The final site photo of our tower trench.

Friday 6th November

The last day of our dig and we needed to clean up Trench 12 ready for photos, finish up any last other details, and do some more work on the finds. Today was a time to reflect on the week and be proud of what we had achieved in 1 short week on our last trench.

Alan up the scaffolding getting a photo of the site from above. Adele and Rose quantifying, marking and bagging the finds as the evening draws in. It was slightly less cold working in the garage!
Adele

Thursday 5th November

With hardly any rain today saw more work on our newest trench and a better understanding of what had happened on the site, as we discovered a culvert running through the trench and through the tower, that was obviously built after the tower and wall had collapsed.

We also had a visit from all the children from Stogursey Primary School. They were digging in one of our other trenches. They all seemed to have a brilliant, muddy time and gained a new experience of excavation, working with finds and how to look at buildings.

Adele

Wednesday 4th November
With yet more rain today we were working very muddy trenches but still managed to get quite a bit done. We finished work in the Trench 1 from last week,

and continued to uncover more of the wall and tower in Trench 12.

We also managed to work out what was happening in our trench 6, from the first week. We now know there were 3 phases of trackway and a small ditch before the small wall forming a little terrace.

Two of our volunteers continued with the photo survey of the walls around the estate.

adele

Tuesday 3rd November
With our volunteers we continued to clean back in our new trench (Trench 12) in the rain until it became to heavy to continue. We found what we first believed to be an earlier medieval building, but by the end of the day we now believe it to be part of the wall, and the tower is smaller than first imagined.

When it was too wet to dig we had a look at the types of finds we have found over the last 5 years, and did some pot washing, quantifying and marking.

Adele

Monday 2nd November

Today was our first day of the adult volunteers week.

We opened up a new trench (12) over the assumed site of the tower, and began to clean back to reveal what we hope will be the wall and tower.

Friday 30th October

What a day! We had a visitation from Mick Aston, Bob roft, Suise Simmons, Dick Broomhead and the photographer from the West Somerset Free Press. Here they are with Lady Gass and Polly.

They joined us for tea break and Mick told us about the lateset Time Team plans.
The feature that we thought was the base of a large wall turned out to be a line of capping stones over a very substantial stone drain (culvert). This was proved when Alan finally managed to remove one of the stones. We now have to find out whether the drain was created along the line of an earlier feature, maybe even a ditch.

We decided to have a final go at finding the 'turret', and will be hiring the digger again to open up a further trench within the area surrounded by the metalled road surface.

We took a final group photo of the fantastic Kilve Team before they went their separate ways. I is very quiet at Fairfield now they're gone, but it has been the best week of the entire project (so far!).

From Rachel.

Today four of us were given a tour around Fairfield house by Lady Gass. She told us about the history of her family and the house in which she lives. Lady Gass also showed us maps from different times of the house's history. In trench 1 we discovered lots of large slabs set in mortar thought to be the foundations of the later wall.

Peter and Louisa continued to survey the garden walls while Matt and Becky continued the "Strictly Come Digging" challenge in trench 10. Sean started to look at the field walking finds found in 2007. Callum strted making a map to show the diffrent ages of the parts of the house.

the kilve team

Today we went straight on to the digging, to start with no one found much but then we got some. There wasn’t many finds today but we made some good progress. Our robber trench that Naomi has specialised in is very deep and starting to reveal a lot and also there has been a wall found and Callum and Matt kept working on that and it’s looking really good and clear.

Poor defenceless little Pete and Sophie have been working on the new trench and did a very good job on that, and Alan is amazing as ever.

We also went on the tour of the Fairfield estate we only found two floor tiles but it was better than nothing. We saw the private road from Fairfield to the sea, this was made because one of the owner’s daughter had tuberculosis and needed fresh sea air.

Matt and Sean learnt how to draw sections, and drew trench two.

The Kilve team.

Tuesday 27th October 2009

Today was our first full day at Fairfield, and we began by excavating Trench 1. One team was levelling out one end of the trench, another troweled along the line of the wall, whilst the other picaxed the layers in the robber trench. We only succeeded in finding a few bits of bone and pot. After lunch, we went round to the side of Fairfield House, into one of the orchards, and examined the walls. We were looking for any noticeable features and changes in the walls history, such as archways or collapses. Most of the team went back to the trench whilst some washed finds and two finished surveying the wall. Whilst digging in the afternoon, we found a strip of bent metal. We then returned to Kilve and had a talk by Vanessa Fells on scientific techniques used in archaeology.
The Kilve team

Monday 26th of October
Today we were shown around the site by Alan and we did some troweling. Alan told us about using layers on a site, which help us to interpret it. We didn’t find much today but we are hoping to by the end of the week. We met and we all think we will make a good team.

