The storm has passed…..

At last, after three months, we have high pressure over us in Dorset, gone are the storms, and in the sky a shiny, glowing, warm object.  Time to check our site at Hive Beach to see if it still exists! 

Hive Beach cafe in the background and in the foreground our site

As I drove down the road I saw the welcome site of the cafe and the NT information hut, the car park and the wall next to the sea. Passed the wall could be a different sight, I parked and headed for the low cliff were our excavated building was. There was definite evidence of waves  having broken over the cliff and in people from the cafe told me the waves had come right up to their veranda.

Looking East before the storms

Looking East after the storms

The change in the profile of the cliff was very obvious and parts of the building were on the beach. I walked along the top and checked a scar at the side of the site, I noticed some shattered pebble flint. As I moved to get a better look and a photo I slipped down the scar and ended up on the beach! Oh well at least I could now see the remains of the building better, and the sticky clay all over me would soon dry!

Looking at the back wall of the building from the beach before the storm

Looking at the back wall of the building from the beach after the storm

Although we have lost parts of the floor and plaster from the walls the site has acted like a erosion barrier, with the cliff either side eroding much more. The most obvious change is the now straight section through the beach and ground the house was built on, we can see the stratigraphy, the different types of sand deposits and also how shallow the foundations are.

The storm cleaned section

Further along to the east of the building, a section of  wire and metal fence stakes had been uncovered by the storms, they must be part of the WWII defences erected over 70 years ago. 

the metal stakes and wire fence uncovered by the storms at Hive Beach

Like many others over the past hundred years I took  photograph looking West to record this moment in time, so in years to come we can compare the cliff line after many more stormy seas  have swept in undermining the cliffs and devouring the land and buildings in its way.

The cliffs have suffered more falls of rock over the last few months (or site is in the lower right)

Hive Beach view from the past looking west

‘There’s a Breathless Hush’

‘An hour to play and the last man in’

Well, it’s the last day and there is so much to do. A bit of Sir Henry Newbolt or perhaps a some stirring stuff from Henry V…
‘Let he who has no stomach for this fight’ (a little random I know.. but it sets the mood)

Rob and Mike were on site today and they worked to answer the unanswered questions before the time ran out. I made my way round the site finishing the plan and drawing the different layers on the sections, marking on the context numbers that relate to the description forms.

starting to record the site today.

It was dry and a perfect day but rather intense, we snatched drink breaks and had a barely noticeable lunch.

Mike took out the remains of the last fire in the fireplace and revealed the brick hearth with a few fragments of pot. There had been so many fires that the family had needed to replace the worn burnt bricks in the centre of the hearth.

The brick floor of the fireplace. The central section of bricks replaced.

Rob dug the pit that had been cut through the flagstone floor under the WWII rubbish dump. I was hoping for a ring of bolts set in concrete showing that the rubbish masked a gun mounting.. but no, the pit pre-dated this and contained Victorian pottery. The pit cutting revealed a lower flagstone floor.

The cleaned flagstone floor and pit after excavation with earlier floor visible.

We cut a trench beside the gully at the east end of the site to find earlier dating evidence. We know that the building was abandoned about 1800 but when was it built? We found several phases of building alteration and repair but nothing to give an earlier date.

One last request was to go to the other building. The one that we were too late for, and see what the sea had left behind to date it. Rob cleaned back the cliff and found a row of stones remains of a yard behind the building and the pottery from this was earlier 18th century.

The remains of the other building. Not much left.

By this time, the drawings were complete. Time was ticking away. Everyone who came to see us seemed very interested in the site but my replies were rather brief to questions (forgive me). Mike and Rob were much more engaging.

The last task was to give the site a thorough clean. Lots of brushing to make our temporary archaeological home really shine for the final photos. It looked lovely.. and then it was time to pack up the tools and say farewell to Hive Beach. Thank you so much to everyone who helped and came to see us.

The doorway into the flagstone area. note the doorpost holes and abraded stone where the door gradually eroded a groove into the threshold as it was opened and closed so many times over the years.

