Preparing for the Big Dig Before we arrange to bring heavy machinery onto site to dig out the filled-in pumphouse pit, it is important to identify exactly where the edges of the pit are. Today’s aim was to find the other end of the pit wall we are currently exposing. This was all discovered in…

Full Flight Our latest evening dig session, as planned, involved clearing rubble and other infill material from the emerging flight of steps. But first we had to do a quick check of something discovered back on Day 9 – a curious length of iron pipe leading away from the western corner of the building. We…

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…

A Brief Respite from the Rain The dry spring we have enjoyed so far is now behind us and it was touch and go whether we would go ahead or cancel Sunday’s session. Throughout the week the predicted weather for Sunday looked poor, but by Friday things started to look brighter both metaphorically and literally….

As the sun went down, so did we! With the lighter evenings and the continuing dry weather, the team has opted to do some excavations during the week after work. As cavers we are quite used to working in the dark and once the sun goes down we just get out some portable lights and…

A Step in the Right Direction It didn’t take us long to decide where to start with our proper excavations now we have the whole area stripped of most of the overburden. In one corner of the building, two curious stones had been exposed poking through the soil and rubble of the building. Slowly digging…

Bring in the Bobcat! It feels as if we have just made a huge leap forward with the dig. We knew that we had a large quantity of overburden to shift so we could get down to the interesting stuff. For more than 100 years, the old quarry has become overgrown, soil and chalk has…

In a few days’ time, on Sunday 19th April, we will be clearing overburden from the interior of the pumphouse. To prepare for this a few hours’ of effort were needed to find out how deep we can go without disturbing any features connected to the well. One square metre of the area was carefully…

At the end of our previous session, we had to leave the bank behind the newly-exposed brickwork with a slight overhang. This has now been tidied back which should prevent the weather washing the ground back over the excavation at this point. Although this was not a big step forward for the investigation, it has…

Our plan for the day was to uncover the wall foundations on the north-eastern side of the pumphouse and, time permitting, to start a two metres-wide trench to reveal the floor of the building parallel to the newly-exposed wall. This was a little ambitious, however, a great deal was accomplished and we finished the day…