Inside the Museum of London

With newly awarded funding from Arts Council England, the Museums’ Archaeological Archive has stormed ahead with its programme of ‘opening-up’ our collections of London’s archaeology. So far this year the Archive team have engaged over 21,500 people directly with our artefacts, either in the Archive, at the Museum, or outs and abouts in the London metropolis. After a manic summer of archaeological events, we thought it was time for a quick catch up!

FOBA Finale

Collections Manager Glynn updates us on our first ‘outer borough’ project:

Our first new project, made possible with ACE funding, allowed us to transport our highly successful volunteer project from the Archive and take up residence in a London borough, taking local archaeology back to its source of excavation. Our first lucky borough was Hounslow. Over 5 weeks a diverse team of volunteers were trained in handling, sorting, documenting, identifying and repacking archaeological collections, excavated from the local area (Brentford High Street), albeit it some time ago (1977).

The culmination of this project was for our volunteer team to share what they had learnt with the greater community. In partnership with Gunnersbury Park Museum, our volunteers engaged with over 450 people as part of the Festival of British Archaeology!

Our team performed amazingly, and the museum staff were mightily impressed at the their ability to engage the public and their level of knowledge.

VIP ‘minis’

Collections Manager Lucy updates us on our new VIP ‘mini’ projects, designed to engage the Archive with new audiences:

The first of our ‘mini’ Volunteer Inclusion Projects launched this summer at the archaeological archive. They build on the success of our ten week VIP projects but allow us to work with groups of people from organisations for whom the format of our current programme is a potential barrier.

The three groups we’ve had the pleasure of working with have all contributed to the design of the project content too.

For some, the aim was to get through as much material as possible. Our volunteers from the National Autistic Society re-packed a phenomenal number of boxes of pottery and building material from a major site called GPO75.

For others, it was all about seeing as wide a range of objects as possible. They really got into exploring assemblages of animal bone, including comparing and contrasting with our human skeleton model.

Our final group from St Mungo’s is still in progress. They’re considering making creative responses to the archaeology using digital photographs – pictures of the results to follow…

Working with these groups has made for a varied and exciting summer. The response from volunteers has been great and we’re looking forward to further developing different ‘miniature’ projects that ‘open up’ our collections in new ways.

Community Excavation

Archive Learning Manager Kath blasts us with figures about this year’s community excavation at Syon Park in west London:

After meeting over 300 children, almost 240 adults, finding 90 bags of finds, recording over 60 new archaeological contexts…

… recruiting 23 volunteers, 11 members of staff, after 10 months of planning, on-site for 6 weeks, with 4 portaloos and 3 portakabins and one final open day…

… we found Sir Richard Wynn’s house just in time!*

*The cellar floor and wall of the post medieval house was, in true archaeological fashion, found in the last few days of the excavation!

But the work doesn’t end there. Bob, our expert MOLA archaeologist is busy checking all of the paper records to write the archaeological report. We have sorted, bagged, labelled and boxed the majority of the finds, which have now made their way back to the LAARC for storage and access.

The group of finds we are most excited about is the building material (from the cellar and from the rubble layers); we are waiting for a specialist to look through the collection of brick, plaster, mortar and tile to confirm the connection between the material and that lovely image of Little Syon.

So hopefully more news to follow later this year – keep your eyes peeled! But until then, a huge thank you to everyone that has been part of the project so far, from the staff at Syon Park to all those who participated or who visited us!

So what’s next for LAARC?

Lastly, Collections Manager Adam gives us a tantalising taster of what’s in store for the Archive:

Well, for starters we’ll be returning to the Archive for a 10 week project that will revert to our classic format of involving volunteers, working on collections to improve the way they’re stored and accessed. Our projects always let us rediscover forgotten beauties that lie within our boxes and we’ll be highlighting the best of these each week on the blog.

We’re also thoroughly pleased to announce we’ll be working once more with volunteers from the University of the 3^rd Age. 

This will be the sixth consecutive year that they’ll be joining us for a shared learning project and the focus this time will be to train the guys up with both collections care knowledge and skills in public engagement. Come November, our septet will be based in the galleries at the Museum of London sharing archaeology with visitors!

Looking forward to 2013, we’ll be on the road again heading to two more outer boroughs of London. Similar to the excellent work that took place in Hounslow this summer, we’re intending to once again inspire communities to engage with their local heritage.

In the meantime, from August onwards, you and your family can become archaeological detectives at the Archive yourselves.

Keep track with all our activities, here on the blog or via Twitter #LAARC

Romani ite Domum

The LAARC is now over halfway through its first ‘outer borough’ project. Last week our volunteers tackled those ‘no good’ Romans. Why precisely the small piece of Roman pottery above was labelled ‘no good’ we have no idea. Perhaps, again, an example of the strange humour that pervades archaeologists! For one thing, this piece did have its all important context number i.e. its recorded location in the ground.

