Today we were predicted to encounter lots of rain and a thunderstorm! Thankfully the thunder and lightening were mostly absent, although last nights winds had given our tent a little bit of a beating. Ian and Katie started the day by re-instating tent pegs whilst listening to a rather put out cow shouting at the meandering sheep. We did see a little rain but not enough for our hardy volunteers to be put off from getting stuck in.

We opened two new trenches this morning which were a fair old trek from where we started, we are now working on higher ground with even better views! The newly opened trenches 5 and 6 were quite the task to de-turf;  thanks to Jan, Ian, Bob and Phil for persevering and getting us down to the good stuff underneath. Trench 5 is targeting a small roundhouse which is visible in the landscape due to an upstanding ring of stones and turf. After taking off the topsoil Jan and Bob cleaned down to find the remnants of a 'wall' with limestone pavement on the exterior.

This roundhouse is situated in the corner of a wider enclosure and that is what was targeted by Trench 6. This trench is still in the process of being cleaned after de-turfing but the structure in it is looking solid and convincing so far, with large pieces of limestone placed on the top of the bank of stones, and we even pulled out a piece of chert from this trench!

Lower down the slope the trench that was opened at the end of yesterday and is positioned over a lynchet at the southern edge of an arable field was being cleaned and recorded. It showed a similar construction to the other banks we have found in our trenches so far where there is some heaping of stones onto a natural outcrop of the bedrock, however with most of the material robbed or collapsed. It was cleaned up beautifully by Hilary, Kate, Kyle and Richard.

We have the preliminary results back from the photogrammetry survey of the upper end of the field system. This largely reinforces the earlier survey of this part of the field system.

Hopefully the not so bad weather and lovely archaeology will continue tomorrow.