Diary  – 26 April: Setting up at King Alfred Terrace

The team arrived to collect equipment  for the dig which was duly moved to the gardens of 14 and 15 King Alfred Terrace, the site of the year’s dig and the second in the series of annual Hyde900 digs on the site of the church and cloisters of the lost minster of King Alfred the Great.

The position of the trenches had been the subject of several discussions – we had  the information on what had been found  during  gardening by Chris Prior, who with his wife Anne owned no 14.

The proposed trenches areas marked out together with areas to be occupied by the tote bins which this year are to be used to contain the spoil removed from the pits  by the diggers, after sieving. The number of trenches and the size of the gardens – not to mention the over 100 participants who would be taking part in the dig (in 2 hour sessions) – made it necessary to contain the spoil to minimise the space taken up by it.

The space constraints meant that the position of the tent for  the processing of the finds was located outside of the gardens, on te grass at the bottom of King Alfred Terrace, as with the tent for sign on and the display (hopefully) of finds.

The kit was as with last year supplied by WARG, and included the legendary orange gazebo seemingly made to withstand a tornado and rumoured to provide a visual transit point for incoming aircraft to nearby Southampton Airport – the WARG chairman, Chris Sellen being a keen and very experienced amateur pilot. WARG have once again recruited an experienced team of supervisors, many of whom participated in last year`s dig. Don Bryan was one such supervisor, who was interviewed recently at the site of this year’s dig.

Watch the interview with Don