I arrived at Stourhead Park early and Peter was watching the mechanical excavator which was about to start Trench J within the Stable Yard.
In the 17th century, this was the outer courtyard of Stourton Castle.
The main late medieval and Tudor buildings were demolished in 1720 and their location forgotten, buried under over a metre of clay and rubble.
They were rediscovered last July under Stourhead Park, directly in front of Stourhead House.. which had been built by 1722.
The next trench I, cut into the triangle of grass in front of the Stable Yard had the line of the rubble footings of a robbed Greensand wall could now be seen here cutting the natural clay just over 0.5m down. The archaeology is much shallower on this southern end of the proposed sewage pipe route.
At the park railings, trench H had just come down onto a trackway cobbled with stone. This was probably the route from the courtyard to the now demolished Dairy and Home Farm shown on the 1785 map.
I was interested in the big trench G and as we walked toward it I could see that this had been dug almost a metre deep by the machine.
Across the centre had been cut a feature containing a round brick culvert about 0.8m diameter. Peter had carried out a watching brief for the ground sourced heat pump installed at Kingston Lacy House a couple of years ago and this culvert looked very similar to the brick structure encountered there.
The culvert in trench G headed straight for Stourhead House and fell away to the east. We agreed that we had probably come across the early 19th century sewage conveyance for the mansion.
Sewage seems to be the theme of this dig. All very necessary of course.
The circular brick culvert had cut through black soil with large numbers of oyster shells mixed with animal bone.
I feel that, in G, the dig is now poised above Stourton Castle.
Archaeology National Trust SW 