After months of hard work we can annouce the dig report for the 2015 Caldies Big Dig is finally published.
On Monday last volunteers from the research, digging and cataloguing teams of our Caldies Big Dig gathered in the Museum of Liverpool at Liverpools Pier Head for the reveal of our display cabinet showcasing some of the fantastic finds that came up from the dig.
The finds were hand-picked by volunteers from the huge amount of finds that came from our four trenches. The finds were also given a personal touch by volunteers writing about what they discovered. The display is located on the 1st Floor of the Museum of Liverpool at the Pier Head and is FREE for the public to view.
The volunteers also recieved a copy of our Big Dig Report which you can download free of charge here: Caldies Big Dig Report.
Once again thanks to the volunteers and all the Museum of Liverpool staff.
The weather was on form this morning and so were the volunteers. We had our greatest number today which meant we could have three trenches open and some find cleaning and sorting at the same time.
A word must go here thanking the volunteers as their response has been fantastic as has the response of the community: one member of the public remarked that ‘Calderstones Park has never had such a high-profile, everyone knows about it now.’
Our volunteers have been great and we’d like to thank them all and hope they keep getting involved with further ‘Connect at Calderstones’ projects.
Whilst work continued apace on Trench 1 and 2 which are our original trenches and are still going down the real interest of the day for all volunteers is what would come out of Trench 4 which was dug to look at the Ha-Ha.
As stated yesterday we were surprised to find it had a very steep cut with lots of what seemed like natural ground (i.e. undisturbed) behind. For safety we had to begin taking the natural out to step down the trench. As the mattocks began cutting into the compacted soil – shock – FINDS!
What we all thought had been natural seemed to be producing finds – it couldn’t be natural after all
We had decided to spend Wednesday washing and sorting the hundreds of pieces of pottery we’d discovered during the previous week and a half. The main reason for this was the poor weather; however when we arrived to set up the tables in the old Theatre Room at the back of the mansion the weather wasn’t looking at all bad.
We decided to press on with our plan anyway and we’re glad we did because within a few minutes of our volunteers arriving, the heavens opened and we were left with trenches like mudpits.
All the finds from all our trenches had been carefully placed into trays to be cleaned. This meant lots of scrubbing with brushes, sometimes big ones and sometimes little tooth brushes.
It was nice to see some of the very mucky items we’d dug up cleaned.
It was also nice to see so many volunteers learning that not all archaeological work is carried out in trenches and that a lot of the finds have to be sorted, recorded and cleaned.
Not a dramatic day but there was a lovely atmosphere and It was especially nice when the BBC arrived to film some of our work.
Keep your eyes peeled and hopefully we’ll be back in the ground tomorrow!
work.
Keep your eyes peeled and hopefully we’ll be back in the grou
The lovely weather of last week had been blown away into a soggy, windy Tuesday morning. Still Museum of Liverpool Archeologists and our Volunteers are made of sterner stuff so without so much as a whimper they dived into the trenches.
We again had some school visits; 60 year 3 pupils from Our Lady Bishop Eton and then 32 pupils from Smithdown Primary. We also had a small group from Alt Bridge School who didn’t know about the dig but were in the park anyway and were fascinated by what we had uncovered.
The big news today was the opening of Trench 4, the Ha Ha trench.
You can clearly see the difference between the dark trench of the ha-ha ditch and the orange of the natural.
A ‘Ha-Ha’ is a ditch with one sloped side and one sheer side made up of a sunken wall. The idea was to create a barrier between the park where you may have deer or cattle and the lawns where you would relax, promenade and picnic.
The Ha-Ha
The advantage of a ha-ha is that it creates a barrier without disrupting the view. Most ha-has are 18th Century so Calderstones is a late example and may show how Ha-Ha building techniques developed.
Within a few inches we came down onto the hard-compacted sub-soil, possibly the natural with the tracks left by dead tree-roots throroughout.
Tree Roots
This was surprising as we were expecting a V shaped cut for the Ha-Ha with one side filled in, instead we seem to have a very sharp cut that is only about 20cm from the wall.
Because of the nature of this cut we may have to remove some of the natural to see how it develops.
In Trench 1 recording and measuring was continuing, we’re pretty sure we’ve hit natural here so it’s now a case of just recording all the features we’ve found.
Lynda trying to hide behind the ranging pole. You can’t fool us!
Trench 2 (behind the house) however is still getting deeper and still bringing up loads of finds. Most of them are 20th or 19th Century but we did find a significant pointy metal object.
Although it does look a bit sword-like its probably a blade for a plow that snapped off or even part of some gardening equipment.
