The Next Step Revealed

A few days of changeable weather meant that the ground had become a little damp. Although the area we wanted to investigate wasn’t too bad, the slope up which the barrows have to be pushed to stack the spoil was a little greasy and we were careful to not overfill the barrows. This was our second evening session which, with the long daylight hours, was largely possible without switching on our lamps although working until after 9 meant this did eventually become necessary.

Our aim was to deepen the latest trench a little more to expose the top of the wall we had found in 2015. This would allow us to assess the remaining material in the trench to determine whether it was part of the pumphouse construction or simply more debris thrown into the pit on abandonment. By the time we had completed this the light was very poor, so cleaning up the trench and recording was left for another day.

At some point we will want to bring a digger back on site to remove a great deal of material which was simply thrown into the deep pumphouse pit to level the ground. To ensure we do not disturb the north western side of this pit with the digger it will be very useful to find the edge so we can avoid digging out too much. To this end, we started an exploratory trench to discover this edge. This was not completed, but some interesting contrasts between two types of material were seen – a compact, chalky, clay-like substance, which is what we believe the bulk of the pit was originally filled with, and a fine greensand in the central area of the pumphouse. We think this second material is the result of a later hole-filling exercise after the originally filled ground slumped, possibly in the 1950s. This is useful evidence for where the edge of the pit may be found.

On 23rd May a short visit in the morning allowed the Wednesday evening work to be cleaned up and recorded, but it became more obvious that the material carefully left on previous dig days was only material thrown into the pit on abandonment as it contains demolition debris. As a result of this conclusion, ten minutes of work soon revealed the next step down in the flight of steps we are slowly discovering.

One step at a time! Literally.