Exploring the legacy of Ethelburga – a community project focused on the Anglo-Saxon heritage of Lyminge, a village in the Elham Valley in East Kent.
As the autumn leaves start to fall on the foundations of Ethelburga's church, we are slowly beginning the process of restoring the churchyard following the end of the dig and the start of the next phase of the project. The viewing platform has now been dismantled. Our contractors, Astral, will return to site on Monday … Continue reading Restoring the dig site
We have now lifted the last of the burials that we intend to excavate in the chancel of the Anglo-Saxon church. We are now confident that burial did not start in this area until after the church was demolished, probably in the 13th Century. We are also confident that the odd 'niches' cut in the … Continue reading Day 35 -Exploring the loose ends
When we began to excavate burials within the chancel of the Anglo-Saxon church, we thought it was likely they were later medieval and not contemporary with the church itself. Up to now we have found no finds to give any kind of date. However, at last we have some pottery, from what appears to be … Continue reading Day 34 – Confirmation of some earlier speculation
The trench in the New Churchyard east of the War Memorial continues to reveal new features, so we now have quite an array of pits and postholes. At the eastern end of the trench, we now have the foundation of a significant wall. We don't have anything dating this currently, but this could be associated … Continue reading Day 32 – More activity in the New Churchyard
Because of the bad weather over night, Day 29 was a wash-out so far as digging was concerned. We did however manage to get in our standard half day on Saturday, when we continued with excavating the burials in the chancel of the Anglo-Saxon church. At the moment, we have no reason to think these … Continue reading Day 30 – Round-up on a revelatory 5 weeks of digging
We are continuing to excavate the burials within the chancel of the Anglo-Saxon church in order to see if we can understand when burial began. We think this was probably in the later medieval period, after the Anglo-Saxon church was demolished, but this is an hypothesis we have to test by digging. The observant amongst … Continue reading Day 27 -Exploring the boundaries of our dig
We were delighted to welcome Carly Hilts, Editor of the popular magazine Current Archaeology, to the site yesterday. There is planned to be a short feature in the next issue and then a longer article in the issue after that. Work continued in the chancel yesterday, excavating more burials including the adult whose torso and … Continue reading Day 26 – Broadening the coverage
For the first dry site tour since the dig began, it was great to see 55 people crowding the viewing gallery to hear Gabor Thomas explain where we have got to so far. We are now half way through the dig and we have been thrilled at how much has come to light. We have … Continue reading Day 24 – Half way through the dig
After the big excitement of yesterday finding the column fragment, we have put more effort into reducing the interior of the chancel. This is ground that was not dug by Canon Jenkins. As expected, we have found burials. What is not clear yet is whether these were intentionally buried in the Anglo-Saxon church while it … Continue reading Day 21 – Continuing to explore the chancel and more
Work continued today to investigate the interior of the chancel. The Victorian revetment for the path to the porch was removed leaving an island of archaeology in the middle of the chancel that, so far as we know, was never investigated by Canon Jenkins. Ironically, as the revetment was removed, we in fact found something … Continue reading Day 20 – A day of star finds
