“We know where we’re going and we know who’s going with us….”, but where have we been?? Scroll down to find out……September 2018 onwards, our third year
Friday June 27th 2019 Day 5, our final day and Year 3 from Beeston Hall School, along with Otter the Labrador. Very excited children searching in the spoil heaps and in the test pits were not disappointed. A great morning, thank you all for coming.
Thursday June 27th 2019 Day 4 and the turn of Year 5 and 6 pupils from Buxton Primary. A lot of excited children, digging, sieving, finding small pieces of pottery, bits of burnt flint, bits of tile, to add to our growing number of finds. A breezy day on the Kiln Field, but everyone worked away throughout the day. Thank you all for coming and helping us out today.
Wednesday June 26th 2019 Day 3 and two groups from Gresham School in Holt were on site. The morning saw excited Year 2 children finding things in the sieve, digging up pieces and listening to Martin telling them what they had found. Students from the Senior School were also on site and after a look at the South Side started digging and found pieces of pottery, slag, kiln fabric. Another great day, thank you all for coming.
Tuesday June 25th 2019 Day 2 . It was a wet start this morning but the rain cleared and the day ended with warm sunshine. We enjoyed a great day with pupils from Aylsham High School learning about the site, and digging and sieving on the Kiln Field. The afternoon brought the dragon flies out by the lake too. Thank you all for coming, we do hope you enjoyed yourselves, we all did!
Monday June 24th 2019 Day 1 Schools Archaeology Week Day 1 of our Schools Archaeology Week. No schools but a chance for volunteers to get in a hole! A very humid day but all is ready for day 2 – except the weather!
Sunday 23rd June 2019 A lovely afternoon spent in the peaceful garden of Deborah and Nigel, enjoying afternoon tea and talking to many people about the project.
Saturday 8th/ Sunday 9th June 2019 Woodgate Garden Show. What a couple of different days! Saturday wet, windy, gusty, muddy, Sunday lovely sunshine. We had a couple of great days and, wiwth what we took on the stall and the share of the gate money, £3000 has gone into the bank account. Thank you everyone who helped and visited us.
Thursday 30th May 2019 A really great evening held by The Rotary Club of Aylsham at the Friendship Hall in Aylsham, recognising those in the community. Even better was our very own Peter receiving his Family and Community Service Award. Not only that, but he was one of three to also receive Rotary’s highest award and be named a Paul Harris Fellow. Truly well deserved.
Wednesday 22nd May 2019 A lovely visit to East Rudham Primary to talk about Romans to Miss Bates’ Owls. A very enthusiastic group of children who enjoyed seeing bits of pots, animal prints and Julie’s great drawings. Thank you all – the flowers are now being enjoyed on the window!
Tuesday 7th May 2019 A great talk by Martin from Britannia Archaeology to over fifty people. It helped us understand all the processes he goes through when involved in any archaeology and what he has been getting us to do and look for over these last three years. Thank you to all – although one found it just a little too much to cope with!!
Saturday 27th April 2019 It was a cold, blustery day for our secondhand book and DVD sale, but we are delighted to say we raised nearly £165. Thank you to all who bought and donated and everyone who helped on the day.
Tuesday 16th April 2019 Martin and Andy came and collected all our boxes of pottery that have been found on the Kiln field, ready to add to their full report. The day was sunny so we started washing the finds from the Kitchen Garden – what a sooty lot!!
Saturday 30th March 2019 It was a lovely sunny day at the car boot sale at Aylsham Bure Meadows yesterday morning and another £100 was made for the ARP funds. Many thanks to Joan and Norman for going early and getting the pitch set up.
Thursday 28th March 2019 Peter gave a talk on the project to the Southrepps Society. A lively audience in the village hall enjoyed the story so far and showed great interest in what is happening. Thank you all, we really enjoyed the visit, do come and see us in the summer.
Wednesday 20th March 2019 This is what near/y 30000 pieces of pottery, found on the Kiln Field during the past three years, looks like. Bagged, weighed, counted and marked by volunteers during Tuesday mornings. Well done, everyone!
Friday 15th March 2019 Quiz Night Our second quiz night was another really successful one. Thank you Nigel and Deborah for organising this, everyone had a good time, joining in the fun, the raffle and Heads and Tails!
