Sifting the Past at Priory Country Park

Never mind the weather! We'll be investigating at the Park's past, both distant and recent, again today. Come along and have a go at wattle and daub making….!

Wonderful Weekend at Willington

Last month on the 27th and 28th June SAW youngsters helped out with the test pit excavation at Willington Dovecote. 

 Orgainsed by Dorothy Jamieson,  overseen by National Trust archaeologist, Angus Wainwright and supervised by Jeremy Oetgen and Helen Parslow from Albion Archaeology, the dig took place over two days, with help from local adult volunteers.

Two pits, one dug by the adults and the other by SAW, gave up a great deal of building materials, including roof tiles, flag stones and lots of brick!

 More exciting finds included a fragment of an iron implement, ceramic sherds and a piece of medieval glass recovered from an excavated hole in the floor of the Tudor stable building.

The Archaeological Fair on Sunday afternoon brought many visitors to site to share in the discoveries and the story of the historic site.

STOP PRESS!

Jack with a notable find on his placement at Vindolanda.

Jack at Vindolanda Trust

NEWS

Just to make sure that you knew... 

is now a

Saturday Archaeology Workshops, based at The Higgins Bedford with archaeologists from Albion Archaeology is now an affiliated branch of the Young Archaeologists' Club.

         

               

Please Comment

Jack, Oliver and Charlie are coming to the end of their Silver Arts Award, please can you leave comments for them here: Gallery, here: War Art by Thomas Hennell
and here: Bronze Exhibition and Visit to Twinwood Museum

This comment came via Twitter:

SAW  at Highlighting History - 26th & 27th July 2014

Part of the Festival of British Archaeology

Come and catch up with SAW at their excavation at Priory Country Park on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th July, between 12.00pm and 4.00pm. This excavation is in its fourth year, looking for evidence of past uses and occupation of the park site, specifically searching for further evidence of  Roman presence.

Visit the dig site, see the latest finds and find out more about SAW.

We hope to see you there!

STOP PRESS: Saturday 26th July FREE guided heritage walk around Bedford River Valley Park at 1pm.
The walk should last around 2 hours. More information from Priory Country Park rangers 01234 211182

You can also find out about other Heritage sites in the area of Bedford River Valley Park, at Willington and beyond. Visit the exhibition in the Priory Country Park Visitor Centre.

For more information visit: http://www.priorycountrypark.co.uk/park_info.html

War Art by Thomas Hennell reviewed by Jack

Visit to RAF Hendon to view war art by Thomas Hennell

On  the 11th of April I went to RAF Hendon to see some of Thomas Hennell's war art. He worked in Asia (namely India and Burma) as well as other places such as Iceland and the Netherlands. Most of his work at RAF Hendon is from his time in Asia - especially in India where he recorded many airstrips being constructed.

In  this picture Indian troops are constructing a British airfield using out-of-date machinery such as the steam roller in the background. Due to the nature of his subject and the fact that they were constantly moving, Hennell had to paint extremely quickly using  loose brush strokes. In most of his pictures he has not used pencil to mark out any shapes. However, when he does use pencil it is only to show position and outline rather than detail. As is shown in this painting the heat was unbearable and was only relieved by a monsoon. Both of these types of weather would have hindered Hennell as he tried to paint. On these primitive airfields shelter was rare so  Hennell was often rushed to do his paintings and therefore his work  appears unfinished; as is shown in this picture by the seated figure in the foreground. By the time the storm on the horizon had passed this figure would have moved so the painting could not be completed.

In this piece of artwork Pioneers are laying an airstrip in Mingaldon, June 1945. This shared airfield housed both American and British Dakotas as well as American Liberators. In this image Hennell has used very suggestive colours that you would not expect to see in a normal scene.  In this particular painting Hennell has put varying shades of pink in the foreground and blue in the middle-ground. These colours create a sense of movement and action within the scene because of their loose and inaccurate personality. He has used various contrasting techniques in this piece of art such as wet-into-wet and dry-brushing. In the central foreground yellow ochre and mid purple have been dry-brushed together leaving speckled white areas which again add a sense of movement. On the left browns and yellows have been used wet-into-wet to create a fading look which has aided perspective. The planes in the background are also very suggestive which means that they compliment the scene without detracting attention from the Pioneers.

