Plans for Autumn 2018 and Winter 2019

Our AAG information sheet for Autumn 2018 and Winter 2019 is now out, with a full programme of Tuesday evening meetings. The first - on Tuesday 18 September at the County Museum in Aylesbury -  is by Gary Marshall on our Military Heritage. In October Sandy Kidd of Historic England will be leading a practical session on Archaeology from Maps.

Download the full list of meetings and events by clicking here. 

The new information sheet also includes up-to-date news on Active Archaeology visits and projects.

 

Don't miss the chance on Sunday 9 September to visit the early works on the HS2 excavations at Stoke Mandeville - and hear the archaeologists' own account of progress so far. This is an Open Day at the excavation site - before you see it again it will have been entirely transformed 

Also at Stoke Mandeville they're offering volunteers the chance to join the recording team for finds and architectural masonry when the church ruins are deconstructed. The link to put your name forward is in the information sheet.

The AAG Summer project at Three Locks is now completed - there will be a brief summary at our first evening meeting on Tuesday 18 September - and for our next project, also on the canal, a small team is needed to clear and survey the site of the Whitehouses swing bridge.

Return to Three Locks

A second season of excavation has started at the Three Locks Pumping Station, on the Grand Union Canal north of Leighton Buzzard - right on the far north-eastern corner of Buckinghamshire. 

 In 2017 the AAG undertook a 'rescue' dig at the request of the Canal and River Trust because an old canal workshop building beside the canal was scheduled to have a concrete slab poured, to seal off its packed earth and brick floor. What was underneath? Might we find foundations of an earlier pumping house?

Instead we found the footings for twin 20ft boilers, each of which would have been 6ft in diameter. These would have generated high-pressure steam to drive a beam engine to pump water from below the three locks back up to the top. This came as a surprise to the Trust, and the concrete slab failed to appear.

So in March 2018 an AAG team returned for a 'Phase 2', attempting to locate the engine house, which must have been close to both the boiler house and the pump well. After four days and with a trench 4ft deep through layers of spoil we had to admit defeat. Either we were in the wrong place or the engine-house floor was deeper still. But we did identify the base of the boiler-house chimney and the course of its flues from the boilers.

Archaeology or gardening?

Nettles gone, but now there's another problem: bricks!

On Monday 21 May AAG members started work on 'Phase 3', a full excavation of the footings for at least one of the massive boilers. And the day started with a little gardening... Even nettles can tell you something about the archaeology, because they thrive in acidic soil, which in the former Three Locks boiler house is the result of 200 years of industrial history.


... And at the end of the day the spoil heaps from our 2017 excavations were revealed. Now we only have to move those piles of bricks before we can start digging. Watch this space...

Apologies for the 11-month gap...

Our apologies to readers of the Active Archaeology Group blog for the 11-m0nth gap since the last posting. Since July 2016 our members have been so busy digging, surveying and investigating that we haven't had time to write about what we've been doing.

Within the next week, however, there will be a new summary of activities... so please do continue to watch this space. 

Unrepeatable chance to visit medieval village site - next Thursday 14 July

Next Thursday (14 July) the excavations of part of the medieval village of Stone will be open for visitors. This is an unrepeatable opportunity because the site is for housing development, so will be in all likelihood destroyed once the builders move in.

The village of Stone, which is west of Aylesbury on the A418 road towards Oxford, dates from before the Norman Conquest of 1066. The archaeologists have found tenement plots near the church, including a possible smithy and a kiln or oven.

The site will be open for visitors on Thursday 14 July between 10am and 3pm. If you can get along there it will be worth the visit. (Those of us who visited a similar site at Aston Clinton two years ago will be aware that this is now built over and the newly-built houses there are for sale!)

Here is the flyer from Archaeological Solutions with details of how to find the site:

Geophysical survey at Hogshaw now complete

The geophyscial surveyors returned to the former Knights Hospitallers' site at Hogshaw last Sunday, 5 June. 

