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Saturday 28 June 03
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Will this group of enthusiasts find a telescope dismantled in the 19th Century? Find out more here. You will need RealPlayer to view this file.
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Groundwell Ridge, Swindon
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The Background
In 1998 one of the biggest housing projects in Europe was well underway at the Abbey Meads development in North Swindon. Groundwell Ridge was destined to become an estate of executive homes until a digger driver preparing the ground for foundations came across some structural remains.
English Heritage inspectors were called in to excavate a few evaluation trenches and conduct a geophysical survey of the 10 acre site. What they found was a mass of Roman, and possibly earlier, evidence of occupation over the whole area. The initial theories bounded around by archaeologists were that this site could be anything from a religious and ritual site to an expansive villa complex. The fact that so many springs are located all over the hillside lends the area more towards the ritual shrine hypothesis, but whatever the purpose of the site, with so many structures evident in the geophysics there's no doubt that this whole area was certainly important!
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Diggers doing their stuff
Loveday Lamb, Karen Bate, Paul and Stephen Elsdon have all volunteered to take part in Big Dig and excavate a test pit at Groundwell Ridge. 'It's a great trial run.' said Stephen, 'I'd like to do archaeology later as a job so it's good to see what digging's really like.'
Loveday, Paul and Stephen are all local Swindoners and Kate has travelled 20 miles from the Pewsey valley to take part. 'The great thing with this is it makes people more aware of archaeology.' said Loveday, 'There's really good support for people digging too.' After the team had discovered part of a medieval jug handle the enthusiasm moved up a notch. 'I'd like to find some more pottery now.' continued Loveday, 'Any more evidence would be great just to find out what was going on here and to get a few more bits to the jigsaw.'
Karen worked on the site back in the nineties as a volunteer on the assessment digs when it was first discovered. 'I'm one of those people who always walks with their head down trying to spot things.' she laughs, 'I think what I'd really like to find would be some nice flints, you know, some evidence for even older pre-Roman occupation of the site. You can't beat a bit of prehistory.'
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Check out the medieval jug handle that has been uncovered at Groundwell Ridge.
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Geophys at Groundwell Ridge
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Time Team surveyor, Henry Chapman, has been racing around the site recording all of the test pit locations and tying in his survey with the original English Heritage results.
'There's two main things I've been concentrating on.' says Henry, 'Firstly I've been constructing a three dimensional map of the landscape using my GPS kit. The model shows you that the site has a large depression at one end and the current theory is that an important spring could be there. Hopefully the test pitting will give us some answers. The other job I've been doing is checking out the geophysics results and tying those in with my survey of the estate. As you can see on the second image: an outline of the houses is clear and then the geophysics results have been dropped into the picture. On top of this we have a red line which indicates Roman walls thought to exist from the original EH survey. With a bit of luck we can put some test pits into those gardens and find out if the geophysics and old EH survey have come up trumps.'
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Click here for a larger image of the 3d construction of Groundwell Ridge
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First Features
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A test pit has uncovered the first archaeological features on the site. Michelle Curl and her three children: Hayley (12), Stacie (10) and Stephanie (7) together with Emma Furness have just discovered post holes which contained Roman pottery.
'This is the real thing.' said Time Team expert Ian Holbrook, 'We're getting near the action now.'
Michelle was really pleased: 'This has been fantastic fun. We've all learnt a lot. You just never realise how much hard work it can be. The crew and archaeological supervisors have been great and we've just had a great day.'
Click to see the postholes! |
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