Day

Date

Title

Speaker

Friday

14th March 2008

Excavations at Goldsland Wood Caves, Cardiff.

The caves and rock shelters in Goldsland Wood on the Vale of Glamorgan contain Mesolithic and Neolithic artefacts and were used for exposure burials, probably in the Early Neolithic. UClan staff and student have been excavating there for the last 3 years and Dr Peterson gave an excellent presentation on the results of the excavations to date. There are two shallow caves and a rock shelter under an overhanging cliff face. The finds include flint tools and small pieces of bones and teeth, human and animal, mainly from the early Neolithic Age (3,600-3,000BC). There are no complete human skeletons and most of the bones are small pieces of jaw, fingers or toes. It has been known for some time that Neolithic burials involved leaving the corpse so that the flesh decomposed off the skeleton, and then burying the skeleton later. Often the bones were buried in large communal tombs, such as long barrows. Dr Peterson thinks that UCLAN has discovered the first site in Britain where the corpses were left to rot. The small bones would be those that had fallen off when the rest of the skeleton was taken for burial, possibly in a nearby tomb that has not yet been excavated. The animal bones, particularly those of wolves, could be those of scavengers which were using the caves and happened to die there. There is still more post-excavation work to be done on the bones and so we hope to learn more in the future about this exciting discovery.

Dr Richard Peterson (UCLAN)

Friday

18th April 2008

Bolton Castle and its Late-mediaeval designed landscape

Dr Moorhouse demonstrated the extensive and complex designed landscape that surrounds Bolton Castle in Wensleydale. In reality Bolton Castle was not a castle. Rather it was an ornate manor house, crenellated for effect only, and it could not have been defended against a military attack. Nevertheless it does create a considerable impression when first seen from either end of the dale. It was built by Lord Scrope, Chancellor of England in the late fourteenth century, and was surrounded on all sides by equally impressive formal gardens. He created the whole complex to show people how important and rich he was. The most ornate garden was to the west of the castle: it was symmetrical, and was overlooked by what was probably Lady Scrope's chamber. An existing mound in the centre of this area is likely to have been a fountain, as one very wet winter water gushed out of it, and there are extensive water conduits underneath the garden. The garden at the back of the castle had two summer houses that overlooked the castle and garden. The medieval village was sited well to the east, beyond the original garden (the present village of Castle Bolton only started to develop close to the castle in the sixteenth century). The gardens also stretched in front of the castle towards the river, the direction from which most visitors would have approached. On the hill behind the garden was the deer park, with a wooden tower from which the animals were shot, and there were extensive rabbit warrens. However the next generation of the family reverted much of the garden to farmland and by the sixteenth century the land was being ploughed right up to the castle walls.

The castle itself was especially well equipped, with all bedrooms and many chambers (the equivalent of modern sitting rooms) having en suite facilities.

Dr Stephen Moorhouse

retired early from salaried employment in 1991 because of ill-health. He carries on his interest in medieval landscape as an amateur, and says he has no familiarity with IT and therefore no web page.

Friday

16th May 2008

The Chester Amphitheatre

(The programmed speaker was unable to attend and his place was ably taken by Dr Peter Carrington BA, PhD, FSA, MIFA, who is a member of the archaeological staff of Chester City Council).

Dr Carrington gave a wide-ranging informative talk, accompanied by an excellent series of slide illustrations. He began with the story of the recent (2003-2006) excavations at 3 points in the Amphitheatre, and the problems associated with these and previous examinations of the site. These began, in effect, in 1925, with the discovery of a section of walling, during the installation of a central heating system in a cellar of an 18th century house built over the site.

He continued with a description of the efforts to achieve a definition of the history of the structure and its predecessors, which so far is based on the finds from the site and very little else. He suggested that the remains as they are today represent the final (stone) phase of the structure, probably dating from the end of the 3rd century AD, but that at least one previous version (possibly a timber structure) existed on the site, although this is undated.

He closed his presentation with a description and pictures of some of the finds from later occupation levels on the site.

Dan Garner (The Grosvenor Museum)

Saturday

14th June 2008

The excavations at Poulton, Cheshire

The visit to Poulton was a follow-up to a presentation to the Society, a year earlier, by Mike Emery, senior archaeologist with the Poulton Research Group. The excavation had originally been started to establish the truth or otherwise of a local rumour that there had previously been a church/chapel/monastery on the site. The weather was dry and the ground very hard at the time of our visit, which made for a successful visit, supported by another excellent presentation from Mike Emery.

