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| The south section of our test pit |
The hottest weekend of the year was no barrier to our dedicated team when we revisited the grounds of Himley Hall near Dudley.
With more than a dozen diggers on each day, we were able to put in a 2m x 1m test pit all the way down to natural at around 1.25m. Under the topsoil we found a demolition layer followed by a short sandy interval before another deeper and more compacted demolition layer. Below this we found around 15-20cm of a fine dark silt followed by more sand before finally coming down on to the natural sandstone.
Before the current hall was built, an older moated house stood in the vicinity. The layer of silt and the very flat sandstone at the bottom of the test pit could in some way be related to the moat or its watercourses.
As can be seen, the final sections presented some very clear and colourful stratigraphy - exactly what each layer represents and when it was deposited we'll endevaour to work out from the plentiful finds, which spanned the 12th to 19th centuries.
Given that Himley Park is open to the public and very well used, we were surprised that we didn't encounter any modern rubbish. This was no doubt due to our site being within the ha-ha, an area much less used than the general parkland.
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| The spectacular view from our dig site |