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.

A Medley from 1979

I've created this 1979 collage from a series of Dr Phillpotts's photographs, some of which, alas, are not quite in focus: see if you can spot Marion Barter, Elsa Charlot, Maryam Ghaffari, Guillaume, Anna Collinge, Ros Cleal, Paul, Ranging Rod, Zoya Spivakowska, Randall Motkin & me. Most of these photographs were taken on the cuttings which were supervised by Ros Cleal, Marion Barter, and Sarah Roberts.

It's that pit again ...

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.

That horse's head again ...

Another splendid addition to the team photo collection from Marion Barter, to whom thanks are due.  This shows the horse's head that was found in the baulk of F3351 part way through excavation, just before it was extricated from its resting place.  L to R: Phil Dixon adjusting the camera, Crickley Hill Man (still with some hair to my surprise), Mike Webb, ? and Dave Southwood. The later journey to the finds hut I posted here a few weeks ago. The work in progress on the digging of F3351 is here, here and here. The final cleaned up pit is here.  Now that I see Marion's photo, I have a vague recollection that the skull was poised so much on the edge of the baulk that it was in danger of falling out downwards before it had been photographed. I seem to remember briefly packing some stones against the side of the baulk to stop it collapsing, but I may have invented this.

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.

F3351 with baulk 1979

After the labours of many people, here's the pit whence came the horse skull just before the final removal of the baulk. Marion Barter and Sarah Roberts's cuttings in the background. For a view of F3351 after the removal of the baulk and with the presence of Ros Cleal see here.

Watching the workers ...

It may just be the timing of Dr Philpotts's snapping, but five standing watching and two doing the work in F3351 is an unusual Crickley view. Jane Fitt in the red shirt and an unidentified person, whose rear in pink trousers can be seen, get credit for doing the work whilst Marion Barter, Julian Parker, Penny Hart (then Griffiths) inspect from the baulk and PWD and Ros Cleal from the cutting. I'll maintain the fiction that I'd just emptied the wheelbarrow, the handles of which are behind me!

A finer architectural shot of the Courtney Memorial Platform can scarcely be imagined: this was 1979, when it was newly built: all that remains of it now is the scar on the rampart where the grass grew not for nearly 30 years. When I was on the top where the platform is a few weeks ago you could see large quantities of red and pink burnt limestone on the top surface of the rampart where the platform once stood.

Do you need a few more people, Dr Cleal?

 

Sure you couldn't squeeze another half dozen in? F3351 seems to have been labour intensive at the start: L to R: Rosemary, David Hole, Guillaume, Dominique, Ros Cleal, Randel Motkin, Rob and a few others begin the task of working their way down to the bottom of the pit. The line of the baulk can be dimly discerned where the tape measure runs across the pit.

Dear oh dear ...

1979 again: where do we start? Carole Anderson's apron, I think: which has some pretty colours in it. My random-knit sweater? Certainly it made an impression: later that year, I was in a cinema in Cambridge and was recognised by Jane Charman, who dug at Crickley in maybe 1977 and 1978: she yelled in front of the whole audience "Julian, the last time I saw you was on ATV Midlands, talking about cow bones, wearing that horrendous random-knit jumper!" I tried to sink invisibly into the seat and failed. In the back pocket of my jeans: trowel, WHS, forged tang. And, Arwel Barrett, what are you doing and what are you wearing? I think, to be fair, Arwel and I had just retrieved, more or less intact, the horse's skull that was found in F3351 on Ros Cleal's cutting. That's what's in the wheelbarrow on a bed of plastic bags. But it wasn't that heavy, so I'm not entirely sure why Arwel appears locked at that rather uncomfortable-looking angle. 

F3351's all cleaned up now ...

Dr Cleal will, I'm sure recall all exact details of this, so I stand to be corrected: this is F3351 completely excavated and cleaned, in, yet again, August 1979. I think this was the refuse pit in which we found, amongst other things, a horse's skull.