Day 6: Chedworth 5 more trenches

Best to begin with the hard graft so we started the day by taking the turf off some more trenches.

There are now windows into Rooms 29( the room next to the mosaic room)..29a..a lobby? or stairway and the kitchen 30.

The other two were on the north side outside the villa against the slope. One between 30 and 29a, to check the theory that the North Range was extended in the late 4th century

and the other at the junction of the hypocaust stone sentinel pilae room 26 and the apsidal room to the west 25. We are looking to discover which came first and whether there are stoke holes to provide heat for underfloor heating.

Then it was time for tea. Kindly brought to us from the kitchen in the Lodge. This is rather a luxurious excavation.

Then it was back to teasing out what remains of the mosaic in room 28…to finish recording all the stratigraphic details in the trench 5c in the NE corner of Room 27 and to wonder at Pete’s trench 5d in the SE corner which has very different layers below the same 4th century floor surface. Deep dark pottery bearing soil cut by the foundation trench of the partition wall between 27 and 28.

At lunch time a discussion took place concerning why Spock, Captain Kirk and Dr McCoy are always in the landing party when they are the senior officers on the Enterprise and whether they had violated the prime directive in the last episode…

and what the names of the bean like things in the mosaic roundels were called… I have read Steve’s mosaic report now… they are heart-shaped petals and the room may once have been a summer dining room.