Day 14 – Questions around the porch

It was a very hot day on site on Tuesday.  Progress is now necessarily slower because we are hand-digging everything, but also it is hard work in the heat.

We are taking down the ground level east of the apse and have encountered burials that may well be early and associated with the Anglo-Saxon church.

The porticus is now showing very clearly.  The east wall of the porticus is towards the bottom of the picture.  The parallel wall further back towards the porch is what Canon Jenkins thought was the west wall, but which we can see as the step between the chancel and the nave.  Presumably the west wall of the porticus is under the porch.  Goscelin de St Bertin, writing in the 1090s, described the tomb of Queen Ethelburga as “in the north porticus by the south wall of the church”.  This does seem to describe what we have in this picture.

Over on the west side of the porch, we have an enigmatic short stub of wall projecting at right angles from the Norman foundation.  There is no evidence of it reaching above foundation height, nor does it appear to the right of the Anglo-Saxon wall in the middle of the picture above.  Quite what purpose it is serving we do not know.