Day 2 - Thursday 9th July 2009

The weather has been kinder to us today and we have made steady progress. Trench M (see plan) is now compete and waiting recoding.

A new trench (H) was opened to the north of it. This has uncovered the north east corner of the building which was part of the dining room added to the house by John Burgoyne around 1760. The walls were surprisingly thin although not as bad as those in trench M.

We have also started a new Trench (G) on the opposite side of the dining room. We have already exposed the top of the foundation and we plan to do more work here tomorrow. The foundation here is thicker and differently constructed but the significance of this is still unclear.

We have also continued work on trench D but have not reached the bottom of the soil and rubble which was dumped over the site when the house was demolished in the 1950s. The depth of the cover has surprised us. A survey of various heights suggests that the west end of the building was much more deeply buried after the house had been demolished. It may be that the bake house at the west end had a higher floor level than the main part of the house and that the people doing the demolition simply turned this into a slope.

We hope to learn more tomorrow.

John Phillips