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Badlesmere Bottom 2019 - Day 5

Submitted by Fred Birkbeck on 23 August 2019
Fred Birkbeck reports on day 5 of the dig at Badlesmere Bottom at Lees Court Estate.

 

Work continues on day 5 of our dig and what a fantastic amount of work KAS members are getting through. Lady Sondes was impressed and fascinated when she visited the site late in the afternoon.

Another blisteringly hot day on site with the crew uncovering more of the ring ditch running through trench 3. We have established both edges of the trench with an additional cut on what would be the inside. We managed to find the bottom of the main ditch which was cut into the underlying chalk. The feature itself was surprisingly shallow so maybe a ditch for a small family enclosure?

Grave cut in ring ditch
What could the strange cut marked with the range poles be? A terminus? A grave cut? 

There are still three more features in this trench to examine but tomorrow we will be moving back to trench 1 to finish recording the two ditch slots and to do some teaching for those who would like to learn drawing and recording.

Ditch slot in tench 1
A second quick slot dug into the ditch in trench 1

Members will also be examining the three features present in trench 2 which relate to the rectilinear anomaly around the medieval church site and a circular anomaly that they run alongside.

Trench 2 annotated
Geophysical survey results with the plan of trench 2 transposed on. 

So, plenty to be done and due to the progress made to today, we are bang on target!