Day 2 – The Day The Teachers Came

The sun was there to welcome us today, and Under Whitle Farm is a beautiful place to be on a sunny day – its not bad on a rainy day but on a sunny day it can be breathtaking.

It was a perfect day to welcome some new volunteers and to welcome back Tina from TPA along with Adrian, who also came yesterday to start freeing up the cellar from fencing and trees with Steve.  Today they began by de-turfing around the cellar and although I didn’t get to check out what they’ve done myself, I had reports of evidence of destruction and possible burning showing through. Of course, now we are wondering what could have happened here – we know that the house was inhabited in 1845 from the evidence on the tithe map, but by 1851 it was empty and some time later it was demolished.

We also finished de-turfing the first trench in the large field (we’re calling this Trench 1) and the volunteers soon started to clean it back to remove the topsoil.

Whilst the emerging archaeology is of course the underlying reason (no pun intended!) for us being at Under Whitle, today was all about the teachers and TAs. They had been invited to come along to see what they will be doing on the days they visit with their pupils and to consider a little more how archaeology could be used to teach the National Curriculum.

After an introduction, they were soon sent off to explore the site by Ian to see what they could see in the landscape they were walking within. They had their turn in the trench and learning how to process finds. They were shown some of the activities the children will be doing and even played that old favourite – Tudor Call My Bluff!

Thanks to all the teachers and TAs for coming. today.  We thoroughly enjoyed having you on site and look forward to welcoming you back over the next couple of weeks. Thanks also to everyone else who was there today.

Now to prepare for tomorrow – the first school visit!

#Excavation