It's not often archaeologists get the chance to dig right beside a church and have fair weather at the end of January to boot, so we were hopeful that this double helping of good fortune would extend to finds and features at today's dig. However, as does occasionally happen, our investigations proved somewhat disappointing.
It seems that the area where we were digging has been well disturbed - not unexpected given the proximity of the existing graves - and finds were few and far between. We did find many fragments of roof tile, of different types, some of which are no doubt from the 19th century rebuilding of the church, and a few pieces of chunky floor tile, one of which had traces of a glaze.
Two sherds of medieval 'sandy ware' pot came to light, both of which date from the 12th to 15th century or somewhere between 500 and 900 years old! One had a pale yellowish brown glaze that terminated halfway down the sherd, the other was un-glazed. Most surprising was that there was just one sherd of 19th or 20th century white pottery with no sign of the usual willow pattern or other common types and none of the usually ubiquitous clay pipes. A few small fragments of bone were found, most probably from early graves that had been disturbed long ago.
Probing revealed that the soil up to a metre below the bottom of our trench was very soft and no doubt much disturbed so the dig was terminated well before reaching the natural. A report will be published in due course and circulated to members of the Albrighton & District Historical Society, several of whose members joined us for today's dig.
