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!

Well, the Whitehall site is back on its old URL, so I'll cancel the temporary rehousing. We'll leave things as they are until the end of the dig, and then we'll be transferring the domain name and web hosting into our own control, thus satisfying my insatiable lust for power and general world domination.

I didn't go up to the site today - as far as this weather is concerned I am neither a mad dog nor an Englishman: I prefer to "put my scotch or rye down, and lie down" (thanks Noel). In fact I spent some of the day sorting out the Whitehall website problem, and much of the rest of it earning some money by editing video of the firework display that ended the TT races on the Isle of Man. Vroom, vroom, bang.

Barbara tells me it was indeed hot and sticky on site and that the day was devoted entirely to paperwork - as in planning - and it nearly all got done. She drew a neat map of her area with all the contexts and features marked on it.

When it did sort of rain, during tea, people sat out and enjoyed the cooling effect. Tony found a bit of glass in his Victorian ditch - Barbara said she didn't think it was Roman, which pleased him: but the jury is still out on the date of the glass.

Fred poked about in his new role of bunter-hunter, and, sure enough, found some... bunters: they are part of the East wall of room 8 (don't ask me!).

Dave and Steve spent a jolly day in the caravan. Nuff said.

Tidying up some of the surfaces




Finishing off the planning




Investigating the 'antiquarian' trench


Keeping book - such neat writing!






Here you are Steve - one I got cheap at Tesco's

Day 13 of 20: Wednesday 29 June

I didn't make it to the site today, so the following is based on idle chatter and tittle tattle with my beloved wife.

Bit of a cinematic day: Barbara and Dave talked features and contexts and resolved The Matrix. I could never make head nor tale of it myself, so well done! Tomorrow they're working on any changes that crop up in The Matrix Reloaded.

Over in the wet, charcoaly area, Tony encountered The Creature from the Black Lagoon, in the form of some masonery - another wall?

Sandra and company worked on A Room (7) With a View: and they are thinking of getting in some Heavy Metal (google it!) to shift those large stones revealed yesterday.

In Barbara's area there is a theory that the bunters may have belonged to a hot stone Massage Parlour (not that anyone will admit to having seen that one!). And Barbara has become the Billy Bunter Babe since she found one herself.

Enough, enough!

More photos by Chris:










Photo by Chris

Day 15 of 20: Friday 1 July

The blog will be with you when Tony has written his 100 lines and the other supervisors have put finger to keyboard.

Have a look at the Mystery Stone page and see if you can come with any good ideas as to what it might have been used for (not a competiton!)

SANDRA's report:

We left room 7 last week with only its SE corner excavated. This week we went back in and took out the fill of the ditch which cuts through rooms 3 and 7.



It had quite a bit of tile in the top layer but under that, solid clay. We took it down to the level of the pilae bases and left it at that for the time being although we realised that we had not got to the bottom of it.

We then removed the material in the NW corner of the room, which had a great deal of burnt and badly degraded tile in it, as well as quite a lot of pieces of pilae and other tile, which was still in quite good condition.



Three more pilae bases were revealed in situ, One in the NW corner and one to the south of it and one abutting the stone and tile feature we are calling the Stokehole Throat at present. The two bases on the eastern edge of the room are not in line with those in its southern half. They are set in by about half a pilae's width! What shall we make of that I wonder?

A pile of small limestone rubble and soft yellow mortar was left in place abutting the eastern side of the Stokehole Throat so it is hard to see exactly how it is built but it appears to have tiles of alternate sizes building it up like bricks in a wall. The north side of the Stokehole is packed solidly with grey clay into which some small limestone slabs are set, they don't appear to have anything but clay under them. The clay is contaminated with a layer of ash at the central point of this part of the room, and there is a very distinct edge to this ash where it meets the sandstone rubble feature between room 7 and the west wall of rooms 2 and 3. The relationship of this feature to the room is not yet understood, perhaps we may find out next week.



Malcolm investigated the gap in the east wall to establish if there was anything structural left. There wasnt, but he found that the dark sooty/clay spread/foundation trench on the east side of the wall had not been cut through at the point where it should have been if the ditch mentioned above had sliced through it. Shirley went back into it this afternoon to see if she could establish an end or a bottom, but unfortunately time ran out. Again, an answer next week would be good.

The limestone rubble spread in the NE section of the room was cleaned back again today removing a layer of the smaller stones from the top. A spread of larger stones underneath was revealed, and although they were laying relatively flat and were "joined up" they still dont represent anything that looks at all structural. More ash and sooty clay was revealed the lower we went.

Margaret and her team investigated the hole under and around our mystery stone, in a feature originally described as a Drain, as it comprised several limestone slabs in a line, culminating in the large mystery boulder.

