Trench 1 - The Wilderness III

This week a major assault on the ditch took place. It has always been unclear whether the ditch was 2m wide at the surface, or much wider, as the damp area could be read either way.

At a depth of 90cm there is a very clear grey/green band of clay, so we chased that layer back out away from the stone revetment, hoping to find a change as we hit the ditch edge.

About a ton of clay later, success! Eventually we hit fine gravel just over 2m away from the stone revetment at the 90cm level. Chasing back a bit further, the gravel can be seen rising at approximately a 45 degree angle. This will make the edge of the ditch about 20cm further back. So it is looking like the ditch may well be around 3m wide at the surface.

With more room to work, it has now been possible to continue the search for the bottom of the ditch at the bank end. We have already dug through 10cm of clay layers at this end of the trench, taking the depth to 100cm, and went down a further 10cm. This clay is made up of dozens and dozens of individual coloured clay layers, some of which are only a couple of mm thick. At 1.1m depth the clay became much harder and we stopped there for now.