Many techniques have been used in this picture such as dry-brushing and the addition of neat water droplets. Hennell appears to of laid down a wash and then leaving it to semi-dry before adding water droplets.  These drops have created a pale starburst effect which helps to  add texture to the ground. Another method of adding texture is through the use of dry-brushing. He has left large expanses of white paper showing after laying his washes. In these spaces Hennell has added dabs of colour or dry-brushed colours across the rough paper. These two simple effects come together to create a convincing suggestion of rough ground.

To create the effect of rain in the sky, Hennell appears to of flicked on water again and has also dragged colour across the sky. It seems that he has used the equivalent of a fan brush in order to streak the 'rain' across the grey wash of a sky. Along the base of the picture Hennell has added horizontal brush strokes of varying shades of brown. the horizontal nature of the loose strokes means that they show the contour of the bare soil extremely well along with the corresponding washes. 

In this picture, Hennell has portrayed an American airfield under construction. The Americans exported much more sophisticated equipment and therefore they worked much faster. As a result Hennell had to paint faster. This resulted in a much more liberal and loose painting style and a lot more suggestion.  This is shown by the only outlined tractors  which contain very little detail.

Overall, Hennell has a very unique painting style in which he uses unexpected techniques to create varying effects that help to add character to his paintings. The fact that he paints so quickly using these impressionist techniques means that his paintings have a sense of movement and a                                                                                                    reality that is not immediately portrayed.

Whilst I was there I also saw some works by Stafford-Baker - an un-commissioned war artist.  Stafford-Baker's style is very much like my own, he pays very close attention to detail and colour as well as how the light reflects off of different surfaces. The detail on the relatively small Beaufighter in the background is precise - right down to the hair-line panel recesses. The foreground Beaufighter with the engine cowling removed also portrays exquisite detail within the engine bay.  Despite the limited light Stafford-Baker has shown the prop boss and pistons extremely well using light and shadow to show shapes. Stafford-Baker has used wet-into-wet techniques to show light and dark without obvious transitions. Overall this study is amazingly

detailed and, if it had been finished, would have made a fine painting. 

I like Stafford-Baker's work very much because he uses various techniques to create a realistic painting that appears to be alive. However, I feel that Hennell paints movement into his paintings much better - probably owing to the hurried nature of his paintings. Despite this Hennell has not included much detail in his paintings and therefore I find it hard to relate to them like I can to Stafford-Baker's. My painting style is more like Stafford-Baker's  and therefore I think that I prefer his work - even though they are both equally as impressive. This article focuses mainly on Hennell because his paintings use interesting techniques that I can use and I can therefore aspire to create paintings like his (only with a bit more detail!). As mentioned previously, Hennell has also used various colours within his paintings that you would not normally expect to find, which creates an interesting effect that I would like to try on my paintings.


Jack

Twinwood Tour 17th May 2014

Thanks to Robert Allen and all the volunteers at Twinwood Museum, we had a fascinating morning listening to and seeing how a World War 2 airfield site and buildings have been restored and developed into a successful and popular museum.

We heard about the renovations to the Control Tower and how the display has been improved over the years and will change again to try to re-create the conditions when the Tower was in use. Many of us didn't know that the windows which now give a splendid panorama of the airfield site would have originally been blacked-out, which of course makes sense during war time.

Downstairs in the Tower the airfield's connection to the World War 2 bandleader, Glenn Miller is told by way of photographs, uniforms and models, overlaid by the sounds of the tunes made popularly his Big Band.

Many of the group found the recreated wartime house interiors and shop scenes, in the Aviation Museum most engaging. Everyone stopped still to the sound of the air raid siren.


A special thank you goes to Jack for showing members of SAW around and explaining about the work behind the scenes.

'Much Larks' at Mountfitchet Castle

Castle Village

The Daily Grind

In April SAW participants made a group visit to Mountfitchet Castle in Essex. This is a reconstructed wooden castle on and original motte and bailey site. Complete with live animals, smoky fires, skeletal prisoners, hanged criminals and torture pit, it gives both and engaging and lurid insight into Medieval life.

