Friday, July 31, 2009

Tea break 1987

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Framed by boots belonging to Steve Vaughan and Simon Bacon, John and Julie Gale look cheery enough in spite of the damp in this 1987 Phillpotts tea break picture. Even the find hut looks soaked through.

Here was thirst-quenching achieved ...

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A fine shot of the Air Balloon in 1990 by Eric van Dorland. The transformation of a modest but cosy public house into today's rather extensive premises seems, perhaps, not yet to have begun, though the modern extension is, in any case, behind what one can see here. The bay window held (and still holds) a bench around its perimeter and this part of the bar made a very good snug into which a horde of diggers could be crammed. One had to emerge from the establishment to walk round to the outside lavatories the door to which can be seen on the far right of the photo. The blackboard behind the "Lyons brewed here" sign reads "Full menu and Specials available all day".

Thursday, July 30, 2009

1993: Cutting ZA91 and ZB91

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Lara Unger's beautiful photo from 1993 shows Cuttings ZA91 and ZB91 (if I've read the site plans properly) at the beginning of the excavation. It sometimes happened, as here, that a cutting opened in the previous year was unfinished. A sheet of plastic would be laid over the surface and the spoil backfilled and the turf replaced. The following season would begin with the heavy labouring job of digging out the dirt off the plastic sheet which can be seen emerging from underneath. This view to the west could almost be a watercolour.

The 1991 season in brief ...

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Thanks to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for permission to reproduce this abstract from their Proceedings relating to the 1991 season: "Coberley, Crickley Hill, Work in 1991 concentrated on three areas: (a) The long mound, where the platform was removed to reveal the road and fences of the Neolithic settlement. (b) The northern side of the Neolithic defences, which proved to be a complex of fences and ditches, with a gap between the village and the banks. (c) The tail of the 1A rampart, which changed its nature on the steep northern side of the hill, and had been constructed as a simple drystone wall without a ditch."

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Ritual sacrifice ...

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Mark Spivakowski looks on as the Chronicler assaults the Great Whale with a catbasher. Perhaps Dr Phillpotts had not understood that normal religious practice does not involve endeavours to assassinate the deity. Is this the only known photographic evidence of Dr Phillpotts wielding an entrenching tool?

Another cut on AXVII

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From the Dineen album in 1982: per Dixon 1994: "the front face of the Period 3b rampart, after removing the tumble and soil, showing the corner of the rebuilt defences, with a short gang length. A gang break is visible ... the collapse of the end of the bank has led to the spreading of the second gang-length southwards."

There wasn't one of these in Dorm 4 ...


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C-H-M has had the honour of a visit from Mr Boden and yesterday we nipped into the Victoria & Albert Museum for the purposes of visual gratification. On our travels, we happened upon the Great Bed of Ware. Mr Boden's immediate observation was "There wasn't one of these in Dorm 4 for those strange bed-parties." The bed can sleep 15, which would have made it ideal, though Mr Boden suspects that the record for a Dorm 4 bed might come close or even exceed that when a pile of diggers really went for it. Given the disparity in size, a dorm 4 bed being, one suspects 6'6'' by 3' maximum, we could have probably got the entire season's cast into the Great Bed of Ware. Mr Boden is included in the photograph for the purposes of scale.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Final Curtain ...

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Another in Mike Sims's series taken in the last days at Ullenwood in 2004. In the distance, on the left, is the kitchen and the mess hall or dining room. On the right, the building that some alleged had been a laundry from examination of the surviving pipework. Mr Boden correctly recalls that this end of that building, as we look at it, was usually inhabited by the catering staff, presumably so that they didn't have to stagger too far to put the porridge on. In the foreground small piles of rubble mark the accommodation habitually assigned to Terry Courtney. It is otherwise completely obliterated. Not so much as a curtain ring or a bedspring remains ...

A supervisor doing some work ...

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Dr Ferris has awoken from his reveries: "While it was very kind of Crickley Hill Man to compare my youthful, hirsute self to the iconic French filmstar Alain Delon, I'm afraid to have to tell him that the film actor I was compared to appearance-wise most recently was the late Donald Pleasence. Time is indeed a cruel mistress.