With magnetometry equipment and ground-penetrating radar we surveyed the area where two metre-side masonry walls had been identified in the 2003 watching brief and a section of the field bordering on what is probably a formal garden noted in our 2015 survey.

The results of Sunday's work have not yet been analysed but we're hoping they will offer clues to the position of the one-time parish church of St John the Baptist, which fell into dereliction 300 years ago.

The survey was led by Kris Lockyear of University College London. He will be coming to speak to a BAS Active Archaeology Group meeting in the Autumn about the new work being done at St Albans on Roman Verulamium. Watch this space for details of the meeting.

Measuring distances suddenly becomes easier...

The AAG survey team tested our new distance-measuring device at Buckland on Sunday - and found it a great time-saver.

This  is a 'Disto', a combination of a movie camera and a low-powered laser beam. Use the camera to focus the laser on a target, and it tells you the distance - to the nearest single centimetre! 

Our photo shows the Disto on the right and target on the left.

On Sunday the team needed to find the exact position of an earthwork in woodland, by measuring the distance to two separate points on the boundary fences and using triangulation. One distance was about 350 metres, the other 200 metres. With the Disto this took about an hour to measure accurately. With old-fashioned tape measures it would have taken more than twice that time.

So now we have no need for tape measures. What a pity we've all spent the past year learning how to use them...

Hogshaw exhibition opens at Bucks County Museum in Aylesbury

The group's Exhibition on the deserted village and Knights Hospitallers' former manor at Hogshaw opened on Saturday 7 May at the Bucks County Museum in Church Street, Aylesbury.

On display are objects found on the site, an account of the 700-year history of the former village and manor as revealed by our research, and results of our earthworks and geophysical surveys made during 2015.

The exhibition will run until the end of July.

RIGHT: Our picture shows part of the Hogshaw display. The pots are examples found elsewhere in the county but which would have been in use in Hogshaw.

Trowels in the ground at Hobbs Hill

On 17 April, under the supervising and experienced eye of Yvonne Edwards of Chess Valley Archaeology and History Society, a team of willing AAG diggers put three trenches across the earthwork at Hobbs Hill and investigated the possible saw pit to the south of the earthwork.  

All four excavations fought their way through the tree-root and leaf-mould layer, progressively recording the layers and finds. One trench has uncovered bottles and metal fragments, probably left by a 19th-century forestry worker, and another trench has reached the underlying chalk.

 

Much more remains to be discovered. Watch this space...

Surveying at Boarstall duck decoy

Five members braved a foggy March morning to help National Trust archaeologist Gary Marshall survey earthworks. The duck decoy is a large pond with several inlets (known as 'pipes') leading from it: originally covered with netting on a frame, these get smaller as they go away from the pond. Ducks were enticed along these 'pipes' until easily caught at the narrow end. Originally ducks were trapped for the table, more recently for ringing. Decoys were once common, but few now remain and Boarstall is one of the best preserved.

The pattern of pipes and ponds has changed over the years, and there is evidence of former ridge-and-furrow. Our task was to map the various earthworks. Recent rain had left the site soggy, so there were cries of 'Hurry up - I'm sinking!' The wooded site also has vicious brambles, so once in position, getting out was often harder. But the sun came out.

A further session will complete the survey on 1 April (an appropriate date) but this may need only half a day.    Pauline Hey

Hobbs Hill earthworks survey drawing completed

The group's survey team has completed work on the earthworks at Hobbs Hill  -  here (left) is the first survey drawing. Section drawings are to follow.

Its origins are unknown... Within two kilometres of Hobbs Hill are remains of a Neolithic barrow, Iron Age enclosure, Roman villa and Norman motte-and-bailey castle. So the Hobbs Hill earthwork could be almost anything. Next task: find out!

Cholesbury Remote Sensing results

Jean B racing down the track

Herts Geophysical Survey have posted a super blog post on the results of the
work they did with BAS Active Archaeology Group and Chess Valley Archaeological and Historical Society at Cholesbury before Xmas.

Pics include Kris with his Santa hat!

