Welcome to Hyde900Hyde900 is a community project in Winchester, Hampshire, to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the founding of Hyde Abbey. For more details see the "What is Hyde900?" page. Hyde900 have taken the decision along with other similar organisations and events to postpone the annual community dig until October. We hope very much to be able to offer an exciting opportunity for you to get involved in the dig with many opportunities such as excavating, finds processing and logging finds. We will keep you updated on the website. In the meantime the Hyde900 team are working hard to create an extra activity pack this year which will be featured online in the coming weeks, so that you can learn more about Hyde900 and the history of Hyde. This online pack will have a variety of activities for adults and children, which we hope you will enjoy. In the meantime, please do feel free to register your interest in our future dig.  One of the major excavations of the abbey site was the 1995-99 Community dig exploring areas adjacent to the abbey church. The trenches included those in the vicinity of the abbey gatehouse, the abbey mill and the abbey guesthouse. However the major excavations were located at the east end of the abbey church. The results of these are shortly to be published by the Hampshire Cultural Trust through a grant from Historic England. A local resident, Barbara Hall, took a series of photographs of these digs, together with a set which recorded the design and construction of a garden, designed by renowned garden designer Kim Wilkie, which reflected the design of the east end of the church as revealed in the community digs. Through her generosity, and courtesy of a grant from Hampshire Archives Trust the photographs have now been digitised by Hampsire Record Office . The photographs can be accessed from the gallery below.    Twenty tile makers from September’s Hyde900 Heritage Open Day event have so far collected their tiles – and have been universally delighted with the results. Emails have gone out to all who wished to have their tiles glazed and fired – at least those where the email addresses could be deciphered! The two other days for collection are Saturday 19 and Tuesday 22 January. If any tile maker wishes to collect their tile, and hasn’t already been in contact is invited to contact the event organiser at david@pekingparismorgan.com.”
Hyde900 had over 1,000 visitors to its stand and more than one hundred participants in its medieval tile-making workshop, making this year’s Heritage Open Days as the best ever. “We’ve enjoyed unprecedented levels of interest in the Hyde Abbey story and are delighted that there continues to be enormous enthusiasm among the public for the process of reproducing tiles modelled on the original medieval designs from Hyde,” said Hyde900 Chairman Steve Marper. People of all ages were visibly enjoying the opportunity to work with clay to form tiles bearing complex patterns derived from the medieval originals, tutored by local artist Kate Arnold. “Many participants were totally amazed by the high quality of what they were able to produce,” said David Spurling, co-ordinator of the event. “Once they have been glazed and fired they will be good enough to grace the cathedral itself!” Visitors to the Hyde900 stand also had the opportunity to see the reconstructed arch from the abbey cloisters using ‘voussoir’ and other stonework which had been discovered during the recent community excavations. The arch will be on permanent display in the Winchester Museum early in 2019. Further details on  The Cloister arch display was previewed before its move to Winchester Museum in 2019  The Hyde900 marquees were frequently at capacity
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