This excavation was undertaken over a three-week period from in June and July 2025 in partnership with the Chiltern Heritage and Archaeological Partnership (CHAP) under the direction of Dr Wendy Morrison who was holding an archaeological summer school.
Lidar and aerial photographs had shown the outline and dimensions of part of a possible Roman marching camp in the corner of a field to which we now had access due to a change of ownership. This was adjacent to the larger ditch and bank enclosure within which we had undertaken geophysical surveys in 2023.
A resistivity survey undertaken at the end of May 2025 revealed strong evidence of the rectangular ditch and an unusual feature within the enclosed area which was unlikely to be the result of ploughing (see image left).
Wendy chose to excavate the ditch feature (T1) with her summer school students, while in a separate trench (T2) SOAG members tried to investigate the anomalous feature apparent in the resistivity. T2 was a 15 x 6m trench from which we removed the topsoil and then concentrated further excavation in the middle and south western areas of the trench.
July 2025 was mostly dry and very hot and with ground that was really dry, hard and full of flints, digging was a very slow and laborious process.
We cleared a 15 x 6 metre area, but then concentrated in the middle of the trench. There appeared to be a possible flint surface across the central areas of the trench and in order to determine what might be causing the features apparent in the resistivity, we dug slots across the trench through the flinty layer and discovered potential ditches cut in to the reddish coloured natural clay. A single post hole was also revealed in the southern part of the trench.
This was an enigmatic and not very revealing trench. There were very few finds of note, apart from what is thought to be a late-Medieval Cu-alloy book clasp, a couple of pieces of apparently iron age pottery and number of small pieces of worked flint.
The summer school students traced the top of the rampart and edge of ditch downwards to reach the bottom of the ditch at approx. 1.9m. Finds from this trench included hobnails and one piece of Samian ware.
The field was detected over by local detectorists when we were doing the geophysics and detected finds included a James I shilling (~1621-1623).
The results of the excavation have yet to be finalised, but current thinking is that there were potentially several phases of occupation: later pre-historic, Iron Age, Roman and possibly late medieval to early modern. Fortunately, charcoal pieces were found in context and four pieces are undergoing carbon dating, two from trench 1 (edge of rampart and near bottom of ditch), and two from the trench 2 ditches. It is hoped to confirm date ranges early in 2026.