Ditherington Flax Mill

Further recording at Ditherington Flax Mill has been ongoing on behalf of English Heritage. Structural repair to the main mill is being accompanied by ongoing archaeological recording. This has enabled us to have a good look at many of the later features associated with the conversion of the building to a maltings in the nineteenth century.

Hoppers and chutes for moving grain around the maltings.

Finds from Wednesbury Forge

The 2006 phase of excavation work at Wednesbury Forge has now finished. Further work will take place on site next year once the remaining buildings on site have been demolished. The team are now hard at work back in the office processing the finds from the project. Here is a selection of some of the material which we have recovered...

Eighteenth century gunflints.

Eighteenth century earthen- ware.

Local nineteenth century bottles

Nineteenth century scissors.

Twentieth century bowling ball (marked 'EAC' - Elwell's Athletic Club)





For more information about the site please scroll down for earlier posts.

CHAT conference

Past and present members of the Ironbridge Archaeology team were out in force at the CHAT conference in Bristol. A more comprehensive impression of the conference will shortly be posted on our contemporary archaeology blog.

Saturday saw the presentation by William Mitchell and Emma Dwyer of a paper on the work we have been doing at Wednesbury Forge, and specifically the issues raised in attempting to record contemporary social archaeologies. As with Jim Dixon's paper we were trying to present the perspective of contracting archaeology within an overwhelmingly university-led conference.

Star of the series of films on Saturday night was of course the Archaeology Van. This was the first showing of the film by Greg Bailey, following the project by the University of Bristol in excavating the van. The film raised a great deal of comment, and will also be shown at the forthcoming TAG conference in Exeter.

Whitehaven Collieries

Whitehaven is a seventeenth century planned harbour town in Cumbria, and was the focus of a wide range of mining and related activities in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We have been working with Cranstone Consultants on an assessment of various landscape features on behalf of the National Trust. Here is a selection of photographs of some of the colliery features we have been investigating with David Cranstone.

View looking north from the area of Wellington Pit.

Pit head winding gear at Haig Colliery, looking south.

Saltom Pit, looking west over the sea.

Looking up the incline near Kells, facing south.