Blog: Shrewsbury Castle dig diary: Day 7 – 24 July 2022

As your regular blogger isn’t here this Sunday, the task has fallen to me to tell you of the day’s progress, which has been slow going in a day dominated by wet weather.

My first trench – luckily an ornamental garden feature as well as a Medieval curtain wall, since Steve’s MSc dissertation focuses on the Landscape Heritage of Walled Gardens

I’m a complete rookie when it comes to archaeology, so if you are looking for an incisive, finds-driven technical conversation then skip till tomorrow please. Before this dig my experience was confined to looking over barriers at Pompeii, The British Museum, or merely slouching in front of the TV. TV archaeology, of course, always fascinated me: it seemed having dug up a 15mm square piece of pottery the stripy-jumpered archaeologists intoned ‘ obviously a ‘ritual item’ belonging to a ‘high status individual’ and from this a full 3D scale model of a Roman Palace might be interpreted. The mystery for me was always ‘how can I get to have a go at this’ !?

Diggers taking turns digging and talking to visitors on the Medieval motte during slow rain today

Well, as a consequence of undertaking an MSc in Heritage with the University of Chester I’ve been able to enlist to spend 3 days living the dream at Shrewsbury Castle. Two days in the baking heat of Trench 4 by the curtain wall and today in Trench 3 removing mud with a teaspoon sized trowel in the rain. And what a great bunch of people explaining how to go about the work. Morn (supervising the University volunteers) explained to me the technicalities of digging, documenting and handling and processing the finds. Nigel, leading the dig overall, keen to explain the history of the castle, plus the context of the layers and Medieval stone features which have been exposed. And that , of course, is the key.

Morn and Demi tread carefully near some complicated features

We didn’t find any gold coins, or iron age burials, but in Trench 4 we did find Victorian and Edwardian rubbish layered over clay alluvial deposits which help tell the story of castle wall developments over the last 1,000 years; while Trench 3 remarkably exposed a Norman Conquest motte top – in one area a tile probably from Thomas Telford; nearby stonework from the 12th Century!

Rain stops play! Better with delicate archaeology in the wet to save it until tomorrow!

I’ll leave the blog for the aspiring professionals from now on, but don’t leave it 40 years like I’ve done before spending some time on an archaeology dig, it’s a great learning experience. Oh, and don’t forget the enthusiasm of the many members of the visiting public who are clearly engaged when looking over the barriers: as I had been doing less than a week ago.

Scripted by Steve Wood, first time student volunteer at University Centre Shrewsbury, on behalf of all the volunteers at Shrewsbury Castle Dig 2022