Punished for having too much of a good time!

You can try your hand at heaving the grinding mill-stones; kitting yourself up for riding in the slips; try on a helmet or two and wear some very heavy chain mail.

Let battle commence!

The fallow deer, ducks, geese and goat are all keen to get close for a free feed, if you buy a bag on your way in.

There are trails to follow and windy stairs to climb for a good view out over the area. You get a good idea of how defensible this site was and yet the castle was eventually taken by King John in 1215?

The reluctant goatherd!

A few nibbles...

Following the visit, I asked what members of the group to send me comments on: 

• what they particularly enjoyed at Mountfitchet Castle and,
• from an archaeology point of view, did they think it is a good idea to build a replica castle on top of the actual site of a castle...?

Liva said:
I thought the great hall  was exciting because I liked the models, and the information was interesting.  I also liked the pretend gallows because it showed that life in some parts of history was tough. The herb garden was good too because it was beautiful. 

Also from an archaeology point of view it would be good to build the replica on top of the original castle because if you discover any new things in the ground you can add it to the collection at the castle. Which is important to see things in their original background.

Malthe said:
For the first question, I enjoyed feeding the animals because it was funny when the animals were chasing me to try and get the animal food. For the second question, I think that the reconstruction is good, but they should have built the reconstruction somewhere else so that people can enjoy the original castle and the reconstruction of the castle.

Matthew's mum, Julie said:

It is really difficult to pinpoint what we particularly enjoyed as it was all so good.  The village scene with its wide range of exhibits, the individual buildings and the gallows (which both the boys were a bit wary of (lol!) all provided a great experience for the boys and not forgetting the wildlife freely wandering around which just made castle village life all the more real. 

There was such a lot to see and do and without you guys organising the morning SAW session I don’t think we would have got so much out of it.  

Shells and snails and muddy blob tales...

Environmental Archaeology - why mud and microscopic animals are very important!

In January, participants at SAW found out how important microscopic evidence is to archaeologists. The types of snail and seed that you can only see with the help of a microscope help to tell archaeologists and those who study past environments, what the climate of a particular place used to be like and the sorts of plant and animal species would have lived there.

This in turn can help to explain the kinds of activities the past inhabitants have undertaken and the help explain the sorts of man-made objects the archaeologists might find.

Archaeologists routinely take mud and soil samples from their excavated sites to sieve and study. We got to sort through the residue from buckets of muddy water. It's amazing what you can find, someone even found a miniature sea urchin!

Apart from anything, we just love getting muddy!

Winter Greetings from SAW

The New Season of Saturday Archaeology Workshop Sessions is here:

Winter & Spring 2014

Here you will also find details of how to Register and book places for SAW sessions.

2013 has been a busy year for all connected with The Higgins Bedford. Find out some of the things we've been doing on our News page:

News

Stuck for something to do over Christmas...? Have a go at our Quiz of 2013, in the Gallery page:

Gallery

Wishing you all the very best  Christmas and for 2014.

From everyone at Saturday Archaeology Workshops. 

New Season SAW

Greetings SAW bloggers!

After a busy summer, there's a lot to catch up on with dig and visit reports due - watch this space! 

Or alternatively, SAW people, let us know what you have been up to. Send in your photos and a short piece about an archaeological or historical site or museum, you have visited recently and we will choose the best to put share on the SAW blog.

In the meantime, the new season of SAW sessions is now to be found here.

Rothwell Charnel Chapel visit

On Saturday 10th August, I visited the medieval charnel chapel in Rothwell church's crypt. The church and charnel chapel were built around 1350 and held approximately 1000 complete skeletons, and it is one of only 2 surviving in England due to Henry XIII's reformation in the 16th centaury, and outlawing the worship and reverence of bones in England. It was discovered around 1700 by a grave digger who (supposedly) went mad due to what he saw. Over 100 years after the discovery Victorians who studied the crypt removed most of the bones excluding the femurs and skulls, as they believed they were in there by accident as they believed you only needed your femur and skull to get into heaven. This has since been proven to contradict medieval beliefs as they believed that god would reassemble them on the day of judgement, no matter how dismembered they were. I found my visit very interesting, and the students from the university of Sheffield who were studying the site were very informative and knowledgeable.

