All is not as it seems
Brenda | October 5, 2011Gordon has been out at the dig in all this terrible weather we’re having and has sent in these fascinating findings:
- The hearth may not be a hearth, but a floor made up of a lot of material from a hearth!
- The post holes in that floor are too small and shallow to hold the cruck frame but may have held less weighty timbers associated with furniture or the roof.
- The big central post pad isn’t a post pad but a hearth in the middle of the area where the floor appears to have been destroyed! But why has it got two small stone lined and capped channels cut into the ground running away from it, one down to the byre and one across to, and possibly through, the wall, the latter capped with clay? Drains perhaps but why would you drain a hearth? Flues then, but how would they work since they seem to stop at the edge of the hearth stone? And what was the pile of burnt and unburnt clay stacked nearby against the wall for?
- And we found a possible belt buckle yesterday as per photo!
So the building is becoming even more of a mystery, what seemed to be a straight forward dwelling with the fireplace and the post holes for the roof structure where we would expectthem to be is now turning into something other. Let’s see where the evidence takes us to come up with final conclusions on what this home would have looked like and how a family would have lived in it.