Lots of Visitors

I had no idea how many people looked at this blog until someone suggested I put a counter on it. I haven't used counters on my sites for a few years, because I found them unreliable. They overcount when someone, usually me editing, is repeatedly refreshing the page. And they undercount when someone on a big system, like Worcestershire County Council who have thousands of computers, looks at a page which is held in a cache. That's a piece of disc space that holds a copy of my page so that the County's computer doesn't keep having to download it from the Internet.

Anyway, I put one on this site and as you can see, about 70 a month are looking in. Including me about 8 times, I think, but excluding the multitudes avidly reading the site in County libraries and the corridors of power!

Some of you may not know that you can use computers free at any public library in the county, and most others in England and Wales. After all, you are reading this on your own computer, probably. Well, it's good to send an email home when you are not there, even one to yourself when you've got a file or digital photo from somewhere. Also, you can get lots of stuff for free that you would have to pay for at home, notably Ancestry.com, that great collection of family history information.

You can still borrow books from there too.

Wildlife Update April

Duncan Sutcliffe has sent me the list of birds and other creatures spotted in and around Fort Royal Park in April 2007. A good list this month, because of the extra activity of the nesting birds, the extra care of the wildlife watchers and the large numbers of visitors swelling the popularity of the park.
Bat
Blackbird
Blue Tit
Coal Tit
Crow
Dunnock
Feral Pigeon
Goldfinch
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Greenfinch
Herring Gull
House Sparrow
Magpie
Mute Swan
Robin
Song Thrush
Starling
Wood Pigeon
Wren

For a change, the pictures are taken by me in Fort Royal Park. The bird is a carrion crow: I think there are only two inhabiting the park, though a flock of rooks comes through occasionally, and I have seen jackdaws there in the past, but not recently. I don't know anything about insects so it isn't on the list: I photographed this one to show how good my camera is at closeups, and because it kept still better than the birds. It was on one of the bottle banks, which explains the odd background.
Finally an appeal. I haven't got a good picture of it yet, but there is a sparrow-like bird that has been around all year in Upper Park Street, particularly active around 9 in the morning this time of year. It has white underwings which show on its tail when resting and are very noticeable in flight. It always flocks with the sparrows. Do sparrows have mutations like this? You don't need binoculars to see it, and I'm sure the residents, including me, won't appreciate them either!

Wildlife Register

Creative Commons copyrighted image by Steve Wilde and taken in Marlow, Bucks.

Duncan has kindly sent me the Park wildlife register for the last few months. Here's a list of the species seen.

Bat, Black Headed Gull, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Chaffinch, Collared Dove, Cormorant, Crow, Dunnock, Feral Pigeon, Great Tit, Grey Squirrel, Herring Gull, House Sparrow, Magpie, Mallard, Mute Swan, Pied Wagtail, Robin, Song Thrush, Sparrowhawk, Wood Pigeon, Wren.

The list is detailed month by month, so Duncan wants all your sightings, not just new species. I can add Coal Tit which I saw in the corner near the Mission Hall apartments on Saturday 31 March.

Wildlife in the Park

Last year on one Saturday afternoon a group of over 30 volunteers turned out to help with gardening, litter collectiing and hanging bird boxes made by pupils from the Royal Grammar School. The event atrracted lots of publicityin the local papers and was a real success. Even though it was late in the year to hang bird boes, at least three of the eleven were definitely used to rear young, and possibly another four, which gives encouragement for this year.
The bird boxes and flowerbeds have enhanced the wildlife attracted to the area and there are suggestions to icorporate more changes to assist wildlife. One possibility is to set aside areas in the park that will be allowed to grow wild, attracting diffrent animals, insects and plants.
For those interested in wildlife, a register is being kept of animals and birds spotted in the park or seen from the park and is posted on the notice boards. Please report your sitings by email to duncan sutcliffe xxduncan@sutcliffeinsurancexx.co.uk (leaving out the xx's which are there to help prevent junk emails). You don't need to be an expert as even a 'probable sighting is welcome. A couple of more interesting animals recorded recently include a number of sightings of a bird of prey that may be a sparrowhawk and sightings of bats as late as October and as early as February. The picture is from Gary Cox's web site and is not local.

