Tuesday, March 31, 2009

View from the Cotswold Hills near Birdlip, Gloucestershire

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This watercolour by V A Wright shows a perspective that will be familiar to Crickley diggers from standing on the top of the hill and looking north. This painting complements the one that was posted here in January. The first one must have been painted from a spot to the east of the trees on the right.  This series, as Dr Ferris remarked on a recent stay at the Albergo Parker "is not exactly great art, but it has a certain charm."  True of many of us, Dr Ferris, true of many of us.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Delivering the tools ...

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A gem from the Ferris slide collection to start the week: how do you get a load of wheelbarrows and a batch of buckets from where they are to where you want them to be? Use your dumper truck. PWD looks as though he's enjoying himself as he trundles along: the shades and the tie are a very cool touch.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Stop press ...

Or should that be stop and press the record button on your remote control?  Kate Dumycz writes: "CH man might be interested to know that our illustrious leader has a life after Crickley Hill and has been moonlighting as a TV medievalist. I spotted him on the TV programme “The Lost Buildings of Britain” bravely abseiling down the cliffs that once formed part of Nottingham Castle. There’s a repeat showing of the programme on Monday 30th March 2009 from 10am to 11am on the Discovery Knowledge channel – set your digi-box to capture the moment!!" 

Wheelbarrows or deckchairs?

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Another snap from the Dineen CH 1980 assemblage.  On site, Sunday lunch break -Barrow recently vacated, Bernie Dawson with newspaper, Ros Cleal, Anna Collinge, Melanie Cook, Frank 'The Soil' Green, Rowena Dutton, Terry Courtney,  Julian Parker's head, Philip Dixon (hands).  That's pretty good, Jane - I'd have got everyone else but not recognised PWD's hands alone ... Those wheelbarrows really were dual purpose - they did make excellent and surprisingly comfortable deckchairs.  

Saturday, March 28, 2009

This month's prize winning entry ...


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This month's prize for portaits at Ullenwood goes, without a shadow of a doubt to Amanda Jones who sent me the splendid pictures displayed above.  

Amanda says: "I do have some more photos from CH93 - I've attached two; one of the marvellous, inestimable Mrs Betty Grubb, who cooked for and fed us, at times over 150 diggers, three meals a day. Fabulous food it was too - for me nothing came close to her cheese and potato pie! The picture is of Colin (don't know last name) Mr Crickley, Betty Miss Crickley and John the Oz (an Aussie! aka John Hewat from Melbourne) from CH93. 

Colin's Crickley abode was a large tent (which I seem to remember he shared with Phil Carlisle) which was festooned with a fabulous collection of kilims and oriental rugs of some distinction. Phil Carlisle was the only man, as far as I know, who was ever allowed to build a life-sized Dalek from egg boxes and other stuff, in Mrs Grubb's kitchen, whilst in drag. A man who was also renowned for his marvellous Barry Manilow impersonations! 

The second one has a picture of me - dancing, between Sheep & John the Oz - late on at a Weds Party. I first went to CH91 and was Miss Crickley to Dave Hollos' Mr Crickley that year!!!"

Keep 'em coming, Amanda: does anyone know who the woman on the left end of the dancing line is? At the right end is Jill Hummerstone who also featured in the solution to the mystery of the double-bowled sink posted here, which, one assumes, may just possibly have been snapped on the same evening. Dr Ferris will be both gratified and astonished that the Mr & Miss Crickley competitions, together with 'Personality of the Year' continued to be held for so many years. It was, of course, mainly an excuse for a knees-up and general partying. The original shindig, at his inspiration, was in 1979 and featured here.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Was there a Savage response?

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Richard Savage looks slightly uncertain, but ready for anything, as he stands in the late evening sunshine outside the huts, at Ullenwood, near the gate, where Messrs Dixon and Courtney used to live during the season.  He slightly has the air of being ready to dash off in any direction to avoid some imminent hazard. Perhaps photographer Jim Irvine can enlighten us?

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Crickley Hill Man in a hole ...

