Stage Two - Summer 2011

(Sunday 2 July – Thursday 7 July) - COMPLETE

Please Note: The Coleshill House site and grounds are owned by the National Trust. The woods and grounds of the house are all strictly private and access is limited to set days a year. See our events page for their official open days. Attempting to access the site outside of these times is not only trespassing but could damage the future of our work and relationship with the Trust and villagers. Please respect this.

Stage two of the project was approved by the National Trust at Coleshill.

Objectives for the week

1. Complete the clearance work started during the January 2011 evaluation weekend on the concrete slabs in Sector 1. This work will also now include exploratory trenches that will hopefully provide both further information about the construction of the structures and also regarding the original use of the structures.

2. Undertake clearance work and excavate two trenches at the MT ramp.

3. Work carried out so far at Structure 2, previously known as the Generator Base, has not really yielded any useful information about it's use. We therefore propose excavating two trenches at this feature.

4. The metal detecting that was carried out over the evaluation weekend provided both a substantial number of artefacts and a number of strong signals that should be investigated further. Subject to number of detectorists on site, we believe that a larger systematic gridded metal detecting survey of these areas (Sectors 1 & 2) will provide us with even more evidence of the training landscape.

5. Follow-up all strong MD & geophysics signals recorded during the January 2011 evaluation weekend with some excavation to see if any further structural remains (including another possible OB) can be identified.

6. Depending on manpower available we will also look to conduct an initial walking survey of Sectors 3 and 4.

All of this is obviously dependant on how many people we have during the week.

See images from Stage Two here