The view from Furnace Cottage: householder Rob Chapman's story

Drawing his own conclusions
'If it wasn't for the Big Dig, I don't think any of this would have happened,' says Rob Chapman, the owner of Furnace Cottage, whose garden was excavated by Time Team at Oakamoor. 'People in the village have always wondered where the furnace was and this has helped us learn a bit more about it.'

As well as being the owner of Furnace Cottage, Rob is an accomplished artist. The research work that he carried out for the Big Dig enabled him to draw his own reconstruction of the site. As the dig developed, though, he had to rethink his original drawing and come up with a more accurate version.

'From my earlier research I did a reconstruction drawing to illustrate what I thought the furnace would have looked like,' he says. 'However, with the constant digging and all of the new research being done, the general consensus of what would have been here has changed. I've done a second revised illustration which matches the current thinking more closely.'

Completely involved
After registering for the Big Dig, Rob never imagined that his garden would end up at the centre of a full-scale Time Team dig, but he really enjoyed the experience: 'It's been nice to have the Team here. It's also been good because I feel like I've been completely involved with everything that's been going on. With all these experts about they've still been interested in my opinion and we've all worked together to try to work out what happened here.'

As the digging progressed, it seemed for a time that it wasn't going to uncover additional medieval bloom material, the find that bought Time Team here in the first place. 'We knew from the records that a blast furnace was here in 1593 and we've found loads of blast furnace slag dating to around that time, but finding evidence of earlier stuff has been harder,' says Rob.

'When we did the Big Dig, it was a piece of bloomery slag that sent Carenza off the scale with happiness. I was beginning to think that we didn't have any more when specialist Gerry McDonnell identified some under the level of the later blast furnace stuff. This was great, especially as it had 12th-14th-century pottery with it.'

So the dig was a great success for Rob even after being invaded by 50 or so members of the Time Team crew in his cottage garden. 'The whole experience has been really good,' he says with a laugh. 'I just hope the garden recovers.'

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