In my Delon picture, and indeed in the previously-posted picture of me posing rather too camply on the barrow baulk at West Heath Common, I note that I am wearing one of my mother's hand-knitted jumpers, the last of which sadly succumbed to a moth infestation in the mid-1980s. Much like my hair."

Here is a 1977 Becky Sanderson picture of Dr Ferris caught, unusually for a supervisor, doing some work on a cutting. He appears to be holding a brush in his left hand. Behind him I suspect that curses rent the air as JP had spoil brushed all over him by the cove in the white trousers. Dr Ferris, meanwhile, is more Dougal, the iconic dog from the Magic Roundabout, than Donald ...

Mr Arwel Barrett on clandestine manoueuvres ...

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Here is Arwel Barrett snapped by Rebecca Chambers peeking round the side of a small hut in 1988. Crickley Hill Man was strolling on Hampstead Heath yesterday in the company of Mr Boden. We came upon the magnificent prospect of the Great Wen that can be enjoyed from the top of Parliament Hill where the kites fly. We talked our way from left to right along the horizon picking out the landmarks. "Canary Wharf, the Gherkin, St Paul's Cathedral, the London Eye, ah, the Post Office Tower ..." said Mr Boden, "Did you know that Arwel used to tell a story about an occasion in the early 1970s in which he alleged that he had spent an evening in the revolving restaurant on the top of the Post Office Tower in the company of Pan's People?" I have googled Arwel Barrett and Pan's People and this social event of the decade is not memorialised.

For the benefit of his Lordship, readers under the age of 45 or not resident in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, Pan's People were a troupe of popular danseuses who prone to appear on a programme on the televisual device called 'Top of the Pops". Perhaps Arwel has some photographs?

Monday, July 27, 2009

A youthful Ferris throws a shape ...

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This portrait of Dr Ferris was taken by Becky Sanderson (Spencer) in 1977. It could easily be a still from an Alain Delon film, I thought. Somewhat more prosaically Mr Boden suggests it's probably on the steps outside the dining room at Ullenwood. I suspect he's on the money with that.

Experimental archaeology 10: baking potatoes ...

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Perhaps Ros Cleal will recall what she was actually doing in this photo sent to me by Manda Jones: getting ready to fish out the baked potatoes? Measuring something - temperature? Figuring where the pots are under the heap? Probably from 1988 or 1989.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Whatever happened to the theme park idea?

Thanks to Kate Dumycz for this one too:

'Crickley Hill may be theme park - Archaeology

Times, The (London, England)-December 30, 1988
Author: Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent

The prehistoric hill fort on Crickley Hill, near Cheltenham, is set to become one of Britain's first archaeological theme parks, if present plans go through.

Neolithic and Iron Age houses will be reconstructed, and staff dressed in appropriate ancient costumes will demonstrate grinding corn, spinning and weaving, and other skills now lost to all but a few craftworkers.

The park will be a joint venture of the Crickley Hill Trust, the body which has carried out excavations on the site for 20 years, and Gloucestershire County Council's Leisure and Recreation Department. The activity area will be east of the archaeological site, on land that does not form part of the ancient monument but still lies within the Crickley Hill Country Park.

The theme park, which will resemble well known and long established continental parks such as Lejre in Denmark, will probably have a circle of round houses at its core, based on those excavated within the Iron Age ramparts of the hill fort. There may also be a longhouse, according to Dr Philip Dixon, of Nottingham University, director of the trust and of the archaeological work at Crickley. It was the first site to yield convincing evidence of Iron Age longhouses in Britain.

The public presentation of Crickley has developed recently with the opening of a visitor centre, in which displays explaining the environment and its use by prehistoric people are complemented by a model of the Iron Age village and by a video programme in which the importance of the site and the discoveries there are explained.

The video was made with a Pounds 1,500 Hepworth Award, one of five given this year to archaeological projects with a promising programme of public presentation.

