Although the website hasn't been receiving frequent updates, plenty has been going on behind the scenes. Our current project has become a fascinating and heady concoction of Victorian water supply, Georgian water and fish management and medieval tile making!
Having disentangled the various works associated with supplying water to the hall and its gardens, we moved on to investigate a feature in the canal. This turned out to be a dam, with the remains of an unusual wooden valve system to control water levels. These photos show the excavated dam and what remains of the square wooden 'pipe' which held the valve.
Having recovered many fragments of tile with glaze adhering and a fair bit of kiln material, it seems that whoever made the floor tiles for the nearby church set up his works very close to our site. Investigations have just begun, hopefully we'll make progress before the field is seeded next month.
