Douglas River Source Trip

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As part of the Douglas River Project, last month Eric and I met at Rivington Barn for a trip onto Rivington moor. This was to see if we could trace the route of the River on the moor and perhaps find its source (clues where to look are in the name i.e. Douglas Springs). Having climbed up through the terraces of Lord Leverhulme’s Japanese garden onto Belmont Road, we soon had our first encounter with the River – little more than a stream at this point, it passes through a culvert under the road at a place called Brown Hill. You can find details of the rest of the trip here.

Roman Road Research Online

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Lockdown has given me the opportunity to catch up with all the research we have carried out over years on the Roman roads in our area. Our investigations go back to the earliest days of the Society – we made our first foray into the field as early as 1985. However our researches began even earlier when, in 1983, we produced our first report on the road leading north out of Wigan. You can now see all this work here  .Also

Wigan to Walton-le-Dale
Wigan to Warrington
Wigan to Manchester
Wigan to Burscough
Wigan to Ribchester

St Wilfrid’s Ledger Stones Survey

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Following on from our Graffiti Survey last year in the Parish Church at Standish, it has been our intention to record the grave slabs (ledger stones) inside the church. These were exposed when the carpets were removed last year. These ledger stones have not seen the light of day in a good many years and we thought it would be a shame for them disappear again without being properly recorded. You can follow our progress here.

GM Festival of Archaeology 2019 (Toddington Lane Well Site)

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Another great festival weekend with eleven bodies on our site at Toddingtons on Saturday and a further nine on Sunday – including a total of seven members of the general public. We also had a good number of visitors stopping by over the two days inquiring about our activity on our Well Site, which is on the west side of Toddington Lane at Haigh. 
We were looking for the old well marked on the 1849 OS but not on any later maps, and also evidence of the possible Roman road linking Wigan with Ribchester. You can follow our activities on our site diary here.

Eye in the Sky

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We bought our new drone in October last year after being inspired by our unusually dry summer. It was obviously too late for us to take advantage of those conditions but we have found plenty of opportunities to try out our new toy. This last week has been no exception – with the unusually warm and sunny weather for this time of year, we took advantage of the ideal conditions to visit sites north of Coppull at :-
Row High Wood and
Charnock Richard where the line of the Roman road extends towards Euxton – also
Pingot Valley where 4 years ago we looked for remains of The Arches viaduct, and
Dean Lock a new site for us on the Douglas Navigation where the remains of a river lock may have survived.

GM Festival of Archaeology (& Brimelow Farm Open Day)

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The weekend Festival and Open Day was a great success with a good number of volunteers and many visitors over the two-day event. Friday volunteer numbers were down (probably as it’s a weekday) but, on Saturday, we were oversubscribed.

Saturday’s volunteers and crew. Left to right: Chon, Tracey, Al, Darren, Alex, Vanessa, Bill, Patrick, Andy and Mark. Front row: Lily, Indiana (Bones) the dog and Lucas.

Throughout the two days we had a constant stream of visitors, particularly from the local residence who were keen to have a look at the Roman road we had discovered on their door step (encourage to have a look by Trevor acting as gatekeeper).  It was particularly pleasing to see David Ratledge who hasn’t been too well recently – his Gazetteer of Roman Roads in Lancashire is quite comprehensive (and he’s currently working on roads in Cheshire – we all wish him well on this project).

Friday’s contingent: Left to right Patrick, Andy, Dave North, Mark, Dave Flanagan and Tony Boylan

Much Progress was made on searching for the Roman road between Wigan and Walton-le-Dale and you can see the details of our work here.