Excavation has proceeded this year in parallel with the development of facilities and plans for visitors: a number of possible ritual pits have been found, one with horse teeth at the bottom, others filled with hazelnut shells. Dr Dixon speculates that fertility of stock and trees may have been a motive.

While these, and most of the 1988 work, lie within the earlier Neolithic fort of some 5,000 years ago, part of the Iron Age rampart of 600BC has also been excavated.

A shelf was cut into the bedrock to stabilise the bank, which was laced with large timbers. Charcoal from the burning of the fortifications, and heavily reddened limestone, attest to at least one occasion when the strategic location, on a spur of the Cotswolds, and the powerful defences, were not enough.

Record Number: 1016512625
(c) Times Newspapers Limited 1988, 2003'

I think I'm quite pleased this didn't happen ...

The Strong Thing - Ivor Gurney



Photo of Ivor Gurney, Christmas 1917 (Ivor Gurney Estate/Gloucestershire Archives). Digital image © Gloucester County Council 2008 from the Oxford First World War Digital Archive.

This poem, written in December 1916 whilst serving on the Somme, shows how Gurney escaped into thoughts of the West Country in an attempt to counteract the sights he met on the front line.

"The Strong Thing

I have seen death and the faces of men in fear
Of Death, and shattered, terribly ruined flesh,
Appalled; but through the horror, coloured and clear
The love of my County, Gloster, rises afresh.

And on the Day of Days, the Judgment Day,
The Word of Doom awaiting breathless and still,
I’ll marvel how sweet’s the air down Framilode way,
And take my sentence on sheer-down Crickley Hill."

Heaven as Gloucestershire.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

All slips quietly to the earth ...

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Eric van Dorland has a fine eye for photographic composition and spotted the 'Ullenwood Camp' sign fallen into the brambles. This was taken in 1990 and shows that decay had set in, even then.

Life In the ladies' dorm ...

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This excellent shot of a pit in either Dorm 3 or Dorm 4 comes from Jill Hummerstone bearing the legend "Must have been my bed for the 1987 season". All the Ullenwood essentials are on view: the iron bedstead, the straw filled mattress (though this looks suspiciously like a superior model!), the small bedside table (a luxury) and the cabinet. The curtains that originally hung at the end of the cubicle to afford a modicum of privacy are long gone.

I would imagine that these days that if H.M. Prison Service were to offer accommodation of this standard they would be roundly condemned by H.M. Inspector of Prisons and firmly told that rioting would be the likely result of housing people in such spartan conditions.

But we rather liked it, on the whole and rarely, if at all, rioted.

Whale worship

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Malc White writes to point out an oversight on the blog: there has been no mention of Whale worship: "Often when Mike the Whale would appear on the cutting there would be a cry of "Whale Worship!" and a dozen diggers would fall to their knees and chant

"Oh Great Whale,
Oh Great Whale,
Oh flatulent flatfish,
Oh farting flounder,
Give us a sign, oh fishy deity!"

To which Mike would invariably reply "Bugger off!"

I can't imagine why. What is more perturbing is trying to remember how this peculiar activity originated and why. The photo montage shows Mike at varying stages in the development of his cult: on the left in 1978, 1980 in the middle, and later in the 1980s perhaps 1981 on the right. Or maybe that's another 2 years' beard growth ...

The chant I had forgotten, but as soon as Malc sent it to me I knew he had it right, even if with the benefit of hindsight the zoological knowledge implied by the words is more than somewhat shaky.

Friday, July 24, 2009

It's back to work we go ...



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It had passed from my mind, until I saw these pictures belonging to Anna Behan (Collinge), that Flt. Lt. Southwood, inspired, doubtless, by PWD's habitual cry of "BAAAACK to work", at the end of one 1979 lunch break, organised and led a party of seven dwarfs singing "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's back to work we go!" Here they are leading the team out onto the cuttings to the evident amusement of other assembled diggers. I cannot identify all seven: Messrs. Southwood, Dawson, Parker, Noakes and Taylor seem to feature (quelle surprise!). Can anyone help with the missing two? Who was Snow White? Where was she?

