Wood's Court Field Week 1

Clive Drew provides an update on the first few days on site and the preparation for the next few weeks excavation in Wood's Court at Lees Court Estate.

During August all our equipment, containers, marquees, offices and toilets have been moved to Wood’s Court Field. They have all had a good clean and are now ready for you.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have very much been taken up by getting the three trenches (T 2, T 3 and T 4) ready for excavation.

A drone view of the trenches.

Trench 2 is on the right of the image, Trench 3 on the left hand side with Trench 4 joining the T 2 and T 3 together.

T 2 is the un-excavated quadrant from the 10m x15m trench that we dug last year which includes the significant portion of the pit like feature that was discovered at the end of last year’s dig.

T 4 is a 10m x 10m trench located over Hoard Site 1.

Finally, T 3 is a 154m x 1.5m trench running between T 2 and T 4. Just to clarify that number the trench is 154 meters long – possible the longest archaeological trench opened up in Kent this year – unless you have other information that might indicate otherwise.

All my own work: Keith Parfitt Site Director.

The trenches were opened up by JCB with the usual watching brief in tow. Surface finds include struck and calcined flint pot/post holes.

Whilst the excavation trenches were having the topsoil removed, the team conducted some field walking. You cannot walk anywhere in this field without treading on worked or calcined flint.

Fieldwalking finds.

One feature in Trench 4 that attracted attention was a particularly large pit filled with pot boilers. Due to the size of this pit an extension was cut into Trench 4 becoming Trench 4a. The pit has a circumference of 6m.

6m pit filled with pot boilers.

Once the topsoil had been removed hand excavating started. A lot of features were exposed and are in the process of being excavated.