Rain, rain go away….

The day started of dry and we welcomed Jenny, Harry, Max and Steve to help on site. The area of mosaic got bigger, hurrah!  but then stopped, nearby were two smaller blocks of mosaic and some painted plaster. One of the blocks of mosaic was upside down, it soon became clear that we were not dealing with an intact floor but broken up mosaic and plaster that had been put down maybe as a hard-core for a floor above it.

The extent of the mosaic

Jenny and Harry carried on cleaning off (removing)  the topsoil layer in the apsidal room and found a distinct line/division between the layers, that Rod found continued right along the room. There seems to be a rectangle of more stony material next to the wall.

Jenny and Harry cleaning back the top layer in the apsidal room

 

 

 

The two areas Harry and Jenny cleaned

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once again we were joined by some new helpers, Savannah and Joshua. They took over from Jenny so she could have a lunch break, which was very kind of them. They found many pieces of roman tile, tesserae and a large piece of roman stone roof tile with half a nail hole in it.

Savannah and Joshua with their best finds, a large fragment of tile and the piece of stone roof tile

Thank you both for your help and keep digging in the garden you never know what you may find 🙂

The second part of the day brought the rain, we tried to keep digging but the ground was so  sticky it was near impossible. We decided to finally open the third trench as we could remove turf in the rain.

The open third trench, the white area is the geo-textile we put down last year.

We soon found the geo-textile that we put down last year, so we just needed to peel it back to find the surface we finished at last year. Tomorrow we will start to go down in the water feature under the geo-textile and will continue to remove the damaged opus signinum floor in front of the bath house.

As the rain fell a cricket joined us under our shelter