The kilve residential group

Friday 23rd October
Attentive students from Bridgwater College looking at the re-excavated and extended Trench 1.

More of the new trench has been cleared back and the 'corner' of the wall can be seen clearly. The soil outside this feature is completely clean while inside is full of stone. The baulk in the middle is protecting a later pipeline, which is still in use.


Students continued with the Garden Wall survey. This photo shows the join between an older and a newer stretch of wall, and an arched gateway.

Thursday 22nd October


Yesterday only Adele and Alan were on site: no students, and I was giving a talk about the Fairfield Project in Minehead. But they'd been extraordinarily busy (with the aid of a JCB digger). When I arrived this morning two new trenches had been opened ....
Alan has reopened and extended Trench 1, which we began in 2005 with our first Kilve Court group. It was carefully positioned to cut across the line of the wall shown on the earliest map of Fairfield, and over a later garden wall shown on one of the paintings. In 2005, we found evidence of a robbed wall, and another 'in situ' wall. There was also some redeposited clay suggesting that a feature had been dug deep into the subsoil, and some of the earliest pottery so far found on the site. This is quite different from the section of wall we are uncovering in Trench 6, so it is time to investigate it further, this time opening up a larger area.




This is the second new trench, placed over the curving corner of the boundary feature as shown on the geophysical survey. Already you can see the curved line of the wall appearing. We now think that the wall was used to hold back the higher level of soil you can see on the right.




Today's Archaeology Degree Course students from Strode College also faced challenging weather, but eventually the rain stopped. Look hard, you can just see a rainbow!



By the afternoon the sun was out. These students are making an accurate stone-by-stone drawing of a blocked opening in one of the garden walls.

Posted by Rachel

Tuesday 20th October

Today we had a group from Strode College out on site, despite the weather being awful we managed to get a whole days work in, and took off the rest of our rubble area down to the dark brown soil below.

Although the students were cold and wet they all worked very well and we cleared the whole area down to reveal the soil below the rubble and mortar layer.

Today they were also fortunate to be on site with Barry Lane who showed them how to carry out geophysics and let them carry out the process to look at part of the land where we have done no previous work to see if there was any evidence of the village of Fairfield.

By Adele

Monday 19th October

Today we had a group of A level archaeology students from Bridgewater College on site to help.

The first part of the day was spent planning half of the rubble layer and putting levels on it so we could begin to remove the rubble layer and expose the surface underneath. Allowing us to get the students to plan the rest of the rubble so that they got an experience of planning and then we put some more levels on in the afternoon.

By Adele

While half the group were excavating trench 6 with Alan and Adele, the otherhalf started sorting the fieldwalking finds from Saturday.

There is a great deal of pottery, concentrated in a few grid square, as well as glass, brick, some animal bone and one or two more unusual finds like a lead disc (we don't know what this is) and a piece of bottle glass stamped with (presumably) the maker's initials. Then we set up a horizontal string line, using a spirit level, to begin on ameasured elevation drawing of a blocked doorway in one of the garden walls. The Bridgwater team quickly got the hang of this skill, despite the fact it was definitely getting colder!

For just one day we had some high tech GPS (global positioning systems) equipment on site. The surveyors were recording the roof of Fairfield house,to clarify the changes in the building and discover the oldest part of the house. They also took readings for some of the points on our site grid. They took the time to explain to the students how the specialist kit works.

By Rachel

Saturday 17th October
Today we had a youth group from Carhampton out to help with another part of our project. We were working in a field just outside Burton where we were carrying out some field walking; continuing from the section a small group of staff on the Fairfield project had covered on September 19th.

We got the children to help set up the grid from the two baselines I had set up before their arrival.

After we had part of our grid set up we got the children to walk each grid in pairs putting any finds into a bag. They were very good at spotting finds on the ground.

In the afternoon we went back to Fairfield house and the children washed their finds and we got a good look at the types of finds the field has on its surface. From these results we can work out where to place some test pits when the youth group next come out.

Adele

Friday 16th October
Today we had a group of individual students on site to help us with our excavation.

We cleaned up the rubble layer and exposed the rubble ready of photos at the end of the day and planning on Monday. We also continued to clean back on the other side of the wall down onto patches of gravel so that the area we are excavating had been taken back to its full extent.

Today, with fewer students visiting the site, we had a chance to get out all the finds from field walking in 2007. Here is Naomi checking the records, to make sure that the bag numbers tally with the field notes

Adele