 

by John D.

[Sorry it has taken so long to include this John. Thanks for sending it in. Ed.]

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum Exhibition Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my last visit to the British Museum in London and my visit to Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition curated by Paul Roberts. The objects themselves were incredible, especially the wall frescoes, graphiti and kitchen implements. My favorite objects were two faience frogs in the Hortus area which were beautiful, I have never seen faience quite like it before. I was also very impressed with the displays. The exhibition is set out by the different rooms in a typical pompeiian house, Tablinum, Culina, Atrium etc. I thought this was very clever as progressing through the exhibition was almost like walking through a Roman house.

As I have been to Pompeii and experienced the incredible the incredible levels of preservation of the buildings this room set idea really helped to bring the living conditions alive for me. Quite a few of the objects I have studied about at school through Classical Civilisation so it was good to see them up close. The displays were also very good. I often feel in some exhibitions that the displays are trying to show the creative "genius" of the curator but these displays were minimalist  and emphasized the object, not the design of the display.

If I am to criticize the display in any way I would say the visitor flow was poorly designed as there were many bottlenecks and I often found myself getting very close and compact with other visitors when filing through narrow corridors. The labels were also, like the displays, slightly minimalist and could have done with a bit more information. But altogether a very good exhibition, highly recommended. However if you are going you must remember to book as it is the fastest selling show the British Museum has had for 25 years.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/pompeii_and_herculaneum.aspx

Success Looming!

 It must be in the genes! Constructing looms and weaving - I wouldn't have thought it was so engaging to contemporary youngsters! But, give them a lovely spring day, some branches, wool and clay 'doughnut-shaped' weights and a little, boy-versus-girl healthy competition and they're away!

Making sure your vertical posts are well anchored and at the same height.

The boys were quicker at trading for the tools -
twenty-first century technology to speed things up!

The girls seemed to appreciate each person's
contribution better than the boys.

Tying leashes to the rear warp threads.

Weaving sunshine. Photographer - Matthew.

The loom boys - well constructed framework
and  threaded.

Some of the loom girls.

An hour and a half later we have two functioning, (but yet to be tested), warp-weighted looms.

Many thanks again to our friends at Priory Country Park, especially Jane Moore, who provided the site and the branches and thanks also to Chris Dobson, historical textiles expert, who gave support, advice and instructions, and doughnuts!.

Silver Arts Award Reviews from Jack and Oliver

Silver Arts Award Reviews

Jack - Twinwoods Visit
On the 27th January I went to the former RAF Twinwoods, now the site of a museum dedicated to its, and other local airfields, history.The airfield is best known for Glenn Miller, as this was where he took off from on 15th December 1944 on his very last flight, but I went there to see the aviation art that they have in their collections.   

Glenn Miller's Norseman

Their main collection of aviation art is by local artist Keith Hill and is in an exhibition on the ground floor of the control tower. This is a collection of oil on canvases of WW2 planes with three large original commissioned works as part of the gallery. The pictures were well laid out and spread out on the walls. They had obviously tried to fit as many as possible into the small room - including three large paintings - but had done well not to overcrowd them. Around each picture was a plain frame and then a narrow space of plain-coloured wall around that. This meant that each picture stood out and you could therefore take in and enjoy each picture individually rather than viewing all of them as one collection. I also liked the way that the original picture of Glenn Miller’s  Norseman was hung directly opposite the doorway, illuminated with lamps aimed at it which made it the centre of attention. 

They also displayed the paintings at Twinwoods by hanging them among the artefacts in some of the museum buildings. I liked this method because if the artwork is directly linked to the artefact (e.g. same model of plane) then they complement each other. Also, you can relate this small piece of aeroplane to the original through imagining where it would be on the painting in front of you and therefore the aircraft. This helps to give the artefact an identity rather than just a lump of metal - making the museum visit much more interesting. 

Spotlights!

Overall, Twinwoods have displayed the artwork in a very effective way. My only concern would be the spotlights that shone on the artefacts, and therefore neighbouring pictures, reflecting off the glass. This meant that the picture could not be seen that well.





