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News items from the past few months are shown here. For older items please see the news archive.

July 2010: Excavations in Lowndes Park

Finds recording - another bottle!	Seal from mineral water bottle c1800

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For a week from the 23rd July, CVAHS carried out excavations in Lowndes Park Chesham on the "rolling pin", an earth mound at the highest point of the park.

We dug trenches into and on top of the earth mound, which was scheduled in 1995 as a possible disc barrow. A series of trenches were also placed across a large enclosure ditch/bank identified from aerial photographs. The hot dry summer had baked the ground so that it was hard digging but we made good progress with the aid of pickaxes and perseverance.

Enough information was generated from the enclosure trenches to confirm the presence of a large bank and shallow ditch. There were very few finds from these trenches but one yielded the bowl and stem fragments of a clay pipe. No other finds were made in the enclosure trenches to suggest a medieval or earlier date.

Trenches on the mound exposed a number of interesting features but evidence for a prehistoric date was absent. Rather the finds (including a large number of hand blown bottles) indicate a date somewhere between 1750 and 1850AD. However it is worth noting that the CVAHS dig was confined to a small percentage of the total volume of the mound.

Once the finds have been processed, dated and catalogued and the reports assembled more details will be made available.

May 2010: New CVAHS Membership Secretary

Brian Smith has had to resign as Membership Secretary due to ill health. Brian has ably performed this role for several years and deserves a big 'thank you' from CVAHS members for all his hard work. We wish him well in his recovery. For the remainder of this year, Marion Wells has taken over. The position of Membership Secretary will be taken over by Julia Plaistowe in the New Year. Marion is reviewing the members' database and would be grateful if you could advise CVAHS of your email address if you haven't already done so. Please let Marion know it on mjwhollybank@aol.com. This will greatly help with future communications.

April 2010: Investigations at The Lee

Surveying in the Sun

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From February to April this year the CVAHS Field Group ivestigated the site of a possible deserted medieval settlement at The Lee. We used resistivity and magnetometry geophysics to form a picture of sub-surface features.

Although the earthworks at The Lee cover a fairly large area, there is comparatively little known about them. No previous excavations or surveys have taken place at the site, but there have been two site visits.

One, by Roland Smith, resulted in a sketch showing features such as possible house platforms and short lengths of hollow way. A site visit by Pike and Farley (1977) resulted in an annotated map which shows additional small spurs of bank and ditch to the south east and west. Michael Farley stated that "within the enclosure, apart from the church/chapel, would have lain the principal house and its attendant barns and outbuildings and possibly a few other dwellings. Much of the enclosure would have been open land, the normal 'home close' of a principal house".

Records suggest that this was a 13th-14th century monastic site consisting of a church and a possible guest house. But what else was here, and is there any evidence of an earlier occupation? Geophysical surveys of the site have now been completed and indicate some interesting features. We are hoping to be able to begin excavation of these in the near future.

March 2010: CVAHS Open Evening

Some of the finds on display

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About 50 CVAHS members and local people braved the wind and rain on 19th March to come to Chesham Town Hall and hear about the society's activities in the past year.

There were short presentations by members of the Field Group - John Gover, Jill Hender, Yvonne Edwards and Marion Wells - on our archeological activities at a number of sites. These included new investigations at Lowndes Park, Chesham and at The Lee medieval settlement, as well as the long-running fieldwork at Valley Farm and surrounding areas. Yvonne Edwards described all these as 'work in progress' as each has produced new information (and, in some cases, physical finds), but more work is needed to understand and date activities on the sites.

Garry Marshall of the Record Group gave an entertaining presentation on 'The Great and Good of Chesham' derived from his study of Chesham's manorial rolls. He demonstrated how local people in the 14th Century were linked in a web of relationships and obligations, from the level of the aristocracy down to individual peasants.

Finally, Roland McLain-Smith described recent developments at Coleman's Wood, where evidence has been found of Romano-British and earlier activity, including traces of a new bank and ditch enclosure. The Romano-British finds may be linked to a suspected villa at Little Missenden.

Displays included finds from Coleman's Wood and an accompanying video, pottery from Valley Farm and environs, and posters about our geophysical survey at Blackwell Hall Farm.

February 2010: Blackwell Hall Geophysical Investigation

Blackwell Hall Manor was in the Chess Valley near Chesham. It derived its name from the Blackwell family who held land in Chesham in the 13th century. The Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) states that "Blackwell Hall marks the site of the ancient manor of that name", however, it's not clear whether the manor was based on what is now Blackwell Hall or Blackwell Hall Farm.

While CVAHS was researching Blackwell Hall Farm a large flat platform area was noted in the back garden to the east of the farm. Was this the site of the original manor house? In February 2010, we decided to complete a resistivity survey over this feature and surrounding area to see if any evidence could be found to support this idea. The results and interpretation of the survey are shown below.

The raw resistivity data is as taken from the resistivity meter with no processing applied. After relief processing, the plot has 'noise' spikes removed and the display highlights anomalies. An interpretation of the data is shown, including the margin of the platform terrace (a small but steep bank on the site), a trackway, and possible outlines of building foundations.

Interestingly, the 1880s OS map shows a building on the platform. But are we looking at 19th Century "garden sheds" or is there something older here? As usual, more research is needed!

Geophysics Results