Saturday, 6th July 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of archaeological excavations at Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire.
More than 5,000 volunteers from around the world worked on the site between 1969 and 1994 - 25 successive seasons of digging, directed throughout by Dr Philip Dixon, former Reader in Archaeology at the University of Nottingham. The Secretary to the excavation was Richard Savage. A reunion was held to mark the 40th anniversary on 3rd and 4th July 2009. Photographs of the 2009 reunion may be found here.A further reunion will be held on 5 -7 July, 2019. This blog has been created to allow the many people who worked at Crickley to find out about the reunions and to share their knowledge, expertise, and memories about Crickley Hill and Ullenwood Camp.
If you'd like to know more about proposed arrangements for 2019, which will be on Saturday 6 July 2019, please use the email "Contact me" link (6th item down to the left below) to ask me. If you worked on the excavation and have reminiscences or photos that you'd like to see published on the blog, please send them to the same email address.
PWD was remembering a week or two ago here the agonies of getting the huts out of the hangar at Ullenwood and up to site and built. This picture, taken by me in, I suspect, 1980 shows that rather busy day at the end of the season when we did all the hard work. I can remember loading and unloading this particular lorry: there was so much by way of huts, shelter parts, the photographic tower, tools and wheelbarrows that had to be transported that at least two journeys were needed. Heavy builders' wheelbarrows, in particular in quantity, do not lend themselves to neat stacking and we had a long struggle puzzling out how best to balance up safety, stability and economy. Many other curious and unhelpful shapes and jagged edges had to be carefully accommodated, all in something of a rush so that the lorry could be returned to the hirers by close of play without incurring an additional day's hire charge. Somehow the job was always done.
Jim Irvine comments: "My first job at Crickley (1977) was dusting the mattresses with flea powder (or some other choking white WMD!). My second job was sitting on top of a precarious load of hut bits and barrows as they were shipped up the hill on the lorry. "What happens if they start to slip?" I asked: "Jump!" I was told."
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My first job at Crickley (1977)was dusting the matresses with flea powder (or some other choking white WMD!)
My second job was sitting on top of a precarious load of hut bits and barrows as they were shipped up the hill on the lorry.
"What happens if they start to slip?" I asked
"Jump!" I was told.
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