The View From Fort Royal

I've put a new set of photos on Picasa, taken when the daffodils were first blooming and the crocuses were at their best. Thank you to the lady who was concerned that I had collapsed on the path. In fact I was lying down to check that I had the Cathedral framed nicely by the daffodils! I've seen several others lying down to get this shot but no-one so far as I know got one with crocuses in the foreground. Can we have some planted more conveniently for next year please?

Fort Royal Park Gardening Group

The Friends of Fort Royal have a gardening group which keeps the beds in the Park looking good throughout the year, and does a regular litter pick. Anyone can join in by turning up on the first Saturday of the month at 2pm. Here's a picture of Dilys and Evan with some of the plants they care for.

Photos on Picasa Web Albums

Please have a look at my Picasa Web Albums with photos of Worcester and around, the 2007 Eclipse and lots more.
Here's a link to the Eclipse set

2007 Eclipse

Panoramic View from Fort Royal Park

This is just a small image to entice you to look at the much bigger panorama of Fort Royal Park on one of my other sites www.fortroyal.org.uk/FortRoyalPano.html
But it's a larger file than Blogger will take - 2 Mb - so probably don't if you are still paying by the minute!

Sidbury and Fort Royal Conservation Area

Worcester City Council published a document on the Sidbury and Fort Royal Conservation Area and it's available on line. A good summary of historical data and proposals for change.

Thank you for your feedback

There have been lots of comments on this blog, so thank you to everyone who took the trouble. If anyone was put off by having to register on Blogger, sorry for not getting the comment settings right first time, but I have done it now.Anyone can comment now, withour registering!

I thought Laura's comment was worth repeating in a main entry, so here it is:

Laura said...

Thanks for all the fantastic photos over the last few weeks - I've enjoyed reading your experiences of the excavation.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if this kind of community excavation could be repeated each year - I met so many people who had heard too late about the dig to get the chance to volunteer - for instance those of us with young kids have to get there while the dears are still at school and we may get the chance to throw a sickie - (no not really Simon!) There's a demand - I only hope it can be met in future years.
P.S. Don't think about the winter guys - volunteers do not get paid for freezing their fingers off!

And Julian found a copy of the BBC video clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDR6-kvAVf4

Last Pictures

These, I'm afraid, are my last pictures. If you have any you want to see on this blog, please shrink them to 300-400 pixels across and email them to me fortroyal1651@yahoo.co.uk with details. Sorry to archaeologists, volunteers, Commandery staff, members of the public and press photographers who I may have walked into, got in the way of or included in the background of pictures without their permission. And thank you to everyone. It's been a fascinating experience.

Looking at a piece of ground, you try to guess what might be underneath, but you are rarely right. Who would have thought that there was so much fill put into the garden in the last couple of centuries that in places we would never get down to older levels in the time we had? Or that such a magnificent wall was only centimetres under the ground at Trench 7?








Can we do it again next year please?

Working up to the BBQ

Friday was the last weekday of the dig, and the team said thank you to the volunteers by putting on a barbecue (well done Angus and Christine) where we got together with some of those people we've worked with for a while over the last few weeks. Justin presented us all with certificates, well he put them on a chair and we helped ourselves, but it saves a lot of clapping, and it was hot. Somebody dug up a barrel of beer and a few bottles of wine - amazing finds on this site - together with orange juice for the work experience trainees and other teetotallers. I thought it best not to take embarrassing pictures of people drinking, so these pictures were taken shortly before, while inspectors from English Heritage were admiring our prize feature, the double sandstone mediaeval wall.

Volunteers all

It was on another dig that the mutinous volunteers were offered a 5% increase in pay.
"You don't fool us," they said "5% of nothing is nothing! We want 10% or else."
That's my volunteer joke. I don't know any archaeological jokes. It's a very serious business down those holes.
Here are some of the unpaid volunteers. Sorry to those whose pictures I took but didn't include. Some of the film didn't come out properly. Probably because it was a digital camera.


The girls are not idling, but watching an excellent demonstration of the hazardous job of mattocking.


Julian Swinbourne the poet with the tools of his other trade.


Those yellow gloves are a wonderful safety feature when the weather is cloudy. We tried photographing the Roman pottery on them, but they outshone the finds too much, so we used a kneepad instead. (Can someone send a comment identifying what they are please?) Here are the details I asked for: clockwise from top left: Black Burnished, Severn Valley Ware, Samian Ware, Mortarium - all from 120 - 200 AD. They are from a dumped layer, so are unlikely to originate on the site, perhaps having been brought with the earth down the new canal to fill low-lying land. They were probably worried about this new-fangled canal flooding the site.