Do have a look. Click on the link below and it should open in a new window.



https://hertsgeosurvey.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/cholesbury-buckinghamshire/

Happy New Year!
Barbara

Geophysical surveys at Cholesbury

PHOTO BY STUART KING

Twelve volunteers gathered in a field next to the Iron-Age Cholesbury Camp on Monday 14 December to conduct no fewer than three different geophysical surveys. This included a 'first' in Buckinghamshire: Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR).

There were two questions to answer: Did the outer ditch of the camp continue, now filled-in, beyond the edge of the scheduled area? And what might be causing the rectangular parch-marks noted in dry weather along the field's eastern edge?

Five of the 12 volunteers were AAG members. Others came from Chess Valley and Hertfordshire archaeological societies. The survey was led by Kris Lockyear from University College London.

First results came from metal-detecting by Stuart King: a George I farthing, a broken buckle (possibly Tudor), and a metal strap link, probably from a harness and potentially iron-age. Initial GPR results were disappointing: Kris reported 'land drains, two bonfire sites and some molehills'! Results from the Resistivity and Magnetometry surveys are awaited... 

Members now active on six projects

The BAS Active Archaeology Group is a hive of activity this Autumn and Winter, with six projects on the go across Buckinghamshire: 

Hobb's Hill, a small earthwork on the Chiltern escarpment just south of Monks Risborough, is the current target for an earthworks survey which is due to be completed in January. Hopefully the results will add to our knowledge of the surrounding Iron Age landscape. 

Our report on the geophysical surveys at Hogshaw Knights Hospitallers manor and deserted village site has now been completed and submitted to Historic England. The site will be the subject of an exhibition in the County Museum in 2016.

Three former nurses who are members of the group have been gathering regularly at the County Museum Bones Store recently. What they've found, and what this might tell us about the people of Buckinghamshire past, will be the subject of the group's evening meeting on Tuesday 19 January.  

Next to the Iron-Age Cholesbury Camp, another group of members are helping to survey a field where parchmarks have been noted during dry weather. For the first time our geophysical survey, led by Kris Lockyear of University College London, will include Ground-Penetrating Radar.

Northchurch World War I practice trenches are the site of a survey led by the National Trust, with help from six of our group members. The commons there were the site of a large training camp in WW1 and the landscape still bears the marks - if you know where to look. 

The sixth project will be at Cheddington Airfield in the New Year, when four members will be surveying what was an American Air Force bomber base during the Second World War. This is part of a project styled 'The 8th in the East' which is surveying former American airfields across eastern England.

• IF YOU'RE INTERESTED in joining any of our projects, eMail us at bucksasaag@gmail.com to find out what's happening and when.

Roman iron smelting in the Chilterns?

Hobb's Hill survey day 1 - a new project

Sixteen members of the Active Archaeology Group converged on Hobb's Hill, near Princes Risborough, on Sunday 1 November for the first day of our survey there. 

The site is a ditch and bank running along the crest of a high spur of the Chilterns escarpment. Its date of construction is unknown, but other earthworks nearby are known to be pre-Roman. The aim of this new AAG project will be to establish where Hobb's Hill fits in.


In brilliant sunshine one team measured the earthworks, a second measured levels to obtain profiles of their shape, while a third explored the surrounding woodland to establish the context of the site. Others off-site will research local finds and reports from other local archaeological sites.

This being autumn, the local 'natural history' also drew our attention, with a notable profusion of different fungi in evidence - though at lunch we stuck to our sandwiches!

Another survey is planned in late November.

PHOTOS: Stuart King.
   

BAS AAG in the press

Today's Buckingham and Winslow Advertiser is running the following story on its village pages.
(Apologies for the poor scan!)
Barbara

Filled to the brim with girlish glee - BAS ladies at Maids Moreton Mound excavation (photos)

Louise

Rhian

Jenny

Glynis

Barbara

A visit to Maids Moreton Mound

We visited the dig at “Maids Moreton Mound” on a warm and sunny morning, Monday 17 August, the first day of the second and final week of the dig.  The first thing we learned was - it isn’t a mound, it’s a platform!  Tim Upton-Smith kindly gave us an overview of the findings so far, explaining that they had uncovered a (6 metre?) square of yard stone and had chosen to dig 4 sondages at strategic points, guided by the geo-physical scan previously conducted. 

