Portsmouth brings back some awesome memories - perhaps the strangest was Stewart Ainsworth being leeched to purify his blood. To recover from the experience he headed to the oldest pub in Portsmouth for a pint. This also happened to be our incident room and it certainly helped us to recover from digging in the sea front gales all day! Most evenings ended with a warming drink and an attempt at the cryptic crossword (something Henry and Matt are getting rather too good at).
Faye and Raksha
Personally, what I found amazing was that the whole site was hidden underneath a park. The locals walk past every day without realizing what lies beneath the pristine green lawns - it reminds me of how quickly the past is forgotten. The site location meant the public could watch the digging and talk to us, sharing their memories which helped to piece together the recent history of the site and interpret archaeology we were finding in the ground. One lady gave us a surprising aid, a wonderful tea towel which had a historical map of the site on.
The initial plan for the dig seemed simple, to find the medieval hospital, something the historical records indicated was beneath the grass. The only problem is that Time Team doesn't do simple and as with most sites we encountered some unexpected challenges.
Firstly it proved to be a multi-period site with a complex stratigraphy - everything from Medieval and Tudor, to19th century parade grounds. To make matters worse it was also in an area bombed during the Second World War, hopefully we wouldn't uncover any explosives!
The weather conditions made this a tough three days. Fierce winds made it difficult to keep our feet on the ground, let alone dig. The soil was constantly being blown back into out trenches and covering the archaeology!
Evidence from the historical records and the geophysics results provided the target for trench one. Unfortunately geophysics can only tell us that there are features in the ground, not their date. The historical records were less than precise in mapping out the hospital building and rather than finding the medieval hospital, we started uncovering large blocks of concrete.
Trench two had similar problems. After perseverance and a lot of digging, plus a sigh of relief, eventually we began to uncover the medieval walls of the hospital. The walls were dated by the last minute discovery of a small sherd of medieval pottery, something which often seems the way with archaeological digs.
