Just a few days after completing our last project we'll be embarking on a new adventure to look for traces of this building:
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The roots of this public house can be traced back two and a half centuries but an inn may have stood on this important thoroughfare for much longer. Hopefully our investigations will provide some clues.
Our latest project is now complete and the report can be found via the Reports page. We didn't manage to find the suspected medieval kiln but we have added to knowledge about the manufacture and distribution of 15th century floor tiles in Staffordshire and Shropshire. Add in the results of our excavations of the water supply features, a dam and a rare type of water management mechanism and the project has to be considered a resounding success.
Here's a photograph showing the tile fragments recovered, they include at least three different patterns, all of which have parallels in abbeys and churches in the West Midlands and Wales. All appear to be wasters, tiles that had some degree of defect in manufacture but some are clearly worse than others, for example the three yellow tiles in the column left of centre which have no glaze and clay from the kiln stuck to the upper surface.
