Deleted Feb 2019
2019 Has Arrived
Work is underway at OAN to produce the final report for the dig. We still haven’t had feedback on some of the results and the final conclusions.
We are also working on the “Popular” Report which will give a less academic review of the last three years. much of the text and images have been gathered together and Stephe and Ken are going down to Lancaster soon for a meeting with Rachael and Adam to see what needds to be done next.
Our other project for the year is to sort out the group archives. These are currently filling Gail’s space and aren’t easily accessible for research. We have decided to rent an upstairs room at the Victory Hall, previously the Doctor’s Surgery and move everything to there as a central location.We have bought three old filing cabinets and will start checking and cataloguing our stuff before moving it to its new home. If you are interested in helping, contact Gail.
The closing of Butler’s Solictors has seen us getting 250 early edition Ordnance Survey Maps covering from Egremont to Barrow. Some of these are hand tinted First Editions but they haven’t been well looked after and are dusty and damaged. Stephe has catalogued them all now but they are going to need sorting into what we want to keep, what we could offer to other Local History Groups and, possible, which of the duplicates we could offer for a donation to pay for the archiving tape to repair our selection. If you wouldbe interested in helping vacuum, ironing and then repairing, contact Stephe.
Presentation of results:
Tuesday 6th November 2018
Stephe presented the first session looking at the community involvement which was a large part of the HLS grant application. The efforts of our volunteers over the three years made a contribution in kind of nearly £40.000. The school project in five primary schools, one secondary school and a sixth form in Yorkshire contributed another £10,200 with 569 children days, 63 staff days and 30 days from Stephe and Mur. By the end of the project Mur reckoned to have done the reconstructing plates and cups activity 68 times!
Thanks were given to the professionals involved OAN’s archaeologists, to Eleanor Kingston from the National Park and Jamie Lund from the National Trust. Particular thanks were given to Gail for sorting the Parish Rooms, to Antony and Hilary at Turner Hall, to Ian for his photography, to John for his metal detecting, to Chris at Ricky’s taxi for organising the school transport and to all the volunteers who took part, especially the steering group that kept everything going.
Jamie Quartermaine then spoke with a review of the whole project from the surveys in early 2016 to filling in at Longhouse Close at the end of June this year. The dates for building and occupation were not conclusive and certainly not as early as we had hoped and there is still debate as to whether they were only shielings, for summer occupation, rather than longhouses for year round settlement. The big surprise was that we got seven Bronze Age dates with a very narrow range between 1496 and 1196BC. It seems that the raised platform dates from that time and the medieval building was a later use of the area. This was the case in the earlier excavations at Stephenson Ground. The relationship of the walls has not been satisfactorily resolved and we have no idea of what was going on for the 2500 years in between the dated periods.
Still we’ve had a great time and developed a group with a wide range of skills and look forward to taking part in future projects around the county.