Brandiers Farm, Roman tile kiln excavations: Week 4 highlights 

Week 4 of excavating a Roman tile kiln at Brandiers Farm was off to a rocky start after torrential rain and winds brought by Storm Antoni undid a lot of Friday’s hard work cleaning back the kiln and its surfaces. Thankfully our wonderful volunteers got stuck into bailing, and our own Anthony brought enough cake…
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Kelmscott Community Archaeology: School Outreach 2023

During the second year of our three-year Community Archaeology Research Programme (CARP), which we are undertaking on behalf of the Society of Antiquities at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, 29 local Farmor’s School students (now in Year 8) and 4 school staff returned again to learn more about the village’s history and to take part in further activities after their…
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Brandiers Farm, Roman tile kiln excavations: Week 3 highlights

Week 3 at Brandiers Farm has had many big breakthroughs! From finding wooden planks in the ‘Pit of Doom’, finding a culvert running underneath the tile kiln flue, finding the 100th stamped tile, finding several complete or near complete tiles, and even finding more phases of the kiln. This week has gone to show that…
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Brandiers Farm, Roman tile kiln excavations: Week 2 highlights

Week 2 at our Minety excavations have drawn to a close, and so many spectacular discoveries were made last week!

Brandiers Farm: Roman kiln excavations begin again!

We lost ground at Mintey last week… but for us that’s a good thing! The 2023 season of the Minety Roman kiln excavations has started off strong! A team of volunteers have joined our site team and the ‘big yellow trowel’ to remove all the topsoil and last year’s backfill from the trenches. That means…
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Kelmscott Community Archaeology: Searching for an ancient settlement

The second season of the Kelmscott Community Archaeology Research Programme (CARP) continued with an archaeological trial trench evaluation of two fields in the village. The evaluation built on the results of last year’s test pit excavations with volunteers and local schools, magnetometer and resistivity geophysical survey by the South Oxfordshire Archaeological Group (SOAG), and this…
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Kelmscott Manor Community Archaeology: Archaeological survey

The second season of Kelmscott Manor’s Community Archaeology Research Programme (CARP) has begun! Following on from last year’s test-pit excavations with volunteers and local schools, we’re now excavating a series of evaluation trenches at key areas in the surrounding village, to identify archaeological activity and evidence of earlier settlement. In preparation for this fieldwork, thirteen…
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Cotswold Archaeology and Work Experience

Cotswold Archaeology has been welcoming work-experience students for well over 20 years, so following a couple of years of enforced COVID absence, we were delighted to open our doors again this year to work experience students at our Kemble, Milton Keynes and Suffolk offices. A total of 13 students attended in 2022, all aged between…
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Kelmscott Community Archaeology: our second and third test-pitting weekends

Following on from our initial test-pitting weekend in April/ May, as part of the Kelmscott Manor Community Archaeology Research Programme (CARP), two further test-pitting weekends took place during June and July. With the help of 34 volunteers and a local Young Archaeologists’ Club, unfinished test pits from our first weekend were re-opened and new ones…
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Kelmscott Community Archaeology Programme: School’s Outreach

During the first year of our three-year Community Archaeology Research Programme (CARP), which we are undertaking on behalf of the Society of Antiquities at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, we’ve been working closely with two schools nearby, giving them an opportunity to find out more about the archaeology of their local area. Students from St Lawrence’s C Of…
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Kelmscott Community Archaeology: our first test-pitting weekend

Following on from the launch of the Kelmscott Manor Community Archaeology Research Programme in March, the first of three test-pitting weekends took place at the end of April to uncover more information about the village’s past. With support from local residents and a team of volunteers, four test-pits were excavated – three in private gardens…
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Kelmscott Before Morris

Discovering the history of Kelmscott Manor through community archaeology Our three-year Community Archaeology Research Programme (CARP) centred on Kelmscott Manor – the retreat of inspirational Victorian craftsman, textile designer, and writer William Morris – will be starting this weekend. Working in partnership with the Society of Antiquaries, we’ll be undertaking test-pit excavations, fieldwalking surveys and…
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