Ivan Clowsley

In 2012 Dig Village was launched in Dunster so off we set for Somerset. I’d never been there before or even heard of Dunster to be honest. We were in for a treat this small market town is an absolute picture. With a large Castle at one end of the high street and the Yarn Market at the other, overlooked by the Conygar Tower folly and about a mile from the sea. It also has the West Somerset Heritage Railway running close by. It also has some excellent pubs and the Lutterel Arms was to become our second home.

As the pub and beer were an integral part of Time Team so it would be with Dig Village. The villagers were a little bit wary to start with with all these strangers marching in to their village armed with mattocks and shovels but we got on fine with them quite quickly. We are now good friends with a lot of the locals.

Why was Dunster chosen for us to explore. Well firstly Mick Aston had done some research in to the town in his book with Roger Leech, Historic Towns in Somerset and identified areas of archeological interest and also very little archaeology had been done there before. So fertile ground for investigation it was thought.

Myself, Rebecca Parr and Simon Fuller test pitting photo’s taken by our other test pitter Penny Lock.

Tim Taylor explained to us the purpose of our Test Pitting strategy was to find the age and spread of the towns development over time also finding the Cloister was high on his list of targets too. Finding nothing was also useful because that would tell us habitation did not happen in that particular part of the town.
Some test pits were to be dug in various locations some in the field next to the Tythe Barn but we were dispatched to a back garden at the top of the village on St George’s Street. Off we went to dig up a vegetable patch it didn’t matter that we were digging a dirty great hole there! The house holder was very friendly and supplied us with cups or tea. He also showed us some of the things he’d found in his garden. It was October and we were wrapped up warmly but the coats soon came off when we started digging. Mr Blinkhorn and Dani Wootton came around to see us a couple of times with camera crew in tow.

Videos of our exploits can be seen on the Time Team Dig Village YouTube Chanel. On the whole we were left to it. We sieved the soil putting the finds to one side and putting anything particularly interesting in a finds bag. Photographs and recording sheets were filled out. It’s just digging holes if the test pit isn’t recorded properly. The process of digging out a cubic metre of soil in 10cm ‘spits’ and recording the whole process is a lengthy procedure. Tim Taylor and Stewart Ainsworth were on hand to make sure we were doing ok. Two days digging soon passed and it was agreed the whole weekend had been a huge success. A couple of sessions in the Lutterel Arms imbibing in the local ale and sampling the lovely food left us tired but happy on our journey home and looking forward to our next dig. We have returned for further investigations quite a few times, more of that to follow.