We're here today because there is an archaeological dig happening in our garden
and it's part of our 75th anniversary celebrations of when the Trust took ownership
of Petworth House and Park.
Petworth is first mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1088, the park is then mentioned in the 1500s.
The house obviously exists through this time period in different guises
so the the gardens that we're stood in now, they start with George London with his designs,
working on top of a layer before which included a section called the birch wood walks
which is the area off towards where the dig is going to be happening.
George London's garden lasted up until Capability Brown was invited to the site at which point,
a lot of the London gardens which were situated in front of the mansion were then destroyed and re-landscaped
and the gardens were moved to the two wings of the house to the north and the south.
The garden as it is now is mostly reminiscent of the layout that appears on the mapping from the 1890 to 1910
and so what we're trying to do is to find lost paths from the garden of this time period.
This particular excavation looking for this path is because the temple in the garden
is supposed to have a half moon shaped path that comes around the temple and then goes down
to another path called the lower path which would improve the sort of connectivity
of different areas of the garden but also to build in a bit of more of the historic character of the garden again.
That's why we're looking to do this excavation to find out about the path
and its construction and then we would hope to do a reinstatement of the path in future years.
We're taking the opportunity to work with Chichester and District Archaeological Society
to try and unpick some of the various phases of activity that have been seen in the pleasure grounds at Petworth.
Various landowners and homeowners at Petworth have left their marks
over the years and we do have some of that knowledge in terms of maps and written sources
but archaeology gives us the opportunity to really peek beneath the soil and tangibly touch some of
the objects left behind by previous activities in the park and use them to engage with our members and visitors to tell the story of Petworth.
The place is practically my home and I've always
been interested in history and especially local history and the history of this place
just suits me down to the ground as I say. People who see the house I also like them to get involved
in the history of the landscape and I want to take them out there and show them and say look
there are things outside as well as the beautiful house. I've been involved in archaeology for over
20 years it's a real passion of mine and anywhere we can dig is special but to be able to dig here
in the grounds of Petworth House it's just extraordinary because we get very little
opportunity to do so really. This this dig here is one of the highlights for me of my archaeology career.
just to be able to dig in Petworth House.
Visitors to Petworth will probably be slightly forgiven for thinking this is a really natural landscape they're walking through.
What we can tell by the clues left behind is that this is a kind of human evolved landscape,
humans have left their traces on the ground in the actions they've undertaken.A rchaeological techniques will allow us
to sort of start unpicking those various phases of activity and trying to almost go back in time
using the soil and the artifacts left behind to tell the story of the site here.
So what we'll do is we'll unstrip the turf, we'll start to reveal different objects that have been hidden, out of sight, out of mind,
bring those back to life and through using those objects start to tell the story of Petworth.
Hopefully we'll be able to have some sort of interpretation signage and the visitors will be
able to appreciate that they're walking on something that was last used 200 years ago and has been lost ever since.
The objects could be kind of bits of pottery broken pottery or bits of old coins
normally stuff that's been broken up and abandoned almost like rubbish but actually
today what we're looking for at Petworth is hidden paths we know from maps and looking at
the map progression that different points have been different path network through this kind
of landscape and we've used geophysics to actually peak beneath the ground without digging any holes
and they've showed us up these ghost pathways underneath the ground and what we're going to do
today is use those construction methods, the bits of stone all the bits of brick
and the bit maybe the bits of pottery or coins been dropped at the same time to actually
kind of start understanding the phase of those paths and actually whether we can maybe reinstate some
of those paths to enrich the the journeys of our visitors and members around the site today.
Thank you for joining us today and thank you for your continued support
to enable us to look after special places like Petworth House and park for future generations.