A watching brief - Day 18

As part of the planning permission process which is run for Cathedrals by The Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England we have to have an archaeologist who has a watching brief on the works. Graham Keevill is our man and he came for his fist visit to the work today.


He came to look at the hole that is being dug through the wall of the crypt, which I showed you last week. Distinct progress has been made by Clinton and his fellow work men. To the left is the state of play last week and now you can see that light has been reached on the other side fo the wall into the Pigeon Parlour - so named for obvious reasons.

The photo to the right shows the Pigeon Parlour and the eagle eyed among you will see that they have left their mark....

And here is Clinton, I had to persuade him to take off his mask and hi - vis jacket which added nothing to the photograph.

 Some of the items that Graham was interested in are here:

A piece of stone showing evidence of one of the many fires that the Cathedral has experienced over the years.

 This piece of stone shows signs of early moulding, it probably dates from the 12th century and was used as part of the Victorian infilling that I have described.

 Here are some animal bones, a jaw to the right and part of a leg to the left, or so I am told.

And finally, a piece of wood which was probably part of the form work used to support the infilling and was left in place 140 years ago. We were not sure what to expect here but true to my earlier comments about over zealous work by the Victorians, the whole arch is filled in supportive masonry. So far, nothing has fallen down that we did not want to.