fairfield dig 2009/10

Thursday 8th October. - A sunny day and here is the staff team out enjoying themselves (sorry, working very hard!) at Fairfield, getting ready for the start of the digging season and our first group of students, due this Monday.

Staff meeting: Rachel Shaw (project admin and education..lots of files!); Adele Mitchell (recent archaeology graduate from Lampeter University, Fairfield old hand, assistant site supervisor, and blogmeister); Alan Graham (black beret - Site Director weeks 2 and 3)and Richard Broomhead (red ring - Site Director weeks 1 and 4), who between them have accumulated masses of archaeological experience on all sorts of sites here and abroad.

Another task was to collect together all our equipment and start to transform the Fairfield garage into our site hq. The height of luxury - we have running water and elecricity!!Bob Croft (Somerset County Archaeologist) is stacking up wheelbarrows, lent to us by Somerset Heritage.

This is trench 6, which we will be excavating first. It has been open to the elements all year, so it needed a good tidy-up to be ready for Monday.
We began working on it last year and have doubled its size for this season.

Trench 6 is very important and here is Adele's moment of triumph when, on the last day of last season (it always happens like this in archaeology) she first uncovered the footings of the wall we have been searching for since the dig began in 2005. You can just see it along the line of the ranging pole.


This map from the 1750s shows the mystery boundary feature we have been searching for. It is the only map on which it appears.

Fairfield House, enjoying its last days of peace and quiet before the diggers arrive.

By Rachel Shaw