As part of my quest to try new things I decided to dig for treasure in my local park.

The wonderful folks at DigVentures (https://digventures.com/) allow members of the public to assist with archaeology projects in their local area. We arrived on a sunny Thursday to find a couple of areas of Lesnes Abbey (https://digventures.com/projects/lesnes-abbey/) cordoned off, with the turf taken up, and a set of tools waiting for us.

After a suitable health-and-safety briefing and some instruction on the tools, we got cracking. I was slightly sceptical that we’d find anything digging only a few centimetres of dirt. The professionals reassured us that we’d all find something.

After scrabbling around for ages, I was feeling despondent. I found some interesting stones, some underwhelmed worms, and some prehistoric crisp packets - but nothing else.

And then.

CBM - Ceramic Building Material - tiles started popping out of the ground. Big orange chunks of ancient tiles were everywhere. My mate Cam and I also found some with holes in them - evidence of them being used on a roof.

A surprising number of oyster shells were present - the discarded detritus of someone’s lunch from hundreds of years ago. I even found a tiny bone (assessed as non-human, thankfully. Apparently that comes with a hell of a lot of paperwork!).

Gorgeous! And then, something shiny! Was it metal? Sadly, no. A chunk of pottery apparently. I kept digging, sraping, hoeing, looking, and then I found more shiny!

The local pottery expert reckoned it was 18th Century salt-glazed creamware (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creamware).

You can take a look at the DigVentures Timeline (https://digventures.com/projects/lesnes-abbey/timeline/) or the Lesnes Abbey Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/lesnesabbey/posts/pfbid02GtHhdPh6QUur8zGA1QeCMjSutovyLy84XiCorMUk3Js9EZcyX6HA4Ug4NetktbRCl) to see more photos of what we all found.

It was a brilliant day out - I never realised just how close under our feet you can find history. It was also a physically demanding day, lots of kneeling on the ground, heaving speades, dragging wheelbarrows, etc.

If they’re running something near you, please get involved with DigVentures (https://digventures.com/get-involved/)