2022 Excavations

In late August 2022, a window of opportunity arose to carry out excavations on the double ditched rectangular cropmark near Darrington.

Dave Went of Historic England's surveying team came and set out an accurate baseline using GPS enabled equipment, and from this, three grids of resistivity geophysics were repeated to confirm the position of the cropmark and so inform decisions on trench locations.

Seven PontArc members and five SLA colleagues committed to fieldwork that ran through to mid-October over 33 days. Seven was the maximum attendance on one day, the average was four people per day. Although positioned, Trench 1 was never opened.

Trench 2 was opened first across the wide inner ditch of the cropmarked rectangle, hoping to find a terminal where the ditch had an opening apparent in the geophysics. Trench 2 had to be extended to span the full width of the ditch cut into the natural limestone. The terminal was not found and the scale/difficulty of the work meant that the ditch was simply sectioned. The V-shaped ditch proved to be some 4.5m wide and cut 1.8m deep into the limestone at its apex. Animal bones and cobble fragments were found all the way down, but pottery was not found below 0.9m. A well worked limestone spindle whorl was an additional find.

Trench 3 was opened across the enclosure's east-west central ditch. The ditch fill was removed across the full width of the trench. The V-shaped ditch was this time 2.2m wide and 1.3m deep at its centre. Pottery was found all the way to the bottom, again with animal bones and cobble fragments. Additional finds included a rough limestone disc whorl, several fired clay casting mould pieces and an unfinished copper alloy plate brooch casting.

The southern end of Trench 3 was found to be just exposing a possible pit feature, so it was decided to extend the trench to take in all of the pit. The pit, roughly circular and about 1.8m across, had a central capping of cobbles, and was initially suspected to be a burial. Bones found near the top were identified as non-human, so the pit was carefully half then quarter sectioned down to its base. The pit was cut 0.8m into the natural limestone with vertical sides and a flat bottom. No pottery was found in the excavated fill, though animal bones, cobbles and charcoal were present. About half way down into the pit, a well worn beehive quernstone was found. This has since been recorded/identified by John Cruse as a Hunsbury type quern typically in use 100BC to 200AD.