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Sunday 22 June 03
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Great Easton, Leicestershire
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Watch the Big Diggers of Great Easton here. You will need RealPlayer to view this file.
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The background
Great Easton is a typically picturesque English village complete with post office, pub, village hall and church. First officially recorded in 1086 as 'Easton' in the Domesday Book, the village could easily have earlier roots. Locals have discovered Prehistoric, Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon finds in their flower beds over the years. Time Team are helping the villagers to discover about their own village as the Big Dig project gets underway with its first 40 test pits.
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The History
The 1086 Domesday reference says that the manor of Easton belonged to the Abbey of Peterborough. According to local tradition this was a gift from the King Ethelred of Mercia in AD 700. An interesting feature of the village is the distribution of the houses along the High Street. There are more houses on one side than the other and some believe this could be because the original manor may have occupied the sparsely occupied side.
Houses have been built in the village both in modern times and during the Victorian period. These sit comfortably between honey coloured 17 Century homes. Behind the village hall there's an open field that is full of intriguing lumps and bumps. If these represent another phase of occupation what period did they belong to? Time Team and the Villagers are digging some test pits to find out.
Stewart Ainsworth has his own theories about the village: 'This is quite an interesting village and you can see in the landscape how it has developed alongside a track way which is most probably prehistoric. I think there was a grange here and then the whole village has grown and developed around that.'
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Fun in the Sun
Village pub, The Sun Inn, have got their own team together to dig a test pit in their beer garden. Licensee, Hazel Bird and her daughter Heidi have got all their research together and their team started digging at 9.00am. 'I'm hoping to dig a test pit big enough to bury some of our locals.' laughed Hazel as the group set about de-turfing their trench.
Heidi directs the group as the work gets underway. 'We did a lot of research in our local library, with our local history group and around the village.' says Heidi, 'It looks like there used to be a slaughter house on this site so we're hoping to find evidence of it in our test pit. We also found out that there used to be another pub next door in the 17 Century and in-fact there were another 9 pubs in the village at that time. We'll probably find a load of old bottles!'
After a good days digging the team at the Sun Inn discovered some 14 Century pottery, a brick surface possibly related to the old slaughter house and even a Chinese 'cash' coin. 'These are very hard to date.' says Helen Geake from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, 'it could be thousands of years old or very recent.'
'This has been great fun.' says Heidi, 'We've really enjoyed ourselves.'
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The Dillons dig for history
Sarah and John Dillon, together with their children, have excavated a test pit in their garden which is on higher ground at the top of the village. 'They've found some great pottery.' said expert Paul Blinkhorn, 'They've got Prehistoric, Roman and Saxon fragments, probably the best stuff in the village.'
'Using the guidelines has certainly made us appreciate the work involved but with each layer we dig it gets easier as we get used to it. said Sarah Dillon, 'Using the guidelines has certainly made us appreciate the work involved but with each layer we dig it gets easier as we get used to it. My husband John is a huge fan of the programme so he's really pleased to be taking part.'
John beams as he enthuses about the pottery they've found: 'It was really hard work digging through the top soil, it's just like concrete in this weather. I nearly gave up but then the pottery expert told me that we'd found some Saxon pottery and I was over the moon.'
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Thoughts for the day
'It looks like the big field at the back of the village hall was actively used in the 10 and 11 Centuries.' says pottery specialist Paul Blinkhorn, 'Most of the pottery from the trenches there belong to that date. After that it looks like the ground was laid to pasture. The rest of the village has medieval pottery finds in most gardens and then we have some Roman and Saxon at the top of the village.' That's over 2000 years of archaeology.
Professor Mick Aston is more impressed by the public support: ' This has been an interesting village to survey.' says Mick, 'But what amazes me is the public support for the event. I walked down the High Street with Tim Taylor at lunch time and nearly every garden had people digging a hole and filling out recording sheets. It's brilliant to see so many people getting involved with their archaeology. This really is what it's all about. People learning about and enjoying their past in a constructive way. The whole archaeological community should support this sort of thing and I must say that I've really enjoyed seeing so many people thoroughly enjoying themselves and learning about their village.'
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