But… what was it? A fisherman’s house/smallholding that finally had to be abandoned to the sea. We thought that it might just be an outbuilding but it was a good dwelling with white plastered walls with perhaps the workshops and store buildings for the business behind. There was certainly much more here than we imagined and a lot we never saw. We must go to the Dorset History Centre and look through the land tax assessments for Burton Bradstock to see whether we can match this place to a tenement or croft in the late 18th century.

The Hive Beach building. We take away our memories, drawings and photos and leave you to the sea.

What will become of it…? We debated today whether to leave the site open and many people would like to have continued to see it.. but in the end we thought it best to backfill the site because it would soon start to decay and look a mess. We’ll use photos and a reconstruction drawing to put on an information board and place it on Fisherman’s Green (apparently that’s what the site’s called). The wall and fireplace of the building will be left exposed until the sea takes it..

Back to the office tomorrow.

What a diference a day makes!

Day eight, sand blasted and frayed lips! My last day on site as I pass the baton on to Martin to finish all the drawing and pondering about the site 🙂

The day started with a welcome to new volunteers Alison and Vaughn and the return of Fay. Rob hoped his plants in his garden would survive without watering, as he decided to stay another day. We sectioned off an area we were going to leave unexcavated and concentrated on digging the layers down to the, hopefully, flagged floor along the back of the wall and down the sides.

The start of the day

Lots of different phases of walls at the east end of the site

As the day went on there was an amazing transformation as new levels of floors and small rooms appeared, not many finds, apart from a few small pieces of pottery on the very top of the floor.

Excalibur! sadly just a large door hinge

I managed to do a bit of digging and found Excalibur!  well it’s  probably a large hinge, I have done a long stint on site and I may have got carried away!

As the remains of the plaster and reed partition is lifted we can hope for a few sealed finds underneath, there is always hope!

So much to work out and so little time!

East end of the site with different levels of floor and small partitioned rooms

West end of the site, with half the floor cleaned off and the fallen plaster and reed wall covering the rest. Some of the plaster is still in place.

The recording and scale drawing gathers pace 🙂

Scale drawing of the uncovered walls

Walls, walls, walls!

Day seven, sunny and lots of buckets and spades and not just on the dig! We have spent the day digging out the sandy soil and revealing the walls and the paved area. We left the WWII area for now as we need to get more information about the building.

Walls on the east side

The paved area carries on

The back of a reed and plaster stud wall sat on top of the paving

End of the day

Crazy paving

Day six on the beach, sunny and hot, the start of the Bank holiday weekend and half term. The holiday makers were out on the beach, lots of ice creams and wind breaks.

View across the site, everyone hard at work in the sunshine

Maisy with her yummy cake, it did not last   long.

Meanwhile on the dig we welcomed Maisy and Kate to the dig team, Maisy had baked us a cake! very yummy 🙂

maisy with a handle from a WWII mug

The WWII rubbish pit carried on producing more bottles, brushes and rusty iron, Maisy found part of a badge, the letters RA in bronze.

A Brylcream bottle, brushes and probably a Brilliantine bottle.

The remains of the 18th century building expanded, with boundary walls appearing and best of all, what we hoped for, a well paved area behind the back wall. There also seems to be another building in the ‘yard’, it may even be part of a lean-to, we need to reveal more to get the whole picture. Rob found a large fragment of salt glazed stoneware pottery right on top of the ‘yard’ stones, so good dating when we research it a bit more.

Boundary wall appearing in the section

The paved ‘yard’ at the back of the building

What a load of rubbish!

Day five on the windy Dorset coast, with sand in our eyes, hair and ears the National Trust working holiday group reach their last day. The group have worked very hard to get as much excavated as possible, I cannot thank them enough.

Again the girls and the boys worked at opposite ends of the site, the boys in the late 18th century and the girls in the 1940s!

The rubbish pit produced mugs, plates, bottles, tin cans and a toothbrush! The plate gave us a good date 1943 written on the base and we had two fancy art deco type Brylcream jars, I think we are starting to build a good picture of the guys who dug the hole seventy years ago!

