Clive Drew interviews Lady Sondes and Estate Manager Elizabeth Roberts
Description: The Hon. Secretary of the KAS interviews Lady Sondes and her estate manager, Elizabeth Roberts to get the estate's perspective of the KAS archaeological excavations at Lees Court Estate.
Transcript: good evening Lady Sondes and this and thank you for giving us your time during the year we conducted three excavations in the string woods farm area as you know the university have done a barrow instruments fields and earlier on in the year in May we looked at that possible cause wait enclosure and then we had the big excavations throughout September onwards called field so as Li's horse stays and as the patron of the society what are your views on what we've done for you in the last year it's been such a wide range of experiences and emotions and in fact it has at times times been very emotional it has been a very exciting it has been very educational it has been a great adventure it has been the beginning of a wonderful journey it has been particularly nice to see how the whole estate has been able to embrace this even if it's been participation in small ways or like with Liz a very substantial amount of effort and time it's now part of our community and sits along seven other enterprises it's part of our calendar whether it be the agricultural calendar the shooting calendar we have now as we plan together for all of the other archaeological events and it is been in a motive and wonderful experience and of course this is just the beginning this from the your point of view from having to deal with us almost daily well communications great isn't it I mean modern communication now email phone things just got done I think it's quite daunting when you're asked to take a field prime field out of agricultural we know production for four to six weeks and you you had a set start date and not always the same for us RN because the weather did put a dampener on things for a few days and we had a little panic but yeah in general we you know we followed all the rules and regulations that natural england placed upon us for digging up fields and field margins and i think we we work through them had some close tight deadlines asking you chaps to be off and for us to backfill the field and carry on but sir yeah i think i think we we got there and i think the great thing about these quarters we do have a good solid team and who are able to I'm going to say drop things quite quickly adapt yeah drop that's you know can you come and move a shippi container please and working out that with a JCB in a forklift truck they're able to move it from one field to the other and you know it just pushes the team in a good way to test all their limits and to work but to work with us so again it's the whole communication everyone was interested we had a few cynical cynics amongst them from from the very first time of the of the round barrel that's just a part of rubble - you're kidding did something important and then watching everybody you know slowly taking interest and coming the ones who weren't so interested you find out they are because you hear that they've been out to the site themselves talking to you directly so all in all I think the team our interest you know really interested and what's lovely is that we talk about it now - the clients are coming shooting and we've had one team who have been a couple of times with different guests and having spoken to about it on the first visits were very keen that we continued the conversation when they came with some other some other guests and another you know slightly different team were very keen that they found out more so it's nice to know that people are keen on the history of not just the estate but you know going right back you know five thousand BC just pick up from Atlas said it's very interesting to see the reactions of course from as we'd call it the home team but we've had also friends and different associates and and there's something quite magical about it there's something very when I mentioned that it's very emotional if it's for myself something's picking up something and being told it's millions of years old this is in my backyard but I think it must be the same excitement for someone who finds something and it's that age and you're holding it in your hand and it's hard to have a frame of reference as an American we're a very young country but even here it's it's it's there's something again quite magical and I think it's touched all of us and all of those who we have seen visiting and I think from what I saw a lot of the volunteers I think anyone who can can come out and join us have the opportunity to to work with someone like Keith Parfitt who is the project manager and who is one of the great archaeologists in this country and the wow factor alone I mean it is there is such a wonderful buzz out there and and we find every time there is something exciting it just isn't that affect which comes right back to the estate office and we're right behind you and it's hard to explain what that feeling can be it's very it's visceral it's tangible it's it's really quite quite magical I think there's the what I find fascinating is there's I can bring you a little piece of Flint and I can say to you that that is Lake Meads and ethic which is 3300 BC there's four maybe in the state's perspective you are used to your recent history which won't go back a thousand years but then you get a piece of what looks like nondescript Flint and that all of a sudden is taking you back four or five thousand years in time and what it means is there's you're living in the here and now and present on this estate but mankind was living here 5000 years ago and they were they you know they evolved from a live to it's very humbling so as I was saying as an American our frame of reference is quite limited so for me to be able to see the state my late husband's family go back seven hundred years is quite remarkable but then again it puts it all in perspective and it becomes very topical a lot of the issues today things that you've worked with in your professional life that are climate change and all the issues if we seize things in their proper perspective we realize that how new we are how how contemporary our lives are as opposed to what's come before us and I think one of the key aspects of the journey was to see if there was some form of settlement what would be the correct word Clark not a settlement a habitation well no I mean I think in what's called field where we talk over the two of the five Bronze Age halls that very clearly that is a Bronze Age settlement I think that was the question was could we confirm that even though that was the speculation before the hordes which of course are now at the British Museum and and I think to be able to know that there was this whole community living there is again these a heart at least for me very hard concepts to use the vernacular to get my head around in quite a remarkable way and that's where I feel anyone who to join us in this wonderful adventure it's it's it's it's an experience well I even see I'm I'm finding hard to put it into words but that is literally how I do feel about it well I think one of the beauties of the sort of archaeology we're doing here is there's you can go into that field and you can put your hand back 5,000 years by picking up a piece of burnt Flint piece of work or a piece of Bronze Age pot you know then we know now from having that pot taters we've got a date range of 1150 to 950 BC so we know that there was a Bronze Age settlement there now the interesting thing is that we then want to expand that for next year so the plan is that we're the first Bronze Age halt that was found at the top end of the field we now want to excavate that because we think the possibilities that Bronze Age