Despite the depressingly grey sky, the weather has been fairly decent and everyone has been working hard even in the heat. After all of yesterday’s heavy lifting today was finally everyone’s chance to have some fun in the dirt and everyone went forth with wild expectations of buried treasure: sadly, so far we have only found 26p, and a shilling, and a Georgian ha’penny. Other “booty” obtained includes enough fragments of china to make up a tea service and more bits of coloured glass then you can shake a proverbial stick at. We have also found several rusty nails and a length of old wire. However, we are still not deep enough into the trench to have found anything contemporary with the castle, but we’re hopeful about what appears to be a wall from a tower, but we have not uncovered enough yet to be sure of this.
Today we finally got all the turf off the excavation areas and have been able to fully entrench ourselves. During the excavation, many worms (in a desperate attempt to avoid the sharp side of the trowel) have been flung from the trench and into a nearby pile of soil. Their evolution to winged creatures is imminent.
Some of the students are learning the background of the castle to give tours of the excavation site to the public. Even though we have only finished getting the turf off the trenches and so have not found much to show people, we are still getting a lot of public interest in our work, which can only be described as a good thing. It will be good as soon we may have something to show to the people who come round.
The team spirits are high and despite the heat and how grubby we’re all getting, we are all still having a good time.
By Nicky Main-Reade and Rebecca Kelly, Student volunteers.
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