Our volunteers undertook the herculean task of separating huge amounts of Roman pottery sherds by their sitecode, context number, phase number and finds number. Some of this information is now outdated in regards to current archaeological practice, as we’re working on quite an old excavation: BRE77. However, the sherds required sorting this way in order for the material to match their deposited records, also stored at the Museum’s Archaeological Archive.

Although much of this Roman pottery is intrinsically interesting, the physical archaeological of the site only makes sense when compared with the site records. Saying that, the original records, held at the LAARC, aren’t always the easiest to interpret (see below).

Pottery is one of the most important object assemblages from any archaeological site, as it’s our principle (and cheapest) dating tool. The records above show the process of trying to phase site BRE77’s Roman stratigraphy, utilizing the identified pottery. Our volunteers have excelled at turning this site archive into a fully accessible resource.

In the afternoon our volunteers participated in the Museum of London’s community excavation at Syon Park. Attempting to locate the remains of the property known as ‘Little Syon’ this gave a great opportunity for our volunteers to understand the importance of objects in regards to excavated features.

By the end of the day we had failed to discover the remains of Sir Richard Wynn’s house, but the hard work of those on next week’s training excavation may prove more fruitful!

‘Connecting our community’

Week 4 of our project and we returned to processing the post-medieval pottery from the Brentford ’77 site archive. Our volunteer teams have achieved far more than we predicated and the pottery has almost been completed!

Amongst the piles of post-medieval London redware pottery, some interesting artefacts were found including a group of contemporary wall tiles. A mystery object for the week is the tin-glazed tile below. Depicting an angel at a brazier, we’ve got an idea as to what the biblical scene might be, but we’re welcoming further suggestions! The tile itself dates to the early to mid C18^th and may be London (/English) made, although we can’t rule out the possibility of it being a Dutch import.

The main focus of the project this week was to get our volunteers thinking about how they could engage a public audience with their new-found knowledge of Brentford’s hidden history. This we did with an activity the LAARC likes to call ‘object dissection’ – to show our volunteers that, perhaps unwittingly, they’re already learnt a huge amount about London’s archaeology. 

And so in the afternoon, we moved into the Docking Station proper. Our volunteers were on full display to Brentford High Street’s passing traffic and despite the rain, engaged with a range of people over the two days.

In order to build extra interest, Collections Managers Lucy and Glynn were in the local Morrison’s on Thursday, engaging shoppers with both the C18^th Pipe Kiln that was excavated in the supermarket’s car park and objects associated with  the  ancient Roman road, literally under our feet.

Next week our volunteers will be in the Docking Station all day, where anyone can drop in and engage with our archaeology first hand and see what the teams are repackaging from Brentford’s depths.

Little Syon in 1820

This week Continue Creating broke from the routine of doing a workshop at Museum of London and took part in the archaelogical dig to find Little Syon. ‘Little Syon’ sat in the grounds of Syon Park, Brentford. The house was built in c. 1592 by George Watson. The house changed hands a number of times and was eventually bought in 1818 by Hugh Percy, 3^rd Duke of Northumberland, and incorporated into Syon Park. It was demolished as part of the landscape renovations commissioned by the Duke but archive records suggest it was still standing in 1820, suggesting a demolition date in the early 1820’s. The excavation is the first time the site’s archaeological will be explored.

Starting to wash the finds

The session started with a very interesting talk from Kath, about the history of the site and what the archaelogists were hoping to find. We learnt about Syon during the Roman period, through the Battle (or skirmish) of Brentford in 1642, right up to the C19th. Then we were taught how to dig. Over the course of 30 minutes, 8 willing volunteers scraped carefully away at the earth in the hope that it might yield some of its secrets.

Stav and Andrew giving it a good scrub

A key part of the archaelogical process is ‘Finds washing’, literally washing what you have found. So with a bowl of clean water, a toothbrush and a gentle hand, the group set to work.

Trying to ignore the wild parakeets flying overhead

The age old dilemma: brick or roof tile?

 Once celan, we could really see what we had found.

In this tray you can see a number of things. There is an oyster shell, which Dan explained was, unlike today, the fast food of Roman times. Then, it was plentiful, cheap and delivered in throw away packaging (the shell!) You can also see pieces of glassware. Kate told us that the clear galss may have formed a vessel that carried ointment/beauty product and the green a wine bottle. The green glass had a sprawling iridescent stain on it, which may not be visible in the photograph, but was caused by soil staining over the years. There are also pieces of brick and roof tile and you can tell where someone had been guilty of shoddy workmanship. A grey seem running through the centre of the piece shows that it was not fired enough. The clay remained grey rather than turning red.