Julie-Ann Morrison (Souter) can be seen highly amused by Mike Taylor's efforts in the bottom photo.

For those who wish to relive parts of their childhood, I include below the relevant clip from YouTube. Song begins at 1' 18" and examination of the footage from 2' 00" onwards will reveal remarkable authenticity in the depiction of the catbashers...




'The Times' 20 August 1987

More from 'The Times' courtesy of Kate Dumycz:

'Archaeology: Evidence of forgotten ritual

Times, The (London, England)-August 20, 1987
Author: NORMAN HAMMOND, Archaeology Correspondent

Excavations at the Cotswold hillfort of Crickley Hill have revealed a set of curious features that may reflect a lost ritual more than 4,000 years old.

Consisting of bare polished rock platforms and several sets of pits, the features are almost devoid of finds, and thus difficult to date with precision.

The discovery came during the 19th season of excavations at Crickley Hill, which overlooks the Severn valley, near Gloucester. An area lying between those investigated in 1978 to 1981, on the 'central knoll' of the hilltop was stripped, and several features found in the 1978 investigations were found to continue.

The platforms consist of areas of the local limestone, possibly levelled up, which have been polished by the wear of innumerable feet over a period of years. The areas have no clearly defined edges, although fires were lit on them in places, and their density of finds was only 4 per cent of that in the neighbouring neolithic village area, suggesting careful sweeping.

Dr Philip Dixon, of Nottingham University, the director of the excavations, feels that this cleanliness makes them unlikely to be house sites. Phosphate testing is being carried out to see whether activities such as cremation were carried out on the platforms: several pits in the vicinity have yielded fragments of burnt human bone.

The fires were not lit in formal hearths, but were more like bonfires, Dr Dixon said. The problem with the phosphate survey, which detects organic materials, is that 'background noise' from medieval sheep grazing and later rabbit warrens needs to be filtered out to see if any prehistory activity is demonstrated.

Some of the platform surfaces overlie pits, although they are thought to belong to the same general period as the platforms. In them were found layers of tightly packed stone slabs, together with such objects as a calf's jaw and a horse's shoulderblade; both may have had meat on them when buried.

The filling of the pits may have occurred in two episodes, with a turf line developing in the interval; another turf line, separating the platforms and pits from the neolithic occupation of about 3000-2500 BC, demonstrates that these features are of a later date.

Dr Dixon surmises that they are of the Beaker period, around 2000 BC, or of Iron Age date, when the next major occupation of Crickley Hill begins with the impressive hillfort visible today.

He feels that the platform/pit complex may be coeval with, or slightly later than, the late neolithic shrine found two years ago at the end of the enigmatic 'long mound' a few metres down the hill (The Times, July 29, 1985).

Further investigation of the long mound this year has shown that it had an even more complicated history than initially thought, with three major periods of development in which the mound was progressively raised and lengthened. Stone settings at the ends and along the flanks of the mound were replaced as they became buried by erosion deposits.

Few parallels are known in Britain for this concentration of apparently ceremonial behaviour, although the circles of large pits found at the Irish megalithic site of Newgrange a few years ago, and also dated to around 2000 BC, may reflect similar preoccupations on the part of the ancient inhabitants.

Record Number: 1024671857
(c) Times Newspapers Limited 1987, 2003'

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Crickley Hill - Ivor Gurney



I knew that there was a poet called Ivor Gurney who wrote of Crickley not least because of the quotation from his poem 'Crickley Hill' which appears at the front of 'Crickley Hill: the Hillfort Defences'. I have recently unearthed Gurney's poems in the excellent Oxford First World War Poetry Digital Archive.

The images of Gurney's papers above are © Gloucester County Council 2008. They show a fair copy of the manuscript written out by Gurney's friend, Marion Scott. He wrote the poem whilst a patient at Lord Derby's War Hospital.

Crickley Hill

The orchis, trefoil, harebells nod all day,
High above Gloucester and the Severn plain.
Few come there where the curlew ever and again
Cries faintly, and no traveller makes stay,
Since steep the road is,
And the villages
Hidden by hedges wonderful in late May.