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Until I saw this picture taken by Jane Dineen, I'd forgotten how deep F3833 turned out to be. I seem to recall that there were a few, but not that many finds, in the upper layers and then it just went down and down. PWD decided in the end that it was a natural intrusion, I think. I'm glad that I am pictured sensibly wearing a hard hat. If the cutting edge had collapsed my body would have been recovered with the cranium intact if nothing else. But the world would have been rid of the random knit jumper a few years earlier. Note my forged tang trowel carefully balanced on a small ledge above my head.

On another matter entirely, Steve Vaughan recently wrote: 'The many trials and tribulations of the excavation currently being laid bare on the blog reminds me of another long-running Midlands-based soap opera that has recently been in the news. Is Crickley Hill Man aware of any connections there might be between the two?'.  

Blog readers may not know that for many years Crickley Hill Man has been fighting financial crime as an investigator at the Serious Fraud Office. Through that connection, it is time to reveal my other role in life assisting the BBC with 'The Archers'.  Matt Crawford's in a bit of a hole on the Archers at the moment as any readers who listen in will be aware. The Daily Telegraph had a piece about it the other day here.  Steve must still have the eyes of an archaeologist to have spotted that one ...

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Sometimes we all just needed to have a lie down ...

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A sunny day in 1985: L to R, Nadine Munn-Baron, Adrian Corrigan, Lucy McShane and, in the foreground, snatching some zeds under that extremely splendid hat, Alan Lupton.  Probably also one of the better discoveries of late twentieth century representative mug assemblages in Gloucestershire ...

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Stop standing about and do some digging!

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Scene from CH 1980 L to R: Jo Stone, Gail Boyle, Julie Gale, John Boden and Ros Cleal. Actually my headline is probably unfair: it looks as though JB is the shop steward making the speech calling on the comrades to withdraw their labour but they may just have been waiting for photographs of the cutting to be taken.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Taking the baulk back to the bedrock

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A 1980 slide from Dr Ferris's collection: when he and I were examining this digitised version a few weeks ago, he said he couldn't initially work out what I was doing - not an unusual conundrum about my behaviour, especially in those days - but then he realised the picture was taken just as I started stripping the baulk back to bedrock. I'm sure he's right: it was a cutting Iain was supervising - N7 - so I'll take his word for it and suggest that I was dutifully doing whatever my esteemed supervisor had asked me to do.  He must have taken this picture not long after I took this one which was posted on the blog in August.  

The trousers that I am sporting I, alas, no longer possess: a pair of cavalry dress trousers that were acquired in the Cheltenham Oxfam shop for a trifling sum. I think it was the red stripe down the sides that made them simply irresistible as digging regalia.  I'm also wearing a waistcoat from the same source. At the corner of the cutting, just above the pit that was F3833, Jane Fitt records some finds.  Phil's photographic paraphernalia, I seemed to recall, were kept in the box sitting by the wheelbarrow.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Second Hillfort

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Again, by kind permission of Professor Dixon: the Second Hillfort at Crickley section of "Crickley Hill and Gloucestershire Prehistory" from 1977:

"After the burning of the first fort the site was abandoned for several years at least, while silt layers and turf formed above the ruins.  Rebuilding began piecemeal: the old walls were patched up and a new gate inserted into damaged entrance.  Subsequently this gate was massively rebuilt in a single operation and was now defended by a pair of stone bastions, approach being checked by a second gate in a large outwork.  Behind this spectacular and formidable obstacle the settlement was replanned: a great round house, nearly 50 feet in diameter, stood directly beyond the inner gate; around it lay an irregular ring of smaller roundhouses; further away small square buildings in clusters were presumably used as granaries, and other groups of postholes, in pairs or similar arrangements, may be seen as the remains of ancillary buildings like those of the earliest settlement; (see figure 3).  A radiocarbon date from the new gateway suggests a date for the rebuilt fort not later than the late 6th or the early 5th century BC.

The difference in building techniques is striking, and the new community used a fine decorated pottery quite distinct from that of the first hillfort.  To regard the inhabitants as newcomers seems reasonable, but they will not have come from far away, for similar pottery-styles (and similar houses) were in fashion in contemporary sites in the mid and upper Thames basin.

