Day 14 on site and we had some extra help in the form of year 10 and Sixth Form History students from local school, Kirkby Stephen Grammar School. We were also joined by colleagues Jess and Emma. Thankfully the weather held, giving us a glorious yet chilly morning.

Earlier in the week, Jess visited the school to deliver an archaeology careers talk and finds handling session. The students arrived ready and raring to go. The students were split into three groups and had turns going on a site tour and digging in two of the trenches. Hannah led the site tour and took the students on a journey around the Bronze Age enclosure to the longhouse, talking through this year’s exciting discoveries.

Students in the freshly opened Trench G were investigating a possible wall running from the longhouse seen in the survey. Their diligent work exposed much of the limestone, leaving only a little for the volunteers to finish tomorrow.

The rest of the team in Trench D were looking for dating evidence in the grikes (gaps between limestone paving) and cavity in the longhouse wall. Sadly, no finds came from these trenches today and it would seem there is no wall after all, however their hard work helped us provide more answers about the longhouse.

In the meantime our volunteers were working as hard as ever. Perry investigated a potential feature in Trench C whilst Linda and Andrew drew the section and prepared a section for environmental sampling whilst doing this they pulled out a small horseshoe! Does this tell us more about what this end of our structure might have been used for? It will hopefully provide some dating too!

In Trench E James, Bav, Len, Rebecca and Justin were taking the deposits down to the layer below the wall and finding plenty of flint and chert on the way down. Len also metal detected our spoil heaps and trenches and discovered another bullet.

And to end the day Rebecca helped Katie filling in some of our context recording forms whilst the rest of the team backfilled Trench F.

Not to be put off by the lack of finds – by the end of the day we had four students making plans to pursue careers in archaeology and many more expressing how therapeutic and good for their wellbeing the day had been. We loved having the students and it seems they had a good time too! We hope to welcome you all to another excavation in the future!