Susie found a hoard of bottles and an enamel water flask.

Alison found the mugs, and Kathleen a drinks bottle.

At three o clock the rain came but so did the chocolate cake 🙂 everyone left with warm glows and full tummies 🙂

Hail smiling morn…

Day four and we are all still digging! A cold day for May, with showers and hail, so we did a lot of cleaning up our loose and running for shelter. Even with this yo-yo day we have managed to dig out a lot more of the site. A bright point in the day came when we added up our afternoon tea fund, it’s now £2.31! so we ordered the chocolate cake for tomorrow 🙂

Today it was the boys in the west versus the girls in the east, the boys clearing rubble, the girls in what we thought was rubble and finds free sandy loam.

Wall collapse rubble clearing

Girls in the east, digging sandy loam

Millie and Kathleen finished the room clearing and then tackled the fireplace, as you can see in the picture the remains of the last fire was still in the grate!

Fireplace before cleaning

Millie and Kathleen – a job well done!

Now back to the sandy loam the girls were digging, first they came across more ironwork and then we had confirmation that we had a World War II dump when four spent (thankfully!) machine gun shells popped out!

spent shells

A mug of something warming

Day three in the Hive Beach house! another dry but windy day. We lost two of the gang to a day of geophysics but gained a local volunteer and for ten minutes three very young archaeologists (ages 4, 6 and 8)

Three young archaeologist, being ‘trained’ by Millie

Kathleen and Ben moved from the top of the ‘cliff’ down into what remains of the building, to start the job of emptying the rubble from what is left of the ‘rooms’ either side of the fireplace. They did a great job and we have more plaster surviving on the walls.

Before rubble removal

After rubble removal

Before rubble removal

After rubble removal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Area of iron and coal

The rest of the workforce carried on going down behind the building, behind the old seat concrete base is an area of coal, ironwork, possible tin cans,  glass and pottery. It looks like someone has burnt the remains of a small building or have had a very big picnic! We know that during World War II  there were small buildings put up in the area and some of the finds coming out of the area of burning seem to date to this time. Anyone for a mug of Bovril 🙂

Bovril meat extract jar from about 1940?

…at the first bend..

Windy day on the beach

Day 2 of the dig on the beach, a windy day so its goggles all round!  The working holiday group were happy but less full of beans as the aches in muscles they never knew existed hit with every step. Or was it just me! 🙂 We were joined by Kait from Canada who had a couple of days left in Dorset and took the chance to have a dig with us, her experience was on Paleolithic sites back home, so our site was pretty modern 🙂

Cleaned wall and rubble.

We carried on cleaning the section of wall to reveal the extent of the site and started to remove the rubble from the collapsed walls. We have found the base of the old seat and just at the end of the day came across a lot of corroded iron. All will be revealed tomorrow as we discover what it is!

Clay smoking pipe bowl

Also at the end of the day this lovely clay smoking pipe bowl appeared next to the wall of the building, it dates to about 1800.

Get set, go….

Lunch time at Hive Beach

Day One of the dig on the beach at Burton Bradstock,  starts cloudy but dry and the NT working holiday gang arrive ready to go and full of beans. The day was spent de- turfing the marked out trench and the face of the small cliff, and then cleaning back (towelling off an inch or so of topsoil) the first layer.

Cleaning back the site after the turf has been removed

The walls and brick fireplace eroding from the cliff

We have already found quite a mixture of finds, including some local earthenware pottery from the late 18th century as well as finer china also from the same period. There are also many finds from more recent history on the site, silver foil ice cream wrappers, 1980s ring pulls from cans, and £1.30 in new money! we will put it towards our end of dig cream tea. Talking of cream teas we started with one today courtesy of our lovely ranger Sarah and her mum, very yummy 🙂 So the day ended with very happy diggers with stiff joints, hope they make it back tomorrow! 

Finds from the topsoil, including local 18th century earthen ware, flint and glass