Their collection also included an original mural painted at Glatton airfield. The mural depicts two surveyors  in the foreground and then in the background Glatton airfield is being constructed. The mural was painted onto plaster on the side of a building at Glatton airfield before being removed and brought to Twinwoods. Sadly, the plaster is now bending because of the damp. I am assured though, that when the museum is open to the public and therefore heated, it will dry out and flatten.

The Glatton Airfield mural

Keith Hills Artwork (at Twinwoods’ Gallery)

The Originals

            A Few of the Others

I would like to thank Robert Allen and the rest of the team at Twinwoods for a truly amazing and inspirational visit.

Jack

Oliver - Royal Academy Bronze Show - 3rd November 2012

I was overall very impressed with the exhibition. The statue that you saw as you entered was absolutely incredible. The exhibition designer put the statue in the first room to obviously make an impact on the visitors as they walked in. As good as the statue being there for impact was, I would have preferred the exhibition to be in chronological order to the give more of a story of the production and working of bronze which I did not feel came across very well. I also thought that the design of the exhibition itself left a lot to be desired. Firstly, it was incredibly dark which made it hard to see people or trip hazards. It made it very easy to bump into people which wasn’t helped by the narrow corridors between the exhibits which made it feel crowded and claustrophobic. Also all of the objects were high up which I guess was to make them feel impressive as they would have been when they were displayed originally. But it made it hard for people who were short like me to see, and I can only imagine what the experience must have been like for wheel chair users.

But the objects themselves were phenomenal. My particular favorites were the Greek statue at the beginning of the exhibition, a beautiful Greek bust of an old bearded man and the Crosby Garret Helmet which had its debut on display after being discovered by a metal detectorist last year with controversial buying by a private collector abroad still hotly disputed. There were also quite a few other objects that I have only read about and never thought I may actually see including many chinese bronzes that have never left China before. I also found the room that explained how the lost wax process was carried out very interesting and informative.

Although, I found the labels slightly less informative. I found myself asking regularly throughout the exhibition how some of the objects had been made, or where they had been discovered. I think this was probably the case as the exhibition was held at the Royal Academy that usually deals with art and not archaeological artifacts so they were probably thinking of the objects as just art rather than objects that are important to world heritage.

Overall I really enjoyed the exhibition because of the incredible objects displayed and the variety and quality of the objects, although I thought the displays were badly curated and the exhibition as a whole was badly designed, as well as not considering the information that should go along side archaeological objects on display.

Oliver

Walking the Timeline

The year is 2013, and having been frozen-out in January, SAW returns to its familiar second home - Priory Country Park, for a workshop exploring the differences and similarities between archaeology and geology.

First of all we had to give a sense of scale to the times these two studies cover, so everyone became a placeholder for images of significant events in the history of geological and human time...

We start with the Big Bang on the left, oxygen arrives after 2500 million years, and hard-shelled  molluscs arrive in the Cambrian era, after 4100 million years (girl in the bright red anorak). Humans appear with the lady in purple - space travel is stuck on the far right!

Phanerozoic Timechart showing
geological eras from the Cambrian
phase onwards

Many of the young people who attend SAW are intrigued by fossils - which are creatures and plants turned to stone over many millions of years, so we brought along fossils from The Higgins Handling Collection for the young people to identify. Gryphaea, Belemnites and Ammonites are very common shell-fish fossils that can be found locally in Bedfordshire, because about 450 million years ago, 'Bedfordshire' was being formed at the bottom of warm seas.

Holding a Gryphaea - once known as a 'Devil's Toe-nail'!

Sorting out the phone family.

Who on earth designed this dinosaur!?

Making model belemnites.

Some young people were challenged to complete a dinosaur jigsaw - which wasn't as easy as it looked, while others chose to make their own model of an belemnite - you can find more models to make at:
British Geological Survey Puppets.html

We have to thank Alison for delivering a fascinating first session for 2013 - and she's promised to do more in the future!

Plants found in coal fossils.

If you would like to find out more about geology and fossils, you could visit the British Geological Survey website: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/home.html?src=topNav 

and you can find out more about Bedfordshire geology by going to the Bedfordshire Geology Group website: http://www.bedfordshiregeologygroup.org.uk/

According to Alison: 'Rocks rock!'