Saturday 26th January 2019 Our Let’s Make a Kiln Talk took place at the Friendship Hall, Aylsham. The presentation on the process was followed by a video of the actual making and an auction of pottery fired in our first ever kiln. This raised a whopping £500 – thank you everyone for being so generous.
Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Delighted to receive a cheque from The Aylsham Show at last night’s presentation evening along with so many others, thank you very much.
Sunday 20th January 2019 Great to welcome BBC Radio Norfolk and Sophie to Woodgate this morning for the Treasure Quest and for the follow-up interview. Sable, of course, stole the show!
Monday 14th January 2019 We have received this lovely certificate for our application in last year’s Historic England Angel Awards and although we didn’t win, it makes us feel as if we did! Thank you Historic England
Tuesday 8th January We start again checking our finds, cleaning, counting, weighing and recording everything we have found with a great lot of volunteers who visit fortnightly.
Monday 26th November 2018 Our final talk of the year was to the North Norfolk Rotary Club at Sheringham. Peter updated the group on our summer progress and invited them to visit in August. Thank you for inviting us for the evening.
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Our first morning of getting ourselves sorted ready to look at this year’s finds. It was wet, cold and windy but did we mind? Of course not!
Wednesday 14th November 2018 Our Social Event last night was a great success and a chance to meet up with Friends again who have become friends. A review of the year and a chance to watch videos and presentations, we also launched our ARP 360 world provided by Virtronix. Fly around our site and click on the many links by clicking here. Many thanks to Aylsham High for the use of rooms and to Jules Country Kitchen for the very tasty food.
Tuesday 13th November 2018 The first meeting in our new building. A small group listening to Andy Fawcett from Britannia Archaeology talking about how to identify pottery.
Monday-Friday 5th-10th November 2018 We have successfully fired our kiln which was opened today at 1000. 221 pots of varying sizes appeared as we removed the clay covering. We spent Monday night on the field stoking the fire and trying to keep the temperature up. We didn’t get it all to the highest temperature, but all pots survived. A fantastic project. Huge thanks to all involved in any way, but particular thanks to John the stoker and Beryl the builder for her expertise and support throughout the project. A full report will appear later on.
Thursday 1st November 2018 A trip to St Benet Hall in North Walsham this time and a talk to the North Walsham Historical Society. Peter talked through how it had developed and brought them up to date with this year’s finds. Thank you all for being so generous and do come and see us next August.
Monday 29th October 2018 Further kiln base mending took place this morning and more clay mixing. Who needs BBC prime television viewing when we have our own champions of Strictly Come Puddling!
Saturday 27th October 2018 Bric-a-brac Sale Woodgate Nursery It was a wet cold day so no photos, but thank you to all who came and helped and kept us going by buying bits and pieces. Between this and the collection box in the Nursery, by the middle of the week we will have 15 chairs in the portacabin, Fantastic.
Tuesday 9th October 2018 We now own a building! Due to some very generous donations during the summer, we have been able to purchase a secondhand portacabin. This arrived this morning, a week early, (apologies to anyone caught in the traffic outside Woodgate this morning, not our fault). Once powered up, this will be used for washing, cleaning, meetings etc and storing finds in the summer.
Monday – Wednesday 1st-3rd October 2018 Our adventure into buidling our own kiln has begun! A happy band of volunteers mixed clay, manure and straw by puddling it (jumping up and down on it and singing silly songs!!), lined the base with it, added a brick pedestal and created a perforated floor by covering hazel withies all with the help of the lovely Beryl.
Tuesday 25th September 2018 Another talk in Aylsham Town Hall, this time for the Aylsham U3A group. It was lovely seeing so many people and sharing our new video from Virtronix for the first time. A lovely lot of pens were bought, thank you!
Tuesday 25th September 2018 We’re going to build a kiln but we needed some clay. We didn’t find any but great fun was had all the same, even if one person did all the work and when he couldn’t take anymore, hugged a tree!
Wednesday 12th/19th September 2018 Peter was at the Aylsham Heritage Centre working with Jayne Andrew, Learning Officer, and children from Bure Valley School, washing, weighing and sorting some of the finds and recording them as part of their project on building a website.
Thursday 6th September 2018 Thursday saw the start of Peter delivering talks about this year’s dig. Aylsham WI welcomed him to their September meeting at the town hall to share the discoveries of this August and look at some of the finds. Thank you for the flowers – and the delicious shortbread!