The life of the second hillfort may well also have been short: the new cobbled road through the entrance was worn and patched, but there were no signs of repair or rebuilding the postholes either of the houses or of the defences.  Despite its massive ramparts the fort was attacked and captured: the houses were burnt, a thick layer of charcoal covered the cobbled road, and the walls of the bastions were reddened by fire.

Other sites to see

Of the many hill forts of the Gloucestershire Cotswolds only Leckhampton, near Cheltenham, has produced evidence of an occupation broadly contemporary with that at Crickley, ending in a similar destruction.  Excavation has shown that the Leckhampton rampart belongs to a single period of building, with a few scraps of pottery resembling that of the second Crickley hillfort.

Nothing is yet known of the houses inside Leckhampton, but roundhouses are familiar from many sites in Britain.  Small roundhouses (based on examples found at the later Iron Age sites ofConderton, near Bredon, Worcs., and Glastonbury, Somerset) may be seen reconstructed at the Avoncroft Museum near Bromsgrove; a large roundhouse, modelled on the house excavated at Pimperne, Dorset, has recently been built at the experimental Iron Age farm on Little Butser Hill, near Petersfield, Hants.

Further Reading

D. Harding, The Iron Age in Lowland Britain (1974),  B. Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities in Britain (1974), B. Cunliffe, 'The Iron Age' in British Prehistory, ed. C. Renfrew (1974), Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Ancient and Historical Monuments in the County of  
Gloucester, Vol. 1: Iron Age and Romano-British Monuments in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds (1976)"


Not sure what Jane had done to merit this ...

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Jane's note on this 1980 photo says "On site: JP, JD with dancing injury, PN".  I think you need a new team of physiotherapists, Jane.  Messrs. Parry and Noakes seem determined to make sure that, sling or no sling, you're not going to grow taller than them.  And why is Noakesy sniffing his trowel?  Or is he speaking into a microphone concealed in its handle?  More worryingly what's John got hidden behind his back? ...

Saturday, March 21, 2009

CH 1980 bailing out the cuttings again ...

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The misty dampness has been captured beautifully by Dr Phillpotts.  Hard to make out who's who, but I spy Arwel Barrett in the middle, improbably sporting a jacket, and Ros Cleal top right walking along the cutting edge headed west. Think it might be Jim Gale, two to the left of Arwel, with black belt and cap.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Another lunchtime portrait

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Another 1980 picture from the Phillpotts collection: Maryam Ghaffari with one last bite of lunch left and behind her, looking as unflappable as ever, Clive Anderson.  I always enjoyed Clive's stories about him and his HM Customs colleagues catching smugglers trying to bring drugs or liquor in through Sheerness: tearing cars apart on the dockside after a tipoff. 

Thursday, March 19, 2009

CH 83 - the Scrungers

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An interesting cameo from the Chronicler's 1983 series: Mary and Magda scrunging. Is that Frank Green in the middle, always known as Frank the Soil? Not sure that it is, but given the activity depicted, it ought to be.  And is Mary really wearing a deerstalker?  I think you'll find that she is ...

I have looked up the word 'scrunge' and its variants on the web and the results are unedifying. Its meaning is neither clear nor consistent. It seems either to get mixed up with scrunch and scrump or to be very vulgar indeed. We used it, as far as I recall, to mean sifting soil with sieves and the assistance of water.

Thinking of Frank the Soil, it is, of course, a Welsh habit to connote which person one is talking about by means of their occupation. Presumably the practice arose as a result of the shortage of surnames with so many Joneses and Williamses needing to be distinguished from one another. I hope it will delight my readers to learn that when I was touring England & Wales three summers ago visiting 17 cathedrals, 2 abbeys and 5 castles in one 3-week trip, I found, in Caernarfon, an ice-cream parlour bearing the legend above the window 'Jones the Cones'.  Perfect.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Experimental archaeology 6: a watched pot never fires ...