They were hoping for something structural, but sadly there was nothing there. They did have some nice pieces of pot though, also bone and tile. This feature has now been re-designated as a Pit. Further investigations may go on next week if time allows into a cut in the edge of the section and also to remove the limestone slabs to see if they can reveal anything further.
(See also Margaret's report below)

One question that has been answered this week is the date of the big ditch that cuts a swathe right through the site in a N/W S/E direction. We can now positively date it as Victorian as it cuts through the Victorian pebble drains that run across the site east of room 7.


MARGARET's report



The Pit, minus the mystery boulder, has been expanded into a trench of considerable depth and area (0.5 x 2m). The team of Wren, Laura, Pete and myself with Fred's afternoon assistance worked down to a grey clay surface which is not yet natural. There was a mix of layers slanting NE, needing 6 new context numbers from Dave! Finds from 2 of the contexts included tile, fine pottery including indented beaker, bone and boar tusk! Seems like a general rubble collection, but there is evidence of archaeology continuing downwards and also to the E, outside the bathhouse buildings.

BARBARA's report

It's been a hard week in the south range but a satisfactory one. We can safely say that we do have 4 or 5 unheated rooms - 3 of which make up the south range of the building.



These 3 rooms are where we've concentrated this week's effort in cleaning back the interior surfaces:

(a) to see if any remnants of floor survive;

(b) to see if there are any features of note inside the rooms and

(c) to establish the wall lines.

Well, the answers are

(a) No, nothing you could really call a floor - the remains in the middle and west rooms are just sloping, rock-hard pebbly surfaces - not good to walk on or trowel! We're down at the foundation layer of the walls, so if they had survived the floors would have probably been at a higher level. In addition, as we're on a slope, the rooms would have had to be terraced.



(b) We did find a very clear plough mark running from the middle room across a limestone "threshold" (pushing it out of line) and on into the east room of the 3. Now a certain VIP told us that a deep plough did get broken about 30 years ago - so we may have our clear first dating evidence for the features in this suite of rooms! (OK, we did also have a late 3rd/early 4th century piece of pot.) There are also odd areas of burning and debris scatters from the walls, duly noted but not spectacular.



(c) We've found that some of the walls have an interior (and possibly exterior) mortar layer about 6 inches wide. So now we're using this as a clue to find the line of the walls, even where they have been robbed out or where the edges are jumbled with debris. Thanks to this we've been into the robber trench of the east wall of Room 10 on Friday, where Jerry and Dave satisfying found 2 bunter pebbles low in the trench. How's that for excitement - well you had to be there - it means a lot to us!!

Just for fun those of you would like to try allocating functions to the unheated rooms:
apodyterium (a changing room, with niches for your clothing), a palestra (a large central courtyard used as an exercise yard) a laconicum (a dry heat room, like a sauna) - taken from Lindsey Davis' Falco fans pages (defunct in 2023!).
Sorry Ruth, I couldn't find a suitable Ruso reference: here's Ruth on Amazon anyway: www.amazon.co.uk/Ruth-Downie/e/B001JP8EN0/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

We had fun one afternoon speculating that the burning in the east room was where they heated the stones for hot stone massages!! But didn't I say we'd had a hard week?!


TONY's report

The first issue that was addressed was the NW/SE trench which cuts through most of Bath House 2. It was established that it terminated in the far SE corner just outside the line of the building and the end was identified where the soil changed to natural. So now the full dimensions of the trench are known.

The next question to be answered was it's age. This has now been narrowed down to about the first half of the 19th century, it may be later but not earlier. The evidence for this was found by examining a series of drainage ditches which were constructed in either the late 18th or early 19th century. In every case where the trench met these drainage ditches it cut through them so that they were removed which meant that it had to be later than them.



An examination of the capped drainage ditch which cuts through the mosaic floor was started. The initial investigation involved removing each of the capping stones in turn and then replacing them. Under the second stone Barbara had a "Small Find" - a field mouse's nest.

Under the capped stones there was a precisely constructed stone drain similar to others that have been found in and around Bath House 1.



The extent of this ditch is now being traced in both directions to determine it's relationship with the wall at the east end and it's starting point at the west end.

Meanwhile work continues in excavating the wet, black sump to the east of Bath House 1 which continues to offer up a variety of finds of interest.



This week was the turn of the metal detectorist who produced two bags of nails from the area, these together with the very heavy iron contamination in the soil all around this area suggests, iron working. The other items of note are a number of fragments of glass in different colours and shapes; part of the skeleton of an animal, from the teeth it looks canine; and the best has been saved for last - A Seed, probably a grain of cereal.

The field mouse's escape hatch




See 'Mystery stone' page