active trowel in the early 1800's.

The area to the North of Bath House 2 where there is a spring and a sump of dark organic material was extended to the East with the mechanical digger and appeared to continue down the slope and an exploratory trench cut even further down the slope to see if it continued. There was no evidence at all of it in the trench. Work continues on taking this area down and there is a significant number of nails being found, this together with the very high concentration of iron contamination in the soil would indicate that iron was being worked here.

The excavation of the Victorian Drain was completed...



which could even be Georgian as the only item found in it was half a Georgian brick at the very bottom of the fill, was completed.

Diggers paying obeisance


Almost like hobbits aren't they?