8 or 9 volunteers were hard at work in those sondages with various sizes of trowel, meticulously clearing the soil away.  In one corner, Barbara (bottom right in picture) was excavating a previously identified deep pit - she was already over a metre down and there was clear evidence that the pit was lined with stone but the purpose of the pit remained unclear.  In another corner (top centre of picture), Lynn, Rhian and Glynis had uncovered a large flat stone and some pink soil, which was an indication of (???)

The round bowl (ignore the green mat)

In one of the other sondages we were fascinated to see them slowly and tentatively unearthing a round bowl which was buried just below the yard stone level and contained clear evidence that it had been used to burn something, as yet unidentified. 

A few meters away someone else was meticulously sieving the soil which had already been removed. 

This dig is the second of two (so far) at this site.  Sadly, we had just missed an exhibition at Buckingham Old Gaol Museum, where all the findings in the two trenches dug on the earlier dig last year had been displayed.  We were told that all those findings had been mediaeval and that the yard stone had been laid down immediately on top, so was also of around that era. 

We felt privileged to have witnessed the work at close hand and are very grateful for the warm welcome we received.

Linda Knights and Bronwen Lee

AAG Autumn and Winter Meetings Programme

The Active Archaeology Group's programme of meetings for Autumn 2015 and Winter 2016 is now finalised. All will be at the County Museum in Aylesbury, starting at 7.30pm. So put these dates in your diaries:

Tuesday 15 September:
EXCAVATING THE ICKNIELD WAY AT ASTON CLINTON
Matthew Morris of Leicester University

Tuesday 20 October:
SUMMER FINDS AT MAIDS MORETON, NEAR BUCKINGHAM
Dr Susan Sorek

Tuesday 17 November:
ASHRIDGE: SEARCHING FOR THE MONASTIC CHURCH
Ken Wallis of Berkhamsted Archaeology Society

Tuesday 15 December:
INVESTIGATIONS AT WARREN WOOD, LITTLE MARLOW
Andy Ford of Archaeology in Marlow

Tuesday 19 January 2016:
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE'S OLD BONES: INVESTIGATIONS IN THE MUSEUM STORE 
Jean Savigar

Tuesday 16 February:
SMALL FINDS, BIG STORIES: THE 'PORTABLE ANTIQUITIES SCHEME'
Rose Tyrrell, Buckinghamshire Finds Liaison Officer

Tuesday 15 March:
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE POTS, POTTERS AND POTTERIES 1200-1900
Mike Farley and Barbara Hurman

• All meetings are in the Learning Zone at the Bucks County Museum in Church Street, Aylesbury, starting at 7.30pm. Entrance is from the footpath at the side of the building facing the churchyard. 

Archaeology day and weekend courses at Oxford

There's a good crop of archaeology courses this autumn and winter in the new Oxford University Continuing Education programme, which is just out. Here are a few examples:

• How about Understanding Prehistoric Stone Tools, a two-day weekend course on 31 October and 1 November with a chance to handle Stone-Age objects in the Ashmolean Museum?
• Or The Hillforts of Britain and Ireland: When, where and why? This should appeal to those working on our own AAG Hillforts Project. Again it's a weekend but with a Friday evening start, on 27-29 November. 
• Then there's a day school on The Romano-British Countryside, with some local settlements as examples. That's on Saturday 16 January 2016.
• And the one I'm planning to go for: East Oxford: A Thames Valley landscape, which promises to show how a community project of test pits, geophysics, place names and old maps all helped identify a historic landscape.

That's just four out of 14 in the Archaeology and six in the Local History list, among many others. Most courses are at Rewley House in Oxford itself, and fees vary. You can view all their courses on-line at OUCE courses list - and even enrol and pay for them too.

Peter Marsden