As part of this event, last month we invited 6 volunteers from the general public to come and help us with our excavations at Toddington Lane. Over the two days, we showed them how to dig trenches, trowel surfaces and survey site features. It was a great success and, despite the damp conditions on the first day, all seemed to enjoy it (and hopefully this will result in some new members). One of our volunteers, Vanessa Oakden, happened to be the Finds Liaison Officer for Cheshire, Greater Manchester & Merseyside. Based at Liverpool Museum, the Portable Antiques Scheme, which she runs, has been very successful over the years, enabling chance finds (particularly from metal detectorists) to be identified and recorded. Vanessa regularly holds workshops in Liverpool and Manchester (and also soon in Warrington) where people can present their finds for cataloguing (more details of the scheme can be found here https://finds.org.uk). As yet we haven't turned up anything of interest from our dig for Vanessa, but she was intrigued by an item which came out of the stony layer in our test pit 1 - the fossil of an ancient calamite plant (a sort of giant horsetail). We're reckoning it to be about 300 million years old .
Site Progress
Vanessa, together with her 6 year old son Lucas, and all the other volunteers, enabled us to make some significant progress. The previous week, we had asked the farmer's digger friend to extend our Test Pit 3 a few metres eastward in an attempt to find the edge of the road. Volunteers Julie and Paul were tasked with cleaning up the surface but, after a lot of trowelling, it was obvious the road metalling stretch all the way to the end of this trench with no sign of an edge. They then helped to record the surface, and with the dumpy level, showed the surface in all 3 test pits (and the adjacent track) to be more or less level - just dipping down 20 cm over the last 3 metres on the east side. The following day volunteer Ian helped Andy to cut through the modern surface in this trench starting at the east end.
This revealed an area of natural rock suggesting there was no other phase of road in this area. This was disappointing but rather than waste more time here it was decided to see if we could pick up the old road further up the hill towards the Trench 2 where we knew we had it. Andy and Ian were tasked with opening a new trench, Test Pit 4, about 13 metres from Test Pit 1. Digging through the loose stone debris mixed in with the top soil, they eventually reached the road surface at about 20 cm below where it was expected. Again disappointingly this turned out to be made up of the same modern material as the other test pits.
Meanwhile volunteer Lee worked on Trench 2's side section. This had been exposed by the digger last month and showed a thick band of dark soil lying under loose stone quarry debris (see over). The road itself can be seen lying directly under the soil band and consists of a compacted stone layer about 40 cm thick. Embedded well inside this stony layer was a single sherd of pottery proving that this road could not be older than post medieval. Lee tried to extend the trench downwards but soon came upon a surface of what appeared to be natural rock, which he found he could not penetrate.
Despite all the setbacks we had made some progress and at least our volunteers got to do some real archaeology (and seemed like they thoroughly enjoyed themselves). As usual you can see more on our blog site here: http://wiganarchsoc.co.uk/blog/?page_id=968
Next Meeting
Wednesday 5th July. - in the Standish Suite at the Brocket Arms (7.30pm as usual). In the 1600s Wigan was only second to London for its Pewter industry and supplied much of the North as well as trading abroad through Liverpool. Caroline Heaven has been studying the subject over the last year or so and has agreed to present her findings to us. She will also be bringing some examples to look at. Hope to see you then- BA
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