Our finds are starting to stack up now so on Wednesday we’ll probably take some time out to wash and record them.
What a stunning day! The weather was beautiful and so were all the volunteers who turned up!
The day stated with a visit from Gwladys Street Community Primarywho had a wonderful reading session in The Calderstones and who gave some excellent feedback on our archaeology.
It was decided that as we had hit bedrock in Trench 3 it would be best to close it down, so all those tonnes of spoil that had been removed had to go back in!
The turf was laid on with expert precision by the archaeologists and in some cases by a ham-fisted yours truly.
…hole? what hole…???
Whilst we were busy shovelling soil the volunteers at Trenches 1 and 2 were getting down to some fabulous archeology.
Trench 2 unearthed a whole collection of flower-pottery and gave the volunteers a great experience of digging out feature sections.
Trench 1 brought up two star finds today: a small fragment of a Masonic Clay Pipe showing a compass and set-square symbol and a fragment of wine/spirit bottle.
Ken with his masonic pipe fragment
The bottle is very interesting as it is hand-blown and doesn’t have any moulding marks on it. This suggests it is quite early and may even pre-date the Mansion House! Volunteers had a great time imagining that perhaps this bottle made its way to a rubbish tip after the foundation stone of the house was laid! Imaginative stuff but you never know…
The bottle found by Peter
Now that Trench 3 has been closed preparation began for Trench 4. This will be in front of the Mansion again but this time up against the Ha-Ha so we can see how it was built and what was placed in it’s backfill.
Day six began with a visit from the lovely Gwladys Street Primary school.
They had learned about dinosaurs and the Egyptians in class and had even done their own little archaeology dig in their school grounds.
They really enjoyed their time in Calderstones and getting to see our archeologists at work!
After the weather yesterday it was great to see all the volunteers out in force even though the trenches were quite damp…
Wet Trenches
And needed some remiedial work: enter Jeff with the ladle.
The job this morning was finishing off the planning of Trench 1.
Before mattocking began…
We had some nice finds including a clay pipe stem with mouthpiece.
A pretty glass bottle.
And ta da! Fran cleared out her crisp packet filled feature to find what looked like a lovely post-hole filled with a base of stones. Could this be evidence of a structure of some sort?
The careful planning of the trench resulted in Hannah and Jude creating this beautiful trench plan.
Today we had a bit of a change around and some newbies joined us.
There was a perfect start to the day with a seasonal hail-shower which forced us to do our morning briefing in the shelter of the portico of the mansion.
It’s a little known fact that archaeologists are in fact soluable – that’s why they wear heavy waterproofs because if they get caught in the rain they effervesse and go ‘pop’. *
The shower only lasted ten minutes but would set the tone for the morning, heavy showers of rain and hail followed by beautiful spring sunshine.
The first proper job of the day was to expand the fencing around Trench 3 (the deepest trench). This expansion was largely to accommodate a bigger spoil heap so more digging could be done.
The new fencing for Trench 3. Look at the size of that spoil heap! *(the caption for Pic 1 may not be true)
Over in Trench 2 (behind the mansion) hard work began to reveal some linear features. What look like two ditches (in dark soil) running parallel through the trench. In order to get a nice photgraph of this the diggers began cleaning off the trench only to be frustrated by a hail-shower.
The shower stopped. Wet mud now smeared the archaeology, back into the trench to clean…. more hail.
All in all Trench 2 had to be cleaned three times due to the inclement weather.
Parallel features… what does it all mean?
Given that and the fact that Trench 3 had become a bit of a quagmire it was decided for safety (and sanity) to leave the trenches until after lunch and repair to the mansion house for some in-doors surveying.
Fran, Jimmy and Peter get used to the hardships of ‘indoors surveying’.
After lunch in was back out to see what could be salvaged of the day. The hole in Trench 1 which looked like it may have been the bowl of a grubbed-out bush had filled with a delightful brown liquid which led Geoff the archaeologist to get out his trusty ladle and spoon it dry. Trench soup anyone?
And for our starter… Trench Soup.
Slowly as the afternoon progressed we had features appearing in every trench.
Trench 1 seems to be more confusing than ever with multiple layers of dumping and debris as well as a feature being called ‘Fran’s Crisp Packet Hole’. This is a hole seemingly filled with crip packets cleaned and discovered by our volunteer Fran. Perhaps not the most archaeologically significant hole but interesting to show the sort of difference in soil colour that you get with filled in holes.
Frans Crisp Packet Hole
Trench 2 continued exposing more of those parallel features.
In Trench 3 we hit a lump of sandstone. This was initially thought to be bedrock but closer inspection and a bit of GPS technology showed that our trench was right on the site of the enclosure that appears on the 1893 map. Could this stone be part of that enclosure?
