Welcome back to Saint Mary's Field Museum. This is a space
where we're able to bring the public in and show people a
little bit about what we're doing here. Uh in this film,
we're actually gonna break out of the tent and we're gonna go
up into the fields around us and we're gonna find out a
little bit more about what's happening in the wider
landscape here and we're gonna go and meet the archaeologist
who's gonna tell you a little bit more about the work that
they've been doing. The site here is important because
obviously, we have the remains of around we think 3,000 people
um within uh the St. Mary's Churchyard and obviously the
building the building of the church itself. But also it's
important because um we have the edge of a possibly
prehistoric but certainly Roman settlement um and as well as a
lot of medieval principally what we found so far
thirteenth, fourteenth century use um near the entrance to the
site. We didn't find that the church was the center um of a
medieval village uh but the the land here has been in quite
heavy use from least the Roman period. So where we are now is
on the ridgeline to the east of the church which is basically a
huge site all around all behind me up to the green fence. Where
we knew from geophysics and previous work that we're
expecting a what's called a ladder settlement which is a
kind of 2,000 year old kind of settlement structure and when
we came to strip the site we did indeed find that but what
we also found was some evidence of some earlier activity on the
site where we found some remains of uh field systems
that were probably dating to the prehistoric period and some
roundhouses structures that again we're looking at the
prehistoric period some of the pottery may have been um bronze
age and date um particularly one small pit we found which
had a placed pot in it and um this probably dates to the
middle bronze age which is um about 1,500 BC. So the
landscape we're looking here is we kind of knew it was in use
2,000 years ago but actually we can show now that it was in use
three and a half thousand years ago. So the area around the
church yard, the field around the church yard is what we're
referring to is area twenty-four. What we found was
uh evidence of a large ditched enclosure actually with a
double ditch. So um in a ditch and bank and an actual larger
one outside that. It's quite possible that these water
courses already existed and that the east west running
ditches were then added cutting into these. The most
significant structure that we found when during the strip of
area twenty-four was this big barn which is uh which had a
beam slot um construction and a postal construction. What we
also found around that was the a drip gully which is basically
to pull water away from the overhanging kind of eaves of
the roof but we also had these six really big post holes at
the end of it. What we're wondering and suggesting is
that this altogether actually makes a large barn with a
raised platform at the end of it which may well have been a
for grain storage or corn storage so you're basically
keeping that stuff up high away from rats and other animals
that are eating it. So the work being undertaken behind me is
another one of our archaeological areas. From the
trial trenching that we did back in 2018 we identified er
some Roman er water management ditches and also er we had some
medieval activity which seems to have been more of a domestic
nature. Well in in this area where we are at the moment
there um was a large amount of medieval activity. Um it's a
very wet sticky environment so it wasn't a particularly high
status site. Um with houses, some pits, some rubbish pits,
some boundary ditches. Um we have one of the final phases of
the excavation here uh revealed uh a fifteenth century warrerners
lodge which is unusual as it contrasted quite strongly with
the material that was already there. Um which in itself is
quite high status structure. Um there aren't that many found in
the UK um but it does indicate that there was quite a lot of
wealth uh and it was owned by the the Lord of the Manor and
occupied by the chap that was responsible for looking after
his rabbits which was a very important source of food at the
time. One of the primary targets of investigation for
this area of the excavation is that how the church fits into
the wider landscape. Who's using the church? Why the
church was there? Um who paid for the church. And how they
paid for the church. So looking at the archaeology surrounding
the church is as important as the church itself.