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Waiting for it to happen: Steve Vaughan, Nick Snashall and Ros Cleal hang about, in Steve's case hopping from foot to foot while pouring tea from his mug on the ground behind him, whilst waiting for the pots to fire.  This is the latest in the 1988 or 1989 series showing various experiments.  Nick seems to be half way through a sandwich to pass the time and Ros seems to be sucking a lemon.  I suppose it may just be that the colours are fading in Dr Phillpotts's original photo and it's an orange ... perhaps Ros can enlighten us?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

CH 1990 looking south to the hilltop

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I realise from careful examination of pages 27 and 29 of "Crickley Hill: the hillfort defences" that I made a mistake in November, when I first got my hands on the Phillpotts archive, in thinking that this was a bit of rampart.  I was probably just too excited at the treasure trove that had arrived. Looking at it again, that shot, which looks north off the side of the hill and this shot taken from the bottom of the cutting looking south up to the top of the hill must both be of the cutting that ran between Q94 and P92 , well towards the western end of the hill. No hint of rampart in sight, just a few upturned buckets.  Must do better.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Arwell's jacket: Constable could have painted this ...

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Crickley Hill Man was sitting quietly reading in his study yesterday with the computer on but unattended. The plink of an incoming email distracted him from 'A History of Wales'.  The author of the email, he is delighted to report, was Jane Dineen, sending some photos before whizzing off to ski in the Maine sunshine.  Either the developer of this photo had an artistic bent or the ravages of time have improved the original: Jane's notes tell her that the jacket was Arwell's.  L to R: Bernie Dawson, Arwell's jacket, Dave Southwood, Lucy Loveridge, Arwell Barrett, Anna Collinge.  Whole scene is idyllic and the clouds and Barrow Wake are just beautiful.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

CH85: low level conference

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A few weeks ago I posted Dr Phillpotts's "high level conference" photo from 1985. Here is the companion "low level conference": John Gale discusses a curious feature with an almost triangular cross section with Philip Dixon.  It took me a minute or two to realise that the item next to the bucket with random strips of masking tape attached is a small planning board.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Fourth Report, 1972: part IV



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Click on the images to enlarge.

Thank you again to PWD for permission to reproduce abstracts from the Fourth Report for 1972.

"Reconstruction of the Period 2 Houses

The Period 2 hollow way narrowed where it ran between Houses 1 and 2, and came no closer than 1.5m to the lines of posts.  The traffic was presumably here being funnelled by a barrier, and it thus seems likely that the outer walls of the houses lay the beyond the lines of the post holes, which thus formed internal supports of the roof structure.  Absence of post holes for such an outer wall creates no difficulties, for the problems, experimentally observed, during the course of our excavations, of cutting small post holes in the oolite might well induce even builders accustomed to earth-fast posts to rely on walling framed on sleeper beams.  In House 5 two post holes in this outer position can be seen as additional evidence for a framed exterior wall: House 5 had no other postholes in this position and the two outer holes perhaps supported a special structure -- the largest house having the most imposing facade.  Between House 1 and House 3 a small square structure with a central posthole, perhaps to support a raised floor, projected beyond the lines of postholes into the roadway.  As can be seen in figure 6, however, the proposed outer walls of Houses 1 and 3 aligned with the south wall of this square structure, which thus continued the line of the street frontage. 

Suggested reconstructions of the longhouses are shown in figure 7.  The simplest method would probably have been to fit horizontal timbers (aisle plates) between the aisle posts on the longitudinal axes of the houses; as at Stonehenge, a plain mortice-and-tenon joint would suffice to join aisle post to aisle plate.  Reconstruction 2 shows one such interpretation with the addition of a substantial outer turf wall to support the ends of a common rafter roof.  Considerable quantities of burned daub from wattling were found around the houses and in the postholes.  This suggests that the outer walls were merely wattled screens, but these could conveniently have been framed on sleeper beams and could, even without earth-fast posts, have supported considerable weight.  But it is noticeable that the post-settings are paired symmetrically, and this suggests an alternative more complex upper structure.  The aisle posts could have been held together by tie-beams across the width of the house and the roof supported on couples at about 10’ centres.  Such a structure - a principal rafter roof - is shown in Reconstruction 1 and in the perspective and axonometric drawings in figure 7. Further elaboration of the roof structure is too hypothetical, but could include bracing and crown posts on the tie-beams.

House 1 and House 7 (see figure 3) preserved evidence of centrally placed hearth, and other houses may have been similarly heated.  The hearth in House 1 survived merely as the circle of scorched bedrock, and the erosion in other areas could easily have removed the evidence of fire. 

