Welcome to the Ancient Cwmbran Society

Following the exploratory investigations performed during the Winter of 2014 – The Ancient Cwmbran Society working in conjunction with the University of South Wales will be conducting the start of an archaeological research programme into lost farmsteads within the area surrounding Cwmbran.

The first such archaeological investigation will take place on a lost farmstead in the Parish of Llanfrechfa Lower. The farmstead is not recollected within living memory and in all probability ceased to exist sometime during the mid to late 19th Century. It is located in close proximity to an ancient, possibly Iron Age, track way and also close to an ancient church and a possible medieval motte. The investigation hopes to be able to establish within reasonable bounds when the farmstead was deserted and if time allows to establish when it was first founded.

The dig will take place over four days commencing , for members, on the 12th of March and closing on the 15th at the latest.

Please note that this report  has been written by an interested amateur Archaeologist with no formal training in archaeological practices. This is purely presented as a social media presentation  and should not be considered to be a true or accurate representation of established archaeological practices.

We work under the guidance of an IFA registered Archaeologist at all times, who will publish a true and accurate report through the recognised channels in due course.

sorry about the lack of updates

Yesterday “Yours Truly” overdid the digging and has aggrivated  an old back injury ( herniated disk to be precise) so  had to take the day off from the archaeology .

I’m back in work on Saturday and Sunday – so there will be no further updates this weekend .

but

If some of the other members send me some photos I will post them here for your delectation .

Note to self – try to remember I am not 21 anymore 🙂

Thursday ( day 1) 6 PM.

Our intrepid crew are all back home now after quite a successful days digging, fortunately we were blessed with pleasant weather for the majority of the day which became quite warm with all the digging activity going on.

 

 

After our early morning coffee  ( which is a bit of a ritual for our intrepid bunch of Amateur Archaeologists- and a ritual which is repeated several times during the course of the day)  we got down to the serious business of locating  and uncovering the excavation we marked from last year. We removed the turf to expose the masonry which had survived the winter months in very good condition.

 

 

Now where the heck did we leave that trench  ?????

Jim to the rescue with his metal detector

 Turf carefully removed for re-use later

We uncovered the archaeology from last year

While the rest of the crew busied themselves ( under the watchful eyes of our Archaeologist Rodger)in setting out and re-establishing  the Ordinance Survey Co-ordinates for the site .

Where did they all go ? What’s that ???  Coffee !  I’ll be right there ………………

Hmm,  is this pointing to the loo ?

Anyway , once back to work we cleaned back and re-established last years excavation.

And continued to dig strati graphically paying attention to any contexts present.

Clearing away the tumble and demolition rubble present.

 lots of finds , several clay pipes, pottery, coal fragments , coloured glass to name but a few.

A small selection of the finds

One interesting feature of the wall – a large gap in which we initially

thought was where a stone was missing, but it could be more interesting than that .

Could it possibly  have been a beam slot?

Meanwhile , elsewhere we removed the turf from the rest of the area .

While cleaning back on the north side of the wall

To make it presentable for photographing and recording.

All in all , a good day’s digging .  Further updates tomorrow!

 

 

Thursday 10am

 

A big hello to all our followers , old and new  , and welcome to the first post from our dig site at Llanfrechfa for the 2015 season.

Unfortunately here will be no live blogging from the site this year, the mobile signal is just not good enough for uploading photos from the site , with very little 3 or 4G signal available , so I will just take some photos at the site and upload them this evening at home.

We started off the morning by using a metal detector to locate the four metal pegs that we left in the ground when we closed and re-turfed the excavation in the Winter of last year (2014) . These pegs  marked the extents of our trench , but finding them was no easy matter.