Looking west from the boundary of Avril's property. The trench is now fully exposed. Nearest the camera is this year's excavation, beyond the fence the (re)constructed trench.
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2002 ExcavationsThis year's excavations took place over the Easter break, which meant we had more time.The plan was to continue opening the trench to Avril's property boundary.The team was made up of Jon Price, Andy Robertshaw, Alastair Fraser, Keith Madison, Steve Roberts, Martin Brown, Richard Culyer, Lesley Wood, Dave Kenyon, and Carol Nubbert.The trench was found fairly easily as the traverses were small. As we expected the bottom of the trench cut was clean packed earth, but this time the drain along the South side was clear and present along most of the trench. The presence of bricks was noted and although these were well spaced they were sufficiently located to clearly represent the remains of a floor. This suggests that the brick floor continued throughout the lerngth of the trench, but that the bricks were deliberately removed at some point. This removal is likely to have taken place at the end of the trench's use as the remaining few bricks would have been a hazard. The most significant find were 58 rolls of barbed wire which had been dumped into the trench as infill at the end of the war. They had clearly been deposited by the army, as farmers would have been likely to have kept them for their own use. Beneath the wire was our first serious live ordnance find: an unexploded German 77mm late war gas shell, which lost us a couple of hours digging whilst it was disposed of. There was not the same density of British unfired small arms rounds as before, with only five loose rounds, and the intact contents of a 50 round cotton bandolier. In addition four unfired Lebel rounds were found.
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