Victorian crockery

Two finds attracted particular attention. The first was this piece of Victorian crockery, probably a serving plate used for day to day eating, rather than special events.

Poppy ware

The second, what Kate referred to as the ’star find’, was this piece of ‘Poppy ware’, so called because of the black dots across it, which look like Poppy seeds. It is Roman, making it over 2,000 years old, and was almost certainly made in Highgate, North London, where the Romans produced a lot of Poppy ware. The Poppy seed pattern is not only decorative but as the circles are slightly raised, helps the user to grip it. This piece was probably part of a bowl.

After the visit, on the mini-bus on back to London Wall , everyone agreed that they had had a great afternoon. A massive thank you to the whole team who made it possible. Andrew did point out though that someone needs to be more careful with their pots because they are all broken!

Following on from our blog posts And he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down… and At the first sign of trouble, find out what else has been happening at Syon Park. 

The existence of Sir Richard Wynn’s house (Little Syon) has been carefully brought back to light through the hard work of Simon Hadleigh-Sparks, a gardener at Syon Park. In his spare time he spends hours in Syon’s archive uncovering the wealth of documentary evidence kept there. Here he tells us how he first stumbled across Sir Richard Wynn’s House: 

Little Syon was a grand private house situated on London Road, that is now within the grounds of Syon Park land, and that has sadly been forgotten about over time. Many locals and Syon workers will not be at all aware of its existence, even though it played an important part of Syon and Brentford history for 226 years. 

I first heard about the house when I was doing some research on the internet, looking-up another project, when I saw the Little Syon painting (see below; image courtesy of London Metropolitan Archives). I took it upon myself to discover what I could about this little known part of Syon’s history.

Painting of Little Syon, courtesy of London Metropolitan Archives

 You will see from this painting that the frontage has a striking resemblance to Syon House (below) which may explain how it came to be known as Little Syon. 

Syon House

What first sparked my interest was of course the name ‘Little Syon’ and also that it was the only section of land not owned by the Syon Dukes for most of the building’s lifetime. It’s a bit of a mystery why the Little Syon site was separate; a possible reason is the land was given to the Nuns when Mary 1st wanted to rebuild the abbey at Syon (which was dissolved under Henry VIII in 1539). The plot was eventually rejoined with the parkland in 1818 AD, but the house itself was demolished shortly afterwards. 

Even now very little is known of the building and its history but I am honoured that my research and discoveries to date are being used by the Museum of London team and my initial research has been the driving force behind the archaeological project for this year. 

I have done most of my research online and looking through the Duke of Northumberland’s archives and records held here at Syon. It is a treasure trove of information from which I hope to discover more (for example this map of the house, below).

Map of the house © the Collections and Archives Department at Alnwick Castle

I also hope to obtain some more info from the Duke’s Alnwick Castle archives, as they now hold a large amount of Syon’s records. Plus the results of excavation are invaluable! 

Researching Little Syon has only fuelled my interest in Syon Park and the unknown aspects of its history. I will continue to explore and research the parkland, and look forward to my future discoveries! 

Simon Hadleigh-Sparks

Following on from Monday’s Syon Park blog post, Kath Creed gives an update on the dig so far.

The first trial trench worried us.

Those of you familiar with archaeology will notice that not very much is going on in that trench. Can you see the line of red in the side? That’s the ‘foundation’ for part of Sir Richard’s house. I’d be slightly concerned if my lovely manor house was just sitting on the surface as that spread implies!

However two more trenches revealed slightly better remains. Trial trench 2 showed a lovely brick debris spread along one of the wall lines…

…and trial trench 3 shows (possibly) the lines of the back walls of the house.

Our plan is to join these second two trial trench together to make a large L shaped trench to explore this summer.

Bookings are now open for our 2012 summer training excavation at Syon Park, Hounslow. More information and booking details can be found on our website: www.museumoflondon.org.uk/syon. Kath Creed, one of our key event organisers, explains how progress has been going so far.

Back in March we hired a mechanical digger to open three trial trenches in the area of hoped for remains of Sir Richard Wynn’s house in Syon Park. Our first issue quickly arose when we realised that the remains weren’t quite where we thought they might be!

 We were hoping they would be here:

A lovely open grassed patch with lots of space for open area trenches.

Instead we quickly realised they were over a fence and here:

In a reasonably recent plantation of new trees!

Well, it’s widely known that the best archaeology is always in the most inconvenient place. Luckily our digger fit perfectly in between the rows, and Topher (Syon’s Head Gardener) explained to us that because the trees are young (and don’t have big root systems yet) he could move a few for us to fit in our trenches. Hurrah!