halt number one is actually earlier than the the site that we dug at woods Caulfield in September so we want to see if there's a correlation and the settlement between Bronze Age for one and one's age towards two and three so that that's a plan for 2019 another plan for 2019 is we want to fully excavate the causeway to enclosure that we did an exploratory trench on because we've got Neolithic pottery in the layers they are correctly defined the other thing that we are going to do is we're going to conduct a geophysical survey in battles Mir this is the start of the hunt for battles with colossal particular yes but that will probably throw up additional excavation targets for 2009 team now I think that what's so III get for you and I totally understand the thrill of the archeology from my point of view without what I found to be absolutely fascinating is that we had 253 people come up and take part in that excavation and that's quite remarkable right I guess the testament to the estate and the thrill of the estate the factors we have this area here that archaeologically is relatively unknown we know what's going on around it can't really got Watling Street and the Romans and everything else there we've got this this particular area here that is archaeologically relatively unknown and to be able to come there I think is attractive a lot of interest and I think that a lot of those people will come back again next year so I think we've got an interesting season ahead in 2019 certainly from the the buzz on the ground I would very much hope that would be the case as there was it was such a lovely feeling to it and with the fact that there was so much happening there was so many finds there was I think he kept everyone's interest it came to everyone good going and the stewardship of an estate as old as as this the history is so important but to be able to look at history in a whole different way his it's just a wonderful legacy to be able to say there's the history isn't just of the last few hundred years but remarkably it's of course thousands of years or in some cases millions of years that's that's pretty humbling as I said yes I think it's like it's very very interesting and the the generosity of the estate and there's an item's being quite phenomenal because you you can't go on two sites and there's a enormous pressure to get you get on there and then get off because the landowner or the developer needs the lands being able to take our time and spend our time properly it's quite a luxury and in this day and age with commercial archaeology in the background it was nice from the Estates point of view particularly those of us who regularly visited how the volunteers and the professionals so happily down to tools to tell you what they had found you know I now look at so I walk across the field today I'm looking for different things you know what I would have kicked kicked on the toe of my boot is now all that's a bit of burnt Flint that's somebody interesting pick it up and you can make a note of it and and and I think it's the same for our gamekeeper farm foreman no cane with the JCB you know how how think ken was how big do you want the whole you know it's not I'm not giving you a you know it's not a day's worth of JCB where kids how big how deep when do you want me to stop and and was was more than willing to put the time in and you know control the machine and go as deep it was it was quite an art both Richard Taylor and to work with Ken to scrape off the three or four inches and a little bit deeper here and a little bit deeper there so you know it was good that everyone got involved but for me was was Keith downing tools or yourself or Richard or even just somebody who was washing items to show you and spend the time and to see their enthusiasm which just rubbed off on twice to see you know to me it does look like a piece of soil and then all sudden it's pointed out well you can see the darkness here or this is a piece of Flint and it's crazed so therefore it's been burnt that means this has happened so it's you know it's great that the volunteers are so enthusiastic and you know to see everybody turning up at 9:30 in the morning and the 10 15 20 cars out some foreign word we also make sure that if we do this experimental archeology and try and build a Bronze Age randos that will attract probably a difference so for people coming on here to actually see you know from one sort of practical point of view have one of these houses was built you know there's there's no GPS then you know so you know whose antlers and and an awful lot of manual hard graft so that's going to be quite interesting to to see that come together during the course of next year I think the the the key thing or from my point of view that there's what I find fascinating is there's as we you know we've only explored a miniscule area of the estate you know there were sort of we can fall out of this building here straight into archaeology and we haven't gone very far and we know that there's an awful lot more on the estate to be explored you know the history of this state gives us quite a strong medieval past but from from prehistory to maybe evil as there's a very significant gap in our knowledge and hopefully this project will go some considerable way to fill that in and so that you might have further ancestors you don't know about yes that we've got to find out but in the whole for the community as well no sir not just necessarily estate but the word has bred you had visitors from other neighbors bringing items yes highlighted more information the schools coming part of you know the LEAs court education research network they're bringing in some of the local schools who came down visited easting school came and visited the university dig sites you know how they and how much they enjoyed that to other local schools want to come next year now they know it's sort of happening and and they can program it in and bring it into their curriculum is is just exactly what the estate is keen on this the education side and also what the society wants to I think that that that's a very important aspect of this project that I'm very pleased there's you know with the devil ones from shell surprise and then visiting that and the university there but we have this gap because we're looking after the primary schools of which prehistory Romans is part of their curriculum we've got the universities likely you're doing degrees in archeology but then you have nothing in the second reason because archeology was taken after the Corinthians I think is quite a disappointment but we're exploring ways there for next year of maybe seeing if something can be done around that you could embrace scheme as part of their volunteering package to maybe come up here and tries because I think it's as you said that you get someone who who's seen time taken so our fancy giving that a go but it's when you get them on the hands and knees of the trowel in hand and they are the lovers and haters they'll be backing in the next door you won't see them and it's that ability to come out here and one of the things that's often said as we do not charge anyone for this whereas other sites they might have to pay a digging fee we don't do that this is totally open and free for anyone coming on the side to watch that one day I had you know some neighbors bringing their grandchildren down and walking on and being welcomed immediately onto site signed in come and have a look come tomorrow bring your friends was just lovely to to witness it was a very good experience for for all concerned and I think next year we can now we know how it's running you know this state can push our side a little bit more with this local school so we know and deal with and get some you know get some more school visits out or local organizations out you you