Day 18
One more day to go! Today, the WA team photographed, recorded and drew their plans and checked the levels of our bomb crater trench. Adam and Justyna, drew the stones in trench 7 on a plan and completed their paperwork.
The rest of the team focused their attention on the bomb crater. I think it is safe to refer to it as a bomb crater now rather than a ‘something’, after I received a letter yesterday from a local gentleman, Nev' from the village who informed me of a bomb falling close to that spot.
He informed me that he was a teenager during the war and that an unexploded bomb fell over Loscar on the evening of the first Sheffield Blitz on 12th December 1940. “The woods were sealed off for a few days and an Army Bomb Disposal Squad came to deal with the bomb... At the same time a bomb exploded in the field where the planned Fracking site will be located. We boys, of course went to examine the crater.”
So, that kind of confirms what was thought about the feature. Initially, we could not understand why we couldn't find any shrapnel from a bomb, but if it didn’t explode, that would solve that mystery!
In the first raid on Sheffield, the Luftwaffe’s Heinkel HE 111 planes dropped flares and explosives over the city. The bombing lasted nine hours and around 300 aircraft took part. Presumably, one of the planes jettisoned its heavy bombs that it had not dropped over Sheffield on their way home to help increase their speed and fuel consumption.
In the bomb crater, we have found some pieces of pottery in the top section of the depression and two pieces of iron right at the bottom. I would describe them as being long rusty six inch nails. However, that is still yet to be confirmed.
I was ‘Billy-no-mates’ today on site as all of the other volunteers were busy, and with very little for the them to do, it made no sense in more people sitting around watching the WA archaeologists dig and catch up all of their necessary paperwork. I however, have got that down to a fine art!
Although I was the only volunteer, we did have some visitors to the site today. Mili came with her colleague, Richard from Wessex Archaeology North to have a look around, and WA archaeologist, Hannah (who lives in Wales village) saw her father, Peter and her grandad come back for another look around. We also had a gentleman called John who wandered in and asked if he could have a look around the site after hearing about the dig from a friend who had visited last week.
Finally, Amanda and Gary, who own the wood came for a visit with their dog, George. Work stopped for a while as the archaeologists were more interested in stroking George, than digging holes! :-)
Without Amanda and Gary’s co-operation and enthusiasm for what Mili and I were trying to achieve, we would never have had the most marvellous three weeks that we have had. I can not thank them enough for believing in us and allowing us to spend time in their beautiful wood.