Day 4 began with some concerned looking Museum of Liverpool archaeologists turning up after being caught in what was described as a ‘horizontal hailstorm’. Indeed this morning the weather did not look very good but we got to our trenches with no trouble at all.
Yesterday evening before we finished an unusual layer of pebbles appeared in Trench 1. We didn’t know where they came from and before they could be removed they had to be meticulously recorded.
This involved laying string and measuring tapes across the trench and then with VERY sharp pencils drawing accurately what was in it. This tied up the volunteers in Trench 1 for most of the day but gave them a great chance to learn some recording and section drawing skills.
This gives Trench 1 our MOST RECORDED TRENCH award!
Trench 2 is not to be left out with the awards, ‘the one behind the mansion’ has produced the most actual finds, nearly three trays worth of pottery and glass (mostly flowerpots) but also a lovely OXO Cup and the remains of some glass bottles, including one with a tempting ‘LIV…’ decoration.
Trench 3 wins DEEPEST TRENCH award. After hitting sub-soil yesterday, today has mainly been about digging down to that.
There have been some nice finds from Trench 3 however including a few bits of clay pipe stem and bowel and also a lovely old lipstick with some of the product still in the tube.
Shocking pink anybody?
Amazingly despite the worrying forecast and the early morning hailstorm the weather held today, not even the midday shower that was predicted turned up. Luck is smiling on us… so far!
The volunteers finished the day with a visit to The Calderstones themselves in the greenhouse. A good day was had by all.
Sometime during the weekend a days worth of photos and writing seems to have gone and despite our efforts hasn’t yet come back.
Hey ho! Onto Day 3!
Day 3 was our first day with a full volunteer compliment, 12 locals joined us for some digging in another beautiful spring day.
We did our usual briefing for the volunteers before peeling off to the three trenches that we currently have open.
Trench 1 is right in front of the Mansion and is aimed to try and find some unusual features picked out by the geophysics we carried out.
Trench 2 is behind the mansion and is looking for garden features. We hadn’t yet had any volunteers in this trench so today was the first day of digging here.
Trench 3 is right across the park and is on the site of Harthill House. We might find the remains of the Ha Ha and perhaps even the Neolithic Pikelooo Hill!
Today was livened up by a visit from the BBC. Diane Oxberry from BBC North West visited with a camera crew and did some interviews with the volunteers and Connor who discovered the bird below!
They visited all three trenches including traveling right across the park to Trench 3 only to arrive and find all the diggers had wandered off to lunch – they’d walked right past each other!
Trench 3 had been a bit of a headache as the soil there was heavy dark and claggy but eventually, half an hour before the end of the day archaeologist Claire declared that we’d hit subsoil. It had only taken over 1 foot (35 cm) of top-soil to get there but it was a great feeling for all the volunteers Trench 3.
Trench 2, newly opened today turned up masses of broken flower-pot and a few pits of pottery. It took one of the gardeners to explain that they used to dump waste there to explain why there was a concentration of flowerpot.
Trench 1 threw up perhaps the most intriguing find of the day where an unusual pebble feature came to light.
Tomorrow we’ll have a go at seeing what it is, until then.
Ok, ok… we know we said we’d start on 27th… but we’ve been too excited, and so have our volunteers!
After a huge response from the local community a small team of early-bird volunteers and the archaeologists from the Museum of Liverpool set about de-turfing and removing the layers of top soil in front of the Mansion House.
De-turfing at the front of the Mansion
Under the expert eye of Jeff Speakman the work began by hoeing the ground to remove the loose soil. This revealed an area of compacted earth and nearby an area of more disturbed ground. It was in this disturbed layer that we found most of our pieces today.
Hoeing the ground
Within a few minutes we’d had our first finds, numerous crisp packets (the remains of picnics gone by?) and bits of glass. More interestingly we discovered some 19th Century dark-glazed ware and some red-slip ware which may be from the 18th Century!
Mike from the Museum of Liverpool displays our early finds.
One particular highlight was our first (and only) coin of the dig so far found by volunteer Peter – a pre-1998 10p piece!
Peter and his 10p coin!
After a busy morning and a relaxing lunch it was back to trenching this time with trowels to ‘clean’ the site in preparation for photographs to record the layer that we’d removed today.
There is now a lovely clean trench ready for the volunteers to come back tomorrow and really get stuck into the archaeology!
Martyn and Arthur enjoying a well earned tea-break!
We’ll aim to update this page evey day as we progress through the dig. For up-to-the-minute news see our twitter feed @Caldiesmansion !
Calderstones Mansion 