What they found

Time Team's excavations at Wicken focused on two distinct sites, one in what used to be Wick Hamon and one in Wick Dive. Wick Dive was the wealthier of the two villages by the time of their merger in 1587, with its manor house and restored church. Wick Hamon, which had lost its manor some time previously, lost its church in 1619, after it had fallen into disrepair and was pulled down.

In Wick Hamon, Time Team concentrated its efforts on the site of the lost church, now buried in a cornfield. In Wick Dive, the focus was on Warren Field, an undeveloped site full of 'earthworks' in which test pits for a project run by Cardiff and Leicester universities had produced large amounts of medieval pottery and some Saxon finds from the 9th century.

Wick Hamon: A shroud pin and spectacles
A 1717 map marks the location of 'the old churchyard' at Wick Hamon, so the 'geophys' team didn't have much trouble in locating the site of the church for the diggers. The excavations produced a rich haul of finds, including a number of tiles from the old church, a clasp hinge to a bible or other book, a shroud pin, a Henry VI halfpenny and even a possible 15th or early 16th-century bone spectacle rim.

Most time was spent, however, investigating two burials under the walls of the medieval church. One of these was on a north-south alignment, rather than the normal east-west alignment of Christian burials. This prompted some excitement at the possibility that this may have been an early Saxon burial. Unfortunately, there was no definitive dating evidence, despite the discovery of one piece of Saxon pottery from about 650AD in the same level as the grave.

Wick Dive: Pottery and postholes
At Warren Field, Time Team put in four trenches, three of which produced a wide range of finds. These included a lot of mid-13th to 14th-century pottery from nearby Pottersbury, which got its name from the fact that there were a lot of potters working there – about 20 kilns have been excavated there. Other pottery dated from just before the Norman Conquest through the medieval period, and included a Nottingham knight's jug.

Non-pottery finds included a lace end, a 17th-century royal farthing token, an 18th-century halfpenny from Ireland and a 13th or 14th-century medieval buckle that still shone in the light. Walls and medieval postholes that were excavated were thought to be connected with the manor, with some relating to houses that were cleared in the 15th century and others to houses that were cleared for later landscaping.

Text only