Lots of visitors turned out on Saturday for the celebrity appearance by Julian Richards, from BBC TV's Meet the Ancestors. Most of the volunteers were hard at work, but one or two found time to schmooze. I tried to get on Meet the Ancestors once, but they would only consider me for a part as one of the ancestors. As one volunteer said, meeting the in-laws was bad enough, never mind the ancestors.

Finds

I can wash up at home any time I like, so finds washing has little attraction for me, but a small band of loyal washers has been supplemented by lots of extra volunteers, particularly during the heat. They wash and scrub the pots, bones and tiles, then mark them with the identifier for the context they come from, that's the level and location of soil they are found in. As well as being pretty to look at, and being the justification for digging that we need for the builders: "Found any gold yet?", they help to date the features that we find. Finally, the whole band of diggers, the tools, health forms, documentation, toilets and Jaffa Cakes which support the dig, not to mention the day by day professional decisions, are managed brilliantly by Justin, the dig boss. He doesn't pose for photos, it makes him break up laughing, but I got him while he was measuring.

Mysterious walls in the Canal Trench

It's in the last few days of the dig that the really promising structures have come to light in the canal trench, but there is little time left to investigate this collection of walls lying closely against each other horizontally and vertically. They are certainly mediaeval, and must be part of the original hospital. The last picture is of the gallant garden trench workers, who have had lots of mixed finds, but no structures for all their hard work.

Digging Deeper

It's only hot today at the dig, instead of unbearably hot. I could smell the sun screen in the trenches - well I think it was sun screen. The mediaeval wall that might be St Gudwal's Chapel is several courses deep and has a star-shaped mason's mark - a sort of trade mark - which matches one in Worcester Cathedral.

Pictures below: The wall;
Holding the measuring pole for levelling;

Planning features on a grid;
Gathering more earth in a bucket to empty on a growing spoil heap;
Levelling, ie finding the height above sea level of the features;
The mason's mark;
Where the mason's mark is carved;

Sorry!

I have to apologise for my absence from the dig this week. The heat was too much for me, and I had some work I could do indoors. I have managed to get a few photos, though. The Chapel wall has come on a treat, and the real mediaeval wall under those "mediaeval gateway" cesspits in the Canal trench looks great. The pit is so deep that I took several photos before I noticed anyone was down there!

It's off to work we go

One reader of this blog (yes, it does have readers other than yourself) commented that there seem to be a lot of people watching while one person or less is actually working. Let's nail this rumour that we are idling about.


First, although the professional archaeologists are often observing rather than digging, this is some of what they are supposed to do:

• ensure that we are working safely, not stabbing each other with trowels, falling into trenches full of water or puncturing gas mains
• keeping the work scientifically accurate, for instance making sure earth, and therefore finds are not falling from modern layers to mediaeval layers, thereby losing the proof that it is a mediaeval layer.
• working out what to do next based on what the features might represent, and what we might find by digging out another layer in this particular corner.

As for the volunteers, they are not working because

• they are learning how to do something
• they are listening to the archaeologists debating a hot concern about dating or identifying gatehouses from cesspits
• they are tired from this unfamiliar manual work
• no one is paying us, we'll stop when we damn well like!

This particular group were watching one volunteer work because they were posing for a photograph, which is another frequent occurrence.

Flash flood delays progress

Very severe rainfall on Wednesday evening caused flash flooding in many parts of Worcester, with several roads being inundated because the drains were full. The recent dry weather had made the ground hard, so that runoff was fast and uncontrollable. Stanley Road, Dent Close, Wylds Lane and City Walls Road and Sidbury were among those affected in the Fort Royal area. The canal overflowed its towpath at Sidbury Lock, affecting the Kings Head pub, which was also suffering flooding from the wash caused by vehicles negotiating floodwater on the carriageway. The Worcester News has a report and BBC Hereford and Worcester has pictures.

The Commandery dig site was waterlogged, and part was completely flooded for a while, so little was done on Thursday, and Friday morning was spent getting rid of silt and gravel which had fallen into the trenches.

Proof of the flooding was in the trench nearest the canal. A fish had been washed into it, and the water had gone down again before it could swim back into the canal. Tragically, nothing could be done to save it, and it was buried with full archaeological honours on the spoil heap. A suitable gravestone was erected during our morning break.