At Buire-au-Bois a soldier wandering
The lanes at evening talked with me and told
Of gardens summer blessed, of early spring
In tiny orchards, the uncounted gold
Strewn in green meadows,
Clear cut shadows
Black on the dust and grey stone mellow and old.

But these were things I knew, and carelessly
Heard, while in thought I went with friends on roads
White in the sun, or wandered far to see
The scented hay come homeward in warm loads:
Hardly I heeded him;
While the coloured dim
Evening brought stars and lights in small abodes.

When on a sudden, "Crickley" he said. How I started
At that old darling name of home, and turned,
Fell into a torrent of words warm hearted
Till clear above the stars of summer burned
In velvety smooth skies.
We shared memories,
And the old raptures from each other learned.

O sudden steep! O hill towering above!
Chasm from the road falling suddenly away!
Sure no two men talked of you with more love
Than we that tendered-coloured ending of the day.
(O tears! Keen pride in you!)
Feeling the soft dew,
Walking in thought another Roman way.

You hills of home, woodlands, white roads and inns
That star and line our darling land, still keep
Memory of us; for when the first day begins
We think of you and dream in the first sleep
Of you and yours -
Trees, bare rock, flowers
Daring the blast on Crickley's distant steep.

Warrington, July 1918

Big Les then and now ...

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A return to the Phillpotts archive for this shot of Big Les driving the dumper during the 1983 season: it may be an optical illusion but it looks as though the steering wheel is bent which would make it more fun to negotiate. John Parry tells me that Big Les sends his regards to all and was sorry not to be able to make the reunion: JP also sent the photo below of Big Les keeping an eye on us:


Aerial surveillance of the workers ...

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Les Capon scrutinises from on high during the 1991 season: from examination at higher magnification, detecting hair and glasses, I think Alan Ford may be next to him on the platform. This photographic tower had the additional sophistication of additional poles to buttress the four corners: the former model was a 'straight-up-and-down' tower that would shift about entertainingly in a decent breeze.

Crichley (sic) Hill in Hansard ...

I was amused to discover this excerpt in Hansard Written Answers:

"Accident, Crichley Hill (Birdlip) : HC Deb 08 July 1964 vol 698 cc112-3W 113W

§Mr. Ridley
asked the Minister of Transport if he will publish a report on the accident at Crichley Hill, Birdlip, Gloucestershire, on 27th March, 1964.
§Mr. Marples
No."

Brusque and unhelpful ministerial replies are nothing new.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Dormitory 3 in 1980

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From Jane Dineen's collection, but not taken by her as she's in this photo of the inhabitants of Dormitory 3 at some point during the 1980 season. Jane is next to Gloria Polizotti with Anna Collinge on the other end of the front row: help needed, please, in identifying the others.

Were you a model for this scene?

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Jill Hummerstone and Les Capon included this postcard amongst their photo collection: the caption on the back reads: "Neolithic Village c. 2500 BC after Crickley Hill". Cattle, sheep, corn grinding, spears and axes feature. The smoke filtering through the thatch is a nice touch. No sign of JP anywhere ...

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Dear old Ullenwood ...

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I'm gradually working my way through scanning the many photographs that people entrusted to me over the reunion weekend. Mike Sims very kindly lent C-H-M the photos he took in the summer of 2004 just as Ullenwood was being demolished. It's almost brought tears to my eyes to see some of the destruction wrought upon the place, but we're very lucky that Mike had the foresight to capture the camp on camera just before its final demise.

Here's a splendid spliced-together shot of the dormitories from the top end looking back down towards the mess hall. I can't work out what the climber is that's grown all the way up the back of Dorm 4 but there's plenty of Rosebay Willowherb (Epilobium Angustifolium) growing between the dormitories as it always did. Curious how much affection one can feel for some old bits of corrugated iron ...

Monday, July 20, 2009

Ros is looking tickled ...

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Dr Phillpotts was obviously not going to let Ros have a quiet snooze during this break in 1979 snapped by Anna Behan: Bernie Dawson and Frank Green watch the tickling.