1979: the strain starts to show

Another collage from Dr Phillpotts's 1979 photographs: F3351 was clearly beginning to take its toll as you can tell from the look on my face as I come back down towards it with a wheelbarrow. Dr Cleal looks as though she's just been knocked out. On the right-hand side of the collage Matthew Wilkinson looks a bit cheerier, whilst at the bottom Randall Motkin chases a frisbee. At the top in the middle Marian Barter scratches her head with Matthew Garner and Dave nearby. At the bottom in the middle many people slave away in the bottom of the Iron Age ditch on cutting AXV, including Mike Taylor, Training, Gill, Pete, Zoya Spivakowska, Elsa Charlot, Mandy Hatherly and me.

What on earth is going on?

I am at a loss to find a reasonable explanation for this picture which Dr Phillpotts has simply labelled "Julian v Matthew Garner 1979".  I have no recollection of the contest. I seem to be armed with an empty dumper truck and Marion Barter's sunglasses. Matthew appears to be armed with one 2 metre ranging rod ready to throw and one in reserve stuck in the ground. A member of the public looks on, doubtless as bemused thirty years ago as I am now ...

Marion Barter's & Sarah Roberts's cuttings in 1979

Taken by Dr Phillpotts from the vantagepoint of the Iron Age rampart looking south west, on an uncharacteristically overcast day, sometime late in the 1979 season. L to R: ?, Sharon, Randel Motkin, Philip Dixon, Sarah Roberts, Matthew Garner, Mark Samuels, Ranging Rod. Randel, in the foreground, is examining F3351, one of the pits quarried for stone for the rampart. In 1979 the huts numbered only three: Phil's observations on their numbers over the years, and the agonies of getting them onto the lorry and up onto the hill, can be found here. The size of the spoil heap also catches the eye.

A study in concentration ...

Finally we have a picture, from Dr Phillpotts, of part of Ros Cleal and Marion Barter's cutting that isn't centred on the F3351 pit: Matthew Garner looks very neatly set to his planning whilst, behind him Ranging Rod and Mark Samuels quietly work away. During 1979 season. I wonder whether the path down the rampart worn by walkers was re-worn after the excavation and is still there or whether it ceased to exist.