Community Archaeology at Shorne Woods Country Park: A New Face for the Future
The Shorne Woods Country Park Heritage Project has gone from strength to strength over the first 3 years of its development. Lyn Palmer has now moved on to the Weald Forest Ridge Project and Andrew Mayfield has taken over as the Community Archaeologist at the Park, with funding secured from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a further two years. Here he reveals the latest news from the project and looks forward to 2009!
2008 saw our most successful community excavation to date. Over 3 weeks in July, a wide range of schools, students, families and volunteers helped to further investigate the site of Randall Manor. We had hundreds of visitors over National Archaeology weekend and gave numerous site tours. We now have evidence for a number of medieval buildings built of flint, chalk and ragstone around a gravel surfaced courtyard. Our kitchen building has at least two phases; we have also investigated a possible storeroom building and in the north east corner of the site, a bakery. The site is bounded to the north by a series of fishponds, which we began to test pit in 2008. The location of the main building is proving more elusive! We have evidence for a building with large foundations on the south side of the site, which geophysics suggests may be laid out east-west. One of our key finds from 2008 was a beautiful glazed medieval floor tile.
In 2009 we will be excavating on site from the 4th to the 26th of July. The strength of the project has always been the wide range of people we have attracted to the dig, which is open to ALL to take part in! If you are interested in learning more about the project and Randall Manor Season IV, please contact me. As in past years we will also be running our Medieval Weekend with free activities for kids on the 18th and 19th of July, as part of the CBA’s Festival of Archaeology.
In addition to Randall Manor, opportunities to get involved in the project will run throughout the year. These will include the chance to take part in an earthworks survey of the whole of the Country Park, fieldwalking, further work at our World War Two RAF and Army Camps and a renewed attempt to understand the mound on the heath in the Park. First identified as a possible Bronze Age Barrow, the flint from the trenches around the mound has been dated to the Mesolithic period. It seems more likely that we have evidence for a landscape containing a mesolithic camp, into which a post-medieval prospect mound has been placed. So with archaeology to suit those interested in a wide range of periods from prehistory to modern, I hope to see many of you at the Park this year!
Andrew Mayfield
andrew.mayfield@kent.gov.uk
ABOVE TOP: Last day of the 2008 Randall Manor dig - the core group of volunteers, tired but happy!
ABOVE BOTTOM: Glazed floor tile from the Randall Manor site.