As part of my quest to try new things I decided to dig for treasure in my local park.
The wonderful folks at DigVentures allow members of the public to assist with archaeology projects in their local area. We arrived on a sunny Thursday to find a couple of areas of Lesnes Abbey cordoned off, with the turf taken up, and a set of tools waiting for us.
After a suitable health-and-safety briefing and some instruction on the tools, we got cracking. I was slightly sceptical that we'd find anything digging only a few centimetres of dirt. The professionals reassured us that we'd all find something.
After scrabbling around for ages, I was feeling despondent. I found some interesting stones, some underwhelmed worms, and some prehistoric crisp packets - but nothing else.
And then.
CBM - Ceramic Building Material - tiles started popping out of the ground. Big orange chunks of ancient tiles were everywhere. My mate Cam and I also found some with holes in them - evidence of them being used on a roof.
A surprising number of oyster shells were present - the discarded detritus of someone's lunch from hundreds of years ago. I even found a tiny bone (assessed as non-human, thankfully. Apparently that comes with a hell of a lot of paperwork!).
Gorgeous! And then, something shiny! Was it metal? Sadly, no. A chunk of pottery apparently. I kept digging, sraping, hoeing, looking, and then I found more shiny!
The local pottery expert reckoned it was 18th Century salt-glazed creamware.
You can take a look at the DigVentures Timeline or the Lesnes Abbey Facebook page to see more photos of what we all found.
It was a brilliant day out - I never realised just how close under our feet you can find history. It was also a physically demanding day, lots of kneeling on the ground, heaving speades, dragging wheelbarrows, etc.
If they're running something near you, please get involved with DigVentures