The archaeology ranges from the Mesolithic (8,000-4,500 BC) to a Second World War RAF airbase, used to assemble and test fly B17s using components brought in from the nearby RAF Sealand Depot. The earliest finds are flints, indicating that it may have been a hunting camp. They have excavated and reconstructed, using birchwood posts a Neolithic henge (about 3,500BC), which was converted into a burial site in the Bronze Age (about 2,000BC), and probably closed about 900BC with the burial of some animal and human bones. They were excavating a different late Bronze Age ring ditch; we could just make out the line of a ditch in the very dry soil. A lot of Roman building material and pottery has been found scattered on the site, an indication that there may have been a high status building somewhere in the area, but it has not (yet) been identified. A Roman boundary ditch has been found which was followed by a 1960 hedge line. Excavation has proved that a chapel did exist on the site, built over an existing graveyard from before the Norman Conquest. The chapel was expanded and continued to be used by the local population, but during the Civil War it was taken over by the Parliamentarians for military use. By 1672 it had become a ruin and by 1718 it had gone, quarried for its stone for use elsewhere.

In the afternoon we visited nearby Holt, the Welsh town on the west bank of the Dee. All that is left of the castle are a few walls on a sandstone mound. The church font dates from 1490 and is carved with the Arms of the Arundell, Fitzalan and the Stanley families. The medieval bridge was built in 1338, though it has been widened.

Site photographs (thanks to Bill Shannon)

Mike Emery

Friday

18th July 2008

Historic Leyland

Our walk around historic Leyland was led by local museum curator and historian, Dr David Hunt. The tour started with a visit to St Andrew's Parish Church, where evidence has been found to show that a church has existed on the present site since the 12th century. The current building has undergone several "modernisations" including extensive Victorian alterations. The overwhelming influence of the local gentry -the Farington family - was very evident, particularly their social position as demonstrated by the family pews and crypt. Other interesting features included a number of unusual memorials, striking stained glass and the masons' marks on the church tower.

The tour continued to Worden Park where the Farington family built their home after the original family seat of Old Worden Hall several miles away became too small for their growing wealth and status. The house was surrounded by extensive grounds including a sunken garden and maze; unfortunately in 1941 a fire badly damaged the main structure which was subsequently demolished. What now remains is an interesting collection of mainly outbuildings including the brew house, ice house and walled garden.

The tour conclude with an opportunity to view the Leyland museum, once a school for local children and now housing an excellent collection of artefacts as well as the most recent touring exhibition from the Royal Geographical Society - "Visions of the World".

The evening had been an illuminating look at an historic area of Leyland and the thanks given to Dr Hunt were warm and enthusiastic.

Visit photographs (thanks to Bill Shannon)

Dr David Hunt

Sunday

21st September 2008

Visit to Whalley Abbey and Town

After such a wet summer we were hoping for a dry day for the annual L.A.S Trip. Luckily it was fine, and, though overcast, it improved during the day.

Our guide was Eric Lockwood, and dressed in role as a monk, he gave us a comprehensive and amusing tour of the Abbey ruins and grounds. There is very little surviving of the chancel and nave, but we were able to see the remains of four great piers for the tower support and the outline of the choir pits - covered ditches to add resonance to the monks' chanting. There were substantial remains of the Chapter House, dormitories, and Abbot's lodgings along with an infirmary and the Peter de Cestria Chapel. The chapel dates from c1250, being the oldest building on the site.

A separate two-storey building housed the Lay Brothers' dormitory - this still with its roof on and, although the existence of such an antiquity is rare today, there seems to be no finance to preserve it.

At the dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537 the property passed into private hands, was adapted into an Elizabethan Manor House and in 1923 the Church Of England acquired it and has made it into a Hospitality Centre including a Retreat and Conference House with facilities for business and private functions.

Lunch was taken in the Cloisters Coffee Shop - lovely homemade soup and a selection of sandwiches. This was pre-arranged by Ruth - to whom our grateful thanks!!

Before we met Eric for the afternoon session, we had a little free time to view other local points of interest; the best preserved North West Gateway from 1330, a Victorian Viaduct with two Gothic arches sympathetically designed and constructed to fit in with the Abbey surroundings, Tudor cottages and a Roman Catholic church. These sites, along with buildings viewed on the afternoon tour, had been compiled onto an A5 sheet, kindly distributed by our guide.

The afternoon tour of the town was also detailed and very informative, pinpointing lots of historical buildings and the site of the original cattle market at the main crossroads, since the town never had a market charter for a more suitable site. The millstream for the Abbey Corn Mill and ablution blocks was diverted from a weir on the River Calder, viewed by going up a small lane. Here we were lucky enough to see a heron.

The Church dates back to Saxon times and has beautiful wood carvings including misericords, box pews and a Roman altar tucked away in a corner near the tower and out of general view behind a small table. Bill explained the carvings on it. Due to its size and weight he concluded it hadn't travelled very far. The church website tells us that in all probability the Romans were the first to introduce Christianity to the Whalley area, and that after the Romans left the Celtic Christian Church became more isolated from the Church of Rome.

The town walk came to an end past the site of the Abbey Corn Mill, now surrounded by tastefully designed blocks of apartments, and a National School of 1844 - apparently the town was well provided for educationally long before other areas. Our day was very enjoyable, our guide well informed and we went home having relaxed in a peaceful and outstanding historic environment.

