Friday 7th to Thursday 13th September - Hall Yard final dig.
The final piece in the jigsaw? Hall yard dig 3 unearths answers and more questions!
Members of Sheinton Heritage Group undertook the final dig of what we have called Hall Yard. In all some 23 volunteers under the leadership of archaeologist Tony Hanna worked over the period. Hall Yard is an area of land just to the north of Sheinton Church on which today sits a private house, Woodlands that was once the Sheinton Rectory built in the 1840’s. Our dig took place on the lawn. So why did we target this site? Because was a site next to the medieval church and:
a) It had a unique oblong shape on the top of a small hill and was the site of a medieval manor house that finally fell down in the 1720’s.
b) Important Roman pottery had been found in our excavation in the field next to what became the Rectory Garden that strongly suggested that close-by was a Roman building, a farmstead or perhaps a villa. A geophys survey of the lawn had been undertaken and showed some interesting features
Two trenches and two one metre-square test pits were opened. In trench 1 we discovered that one of the features shown was a brick lined drainage channel taking water from the roof of Woodlands to a soak-away. The fill around it contained 19th century pottery. Trench 2 proved to be across a feature that was a ditch from which was recovered some medieval and Roman pottery, it also contained some large stones that might have once been the foundations of a structure. The site would be worthy of further archaeological exploration. |
