For forty years FoPH members have been digging into Pendle’s past. In its 40th year, well 2023 into 2024, we have been hunting for physical evidence of a cattle pool known as Brericar, one of the many Lancashire holdings, many within the Blackburn Hundred, of Queen Isabella (c.1295 to 22 August 1358), wife of King Edward
Forty years! That’s how long the Archaeology group has been digging into Pendle’s past. Quite an achievement, and there is more to come. The group started out in the Middle Ages investigating the origins of what is now the Pendle Heritage Centre, and it looks like we are back there again with our latest explorations.
After yesterday afternoon’s colossal effort, this morning was sedate. Georgina & I spent the morning cleaning the worst off some of the finds so that they could be stored until it was time for proper cleaning and analysis. We also had a look at the trench & put a few sods back in place. The
We had more fathers than mothers on site today and it was scorchio. Sondage D has been taken down to ‘the natural’, Feature 1 has been cleaned up and recorded, ditto Feature 2, and elsewhere more of Context 3 is being peeled back. Judging from the pottery found in it, Context 3 looks like it
Today I started recording some of the sections and to help me do this I used some high tech – to wit a camera & some cotton buds . Well I do like the sections to be kept nice & clean. We make a record of the sections so that we have some idea of
We have been concentrating on the feature previously known as Idris’s Doughnut and trying to find ‘the natural’. The Doughnut continues to grow and now seems to be a made cobble platform of some sort & probably pre-dating the existing buildings in the area. The surface a short distance below it certainly pre-dates them –
I’m sure the site’s archaeology is taunting us. Sondage A revealed what looks like the rest of the Doughnut. It’s a feature built of medium sized pebbles and it may well be a pad to go under a wooden post. After a day of finding mostly worked stone, today continued in much the same way
We were at it again today, delving underground, lifting up rocks to peer into Pendle’s past. It’s getting more complex and older. The largest amount of pottery today was Medieval & there was precious little of that though Gayle did find a beauty. By far the most prolific material found today was stone, and chert
The rain returned today and it seemed to be enjoying itself. We cleaned about a third of yesterdays finds and theorised about what the artifacts we have found so far may tell us about the site’s history. We also looked at our soggy trench and saw a few things that have been exposed by the
Miserable Monday indeed. Yeh verily it did piddle down all day. But lo, we were not daunted, for we were fortified with hot drinks and comfortable seats. We spent to day cleaning finds to date and starting the assessment of the bulk finds. Find Of The Day goes to something that looked like nothing until
Today we started on our first ‘proper’ context (image below). In other words the first undisturbed archaeological layer. We were still finding Victorian material and prehistoric chert but we have also unearthed some Medieval pottery. The first & best sherd of Medieval pot was found by Steve and is our Find Of The Day. It