Site photographs (thanks to Bill Shannon)

Friday

17th October 2008

Ferry Fryston Prehistoric Burial Ground - not just a chariot burial!

Preparations for the widening of the A1(M)/M62 at Fryston included an archaeological surface survey, which identified a large number of sites of potential archaeological significance. As a result, part of the line of the road was re-routed to reduce the risk of damage to the archaeology. During the construction works 60 prehistoric sites were identified, the most spectacular being an Iron Age chariot burial, dated to 400-200 BC. Using an excellent set of slides, the speaker described a number of the sites in some detail, demonstrating that the landscape had been in regular use for 4000 years and more, from the Neolithic to the present. There were Bronze Age burials from 2,500, 2,000, 1800, & 1,300 BC. One person, buried using a local tree trunk, was provided with a tin-copper bronze dagger from southern Ireland, an archer's decorative wrist guard made of volcanic rock from Langdale (Cumbria), and a decorated pottery beaker from Yorkshire itself.

The chariot burial was placed within a larger Iron Age cemetery, amongst simpler burials, implying that the man was probably of some significance, a local chief perhaps. Examination of the skeleton suggested that he had had a better diet than most of the community. The "chariot" was assembled from bits of old chariots, some of which would no longer have been useable, and it did not fit properly into the grave. The burial was surrounded by a rectangular ditch. In Roman times (200-400 AD), the ditch had been filled with the heads and right forelimbs of at least 160 cattle. As they were all slaughtered at the same time in the late autumn and came from different herds it was probably done as a ritual.

Fraser Brown (Oxford Archaeology North)

Friday

28th November 2008

Boxgrove Man - life in Britain half a million years ago

Boxgrove in Sussex is Britain's oldest archaeological site, in that it was occupied over half a million years ago during a warm interglacial period at the beginning of the Ice Ages. The people who visited the site were not modern humans (ie Homo sapiens) but an archaic species called Homo heidelbergensis. Remains of this species, including a shin bone and two teeth were found at the site, and Boxgrove is important for what it can tell us of the life-style and behaviour of these extinct people. Half a million years ago, the site was part of a long coastal plain, backed by a line of chalk cliffs. The plain was grazed by herds of large animals - horses, bison, rhinoceros and giant deer - which were being hunted and killed by Heidelberg man.

When Boxgrove was excavated during the 1980s and 90s, archaeologists found that some parts of the site were in a pristine state - stone tools and animal bones lay where they had been left 500,000 years ago - and it is this feature which makes the site so important. The site basically is one large butchery site. The chalk cliffs provided an abundant supply of flint for tools, and several thousand hand axes were found on the site, the majority having been used for butchery - but there is little evidence for the hunting itself, and no campsite was found. Fortunately, there are in Germany two other sites that can help fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Wooden hunting spears have been found at Schoningen and a campsite has been excavated at Bilzingsleben. Together with Boxgrove, these three sites allow archaeologists to reconstruct at least a partial picture of how life was lived early in the Ice Age.

Mavis Shannon

Friday

16th January 2009

Annual Dinner - The Shajan Indian Restaurant at Mellor.

17 brave souls took fortune by the throat and, ignoring the elements and the current influenza epidemic, enjoyed an excellent evening of good food, a little tonsil varnish and some scintillating conversation. The meal itself was presented buffet-style. After a range of starters and an endless supply of popadums and chutneys, the main course consisted of a range of curry dishes (lamb bhuna, chicken korma, and prawns) served with rice and chips in generous amounts. For those unfortunates with unreliable digestive systems, special choices were served to great satisfaction. The meal was finished with coffee and chocolates, these courtesy of Margaret and Ben Edwards, to whom our grateful thanks. Those who did not attend missed a great occasion.

We wish to record our appreciation of the efforts of the Shajan management and staff who helped to make the evening such a success.

Friday

20th February 2009

Annual General Meeting and Members' evening.

After a brief but comprehensive AGM and annual review of the usual 5 indoor talks and three field excursions, Gaynor Wood was elected as the new Chairman. Following this four members of the society gave short presentations on a variety of topics. Mavis Shannon spoke about the very different interpretations by two Museums on how Neanderthals looked and behaved: while that in London showed them stooping almost like an ape, the museum in Guernsey showed them very like modern humans. Janet Edmunds showed slides of some sites in West Cornwall: from a Stone Age barrow and complex of round houses built around courtyards in the first two hundred years AD to 16th century pew ends carved with pictures of the tools of the trade of local workers. Derek Forrest spoke about his experiences of bathing in reconstructed Roman baths in Walls End, near Newcastle and in Germany; bathing in Roman times was more about being social than cleaning oneself. Finally Ben Edwards explained how he found out that the stained glass in one of the vestibule windows of the old Boys Grammar School, now Moor Park Business and Enterprise School, is Tudor and probably originally came from Hampton Court.