Events

The medieval building runs for 11m across the excavation site, from its frontage on the old line of Scowerenestret. The back of the building is beyond the site, under the present day Jewry Street. It was a long, narrow building (4.5m wide) with flint and cob foundations, timber walls and probably a slate roof.

Its dimensions are fairly typical of urban buildings of this date, with a number of rooms, some of them semi-basement, stretching back from the old Scowertenestret. The original large rooms were later subdivided, reusing some stone from an earlier building.

Chalk block reused from an earlier building with a possible mason’s mark or protective symbol.

Little has been found at the front of the building, because it was demolished when Jewry Street was levelled in the early nineteenth century. But a brick hearth found here seems to date from the first phase of the building, giving it an impressive entrance hall.

Cleaning the brick hearth

Deeds of 1285 refer to the site as a curtilage held by William of Buckingham. By 1417 the plot is described as a cottage belonging to John Shaldene.
Evidence from the building corroborates this. It appears to be standing on its own, with garden or open ground on each side.

A side door in the north wall of the building once opened onto a cobbled yard and an outbuilding with a chalk floor. The outside area to the south is scattered with rubbish pits.

Jewry Street was a prosperous part of medieval Winchester and boasted a number of stone houses, particularly on the east side of the street. The name Jewry Street, ‘Vicus Judeorum’ or ‘Gywerystrete’ was used from the early 13th century, but although the north-west quarter of the town was popular with members of the Jewish community they lived alongside the other inhabitants of Winchester.

Commercial development at 28 Jewry Street is giving us the opportunity to investigate a corner of the city which still holds unanswered questions for archaeologists and historians. Wessex Archaeology Ltd was appointed by Clanfield Properties Ltd to carry out initial test pitting last year. Based on this work an excavation strategy was designed and agreed by Winchester City Council's Heritage Environment Officer. The unusual strategy involved sinking the piled foundations of the new building into the ground before rather than after the excavation. As a result archaeologists can dig right up to the edges of the site and work safely at some depth below the adjacent road and buildings.

Preliminary work started just before Christmas and the excavation began in earnest last Monday, 5th January 2009. The excavation team of ten will be on site until the end of February.  By then we expect to have investigated around 300 cubic metres of archaeological deposits ranging in date from the Iron Age right up to the 19th century.

Perhaps the greatest archaeological potential of the site is to give us more evidence about the development of the Late Saxon (AD 9th-10th century) town, in particular its north-western corner. The site lies over the line of a street and buildings that were part of the Late Saxon town plan.  Among the questions we would like to answer are when the street was first laid out and how built-up it was.

Below the Late Saxon street and buildings we also expect to find traces of the earlier Roman town. It is likely that a Roman street runs through the site and we may find evidence for its development and that of any buildings that flanked it.

It is possible that evidence of earlier structures or occupation may also survive. The site is inside the Iron Age enclosure of Oram's Arbour, which preceded the Roman town.

As well as the remains of streets and buildings, we expect to recover large quantities of finds and environmental remains.  These will tell us more about the activities carried out on the site at the various stages of its history.

Pottery, animal bone, plant and seed remains and industrial residues, such as those produced from metalworking, can give us a picture of people's everyday activities in the past.

The north-western corner of the historic city has been the subject of a number of excavations in recent years and we now have a much better idea of its development through time. The current excavation will add to the results of excavations carried out nearby on Jewry Street and in Staple Gardens.

During the excavation we will be providing information on boards at the site and in the Winchester Discovery Centre opposite.

The second week of excavation at Truckle Hill is, if anything, even more rewarding than the first. Some 3m away from the rear wall of the caldarium and running more or less parallel to it, is another wall, in remarkable condition. Interest turned to real excitement when careful trowelling revealed decorated plaster on the wall. This suggests an internal wall beyond what we had thought was the extent of the bath-house. The plaster is painted with a design of red and yellow, imitating exotic foreign marble, with a buff panel framed with black. Only a small section has been uncovered but it is likely that there is more, hidden beneath the soil.

Painted Roman wall plaster

Down the slope from the bath-house we are finding quantities of wall plaster, small fragments, many of them coloured. Pieces of stone roof tile, flue tile and the odd tessera all suggest that this is where building material was dumped when the bath-house was altered or demolished.

Some 100m from the bath-house, work continues on the mysterious mound further up the valley. There is a spring near here and last week it looked as if this might have been the site of a cistern, providing water for the bath-house. Now this seems less likely. Layers of mortar have been uncovered where the ground dips in the centre of the mound. Could this be where the mortar for building the bath-house was produced?

As so often happens, this excavation is not only answering old questions, but raising new, exciting ones as well.

Today was our last day at Down Farm as, after five successful years, this will be our final year on this site. After a week’s training our participants are now confident and competent and needed little instruction from us. The site was quiet except for the rustling of records and the scratching of trowels as we pressed on with work on this Iron Age settlement site.

Over the past five years we have dug countless postholes, several pits, an enclosure ditch and numerous sections of enigmatic quarry hollows. This has revealed a wealth of information about the prehistoric residents of this site.

We now believe that we have found a small farmstead where a small group or even just one family lived for several generations. They farmed the land, built roundhouses and square ancillary buildings, quarried chalk and buried their waste. We’ve found evidence of activities that may have been rituals – a cow burial flanking the enclosure ditch and a human femur buried in a shallow pit – the meanings of which are now lost to time. All that remains of their lives are the traces preserved beneath our feet which our teams have painstakingly excavated in order to bring to life the prehistory of Down Farm.

The team from week two of the Practical Archaeology course 2008

Thanks

Wessex Archaeology would like to thank everyone who has dug with us, this year and over the previous four years, and everyone who has supported the project. We’d like to thank those that have given workshops and worked behind the scenes on post excavation and project management to make this a success. We’d also like to thank Martin Green, not only for letting us work on his land, but for the talks, tours, advice and good humour he has shown over the past five years.

The Wessex Archaeology Team.