Highlights of the 1999 Excavations
In 1998 we had confirmed the presence of a large
fortified, ditched enclosure, similar in style and size to neighbouring Iron Age Hillforts in Derbyshire. A single sherd of
Iron Age pottery but plenty of typical
fire cracked pebbles supported this. Artifacts in the upper fills of the ditch suggested that the site was still occupied during the Roman period.
Ten trenches were excavated in 1999 to confirm this, nine positioned where the ditch was thought to surround the site and one placed within the enclosure over an anomalous feature detected by Geophysics. Graham Eyre-Morgan from the University of Manchester continued to direct the excavations in 1999 with support from Stuart Holden.
A third quadrant was added to the ditch (TX3 and TX4 became Trench1), which was taken down to rock at the bottom. This yielded many more artefacts, most surprising of which were
Flints thought to be from the
Mesolithic Period. Trench 2 in the corner of the garden near the West end of the Church exposed a possible palisade slot cut into the bedrock behind the ditch.
The long Trench 3 was opened in the middle of the garden over the
anomalous feature identified by
Geophysics. It revealed a large posthole with
Mesolithic flints,
Iron Age Pottery and
Roman Pottery and was therefore extended into a large open area excavation.
This turned out to be very difficult archaeology, a complex series of stratified layers with intersecting features dating right through from the
Mesolithic to the
Romano British periods.
Trench 4 and Trench 5 were unsuccessful attempts to locate the edges of the ditch in the SE cormer of the field and the Church Car park, reaching Bedrock with no archaeological finds.
Trench 6 and Trench 10 however, confirmed the line of the ditch to the North, revealing that the fortified enclosure could well have been much larger than previously anticipated, possibly up to an area of 15 or 16 acres, making it comparable to the largest Derbyshire Hillfort discovered so far at
Mam Tor.
Read the full
1999 UMAU Archaeological Report