Well the day had come to start to back fill the site, in other words put back all the soil we had spent two and a half weeks digging out! Plus 6 tonnes of top soil!
Arriving on site the task look insurmountable, we were all exhausted after all the digging and the hot weather. Then from across the site came a large group of people with wheelbarrows and shovels, the volunteer team from our central office at Heelis had arrived.
We first put geotextile along the edges of the mosaics to support them and then covered them with more geotextile, we organized the teams and off they went.
The white expanse of geotextile covering
The bucket chain
Many buckets to fill!
we rotated the jobs as it was so hot we needed to keep having water breaks
The white geotextile is disappearing
The large spoil heap is nearly gone!
The group was leaving us at 3.20pm and they were determined to finish moving the whole spoil heap and at 3.21pm they did it!
Thank you so much we couldn’t have done it without you, we love you all
Thank you all so much, you were our hero’s you did so much we now have a manageable (hopefully) day tomorrow with the corridor to cover, the buttress trench and Fays small wall trench to back fill. Thank you Ros and Jane and your volunteers as well, we became one big team. We then will pack up all our kit and the finds and head south. But stay tuned as there will be news from the buttress trench tomorrow 🙂
Archaeology National Trust SW 