The hollow way continued as far as the end of the second bay of houses one and two.  No further trace of it could be found, and it is therefore possible that the entrances to these longhouses were lateral (see cover drawing).  At the east end of House 4 an additional posthole, 811, may have been for a gable door.  Apart from a streak of burning which might indicate that a porch stood on the north side of bay five in House 5, there was no other evidence for door positions, and there is so far very little trace of the subdivisions that are found in comparable structures on the continent of Europe (e.g. Waterbolk, 1964)."

Friday, March 13, 2009

Cunliffe on Crickley Hill

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I remember being taught to sing a ditty by David Southwood with the following lyrics: "When this bloody dig is over, no more trowelling for me: I will go and put my feet up and watch Barry Cunliffe on TV."  I'm afraid that I can't provide a TV clip of Professor Cunliffe on the blog but I am grateful to the Secretary of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce this extract from the presidential address that Barry Cunliffe gave the Society in 1984:

"Gloucestershire and the Iron Age of Southern Britain

By Barry Cunliffe

Presidential Address Delivered at the Council House, Bristol, 24 March 1984

But these hilltop enclosures, whatever their function, were not the only defended sites of the Earliest period.  The excavation of the strongly-fortified promontory fort of Budbury just over the border in Wiltshire has produced a mass of contemporary occupation material including highly-decorated pottery of All Cannings Cross type.  In Gloucestershire, Crickley Hill with its substantial stone-built and timber-laced rampart (Crickley period 2) must belong to this period, for it has produced three radio-carbon dates suggested of construction in the eighth century BC (Dixon 1972; 1976).  Philip Dixon's large-scale excavation here is an outstanding importance for the evidence it is providing of the Earliest and Early phases of the Iron Age in Gloucestershire. Inside the gate of the period 2 fort he has discovered a number of four-post buildings together with several long rectangular structures which are either houses (as the excavator prefers to see them) or rows of four-, five-, and six-post "granaries", some of them in fenced enclosures.  At any event the massiveness of the Crickley 2 defences and the density of buildings within, combined with a comparatively small area closed, serves to distinguish Crickley from the broadly contemporary hilltop enclosures, suggesting that the fort was occupied by a community of some status.  Thus we can begin to see a pattern emerged with a few very strongly-defended forts like Crickley and Budbury possibly representing the residences of the elite, while the larger hilltop enclosures may have been pastoral structures serving larger communities.  That the period was one of some stress is shown by the destruction of Crickley 2 by fire and its partial rebuilding in period 3a.

It was during the Early period in Wessex that hillforts seem suddenly to have proliferated.  This may well have been the case in Gloucestershire but the evidence is rather less clearly defined. At Crickley however, in period 3b, there is dramatic evidence for the massive rebuilding of the defences with complex outworks to protect the entrance.  A single radiocarbon assessment suggests the construction date may have been in the sixth or fifth century BC.  Excavations within the fort showed that the layout of the settlement had changed, the exclusively rectangular structures giving way to a new layout dominated by a very large roundhouse sited just inside the gate.  The nearby hillfort of Leckhampton, defended by a timber-laced rampart with stone fronting-wall, is thought to have been built at about the same time; it too could boast an entrance of monumental proportion."

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Cutting AXV - 1979

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Another slide from the Ferris portfolio: this from 1979, of the rampart cutting.  The wall begins to emerge from under the tumble. A couple of planning frames, artistically abandoned at jaunty angles, lie nearby.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

This digging business is exhausting ...

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Lunchtime shape: the morning's work one day in 1980 leaves Maryam Ghaffari, Elsa Charlot and Arnelle in a state of such tiredness that they snooze in a triangle.  It all looks very peaceful.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Crickley idyll with cattle ...

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Crickley at its best.  Glorious effort from Peter Wakely in his 1995 series for Natural England: it must have taken a while to get the cattle in the foreground to arrange themselves properly for the shoot.

Monday, March 9, 2009

It's that pit again ...

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Just when you might think it would be impossible to have a picture of F3351 from yet another different angle, another photo emerges from the archives.  This unusual view comes from Marion Barter and she must have nipped up onto the top of the rampart before getting Frank Green, Chris Phillpotts and Ros Cleal to strike a pose.