The working life of Museum of London

The end is in sight, but the fun’s just begun

With only two more weeks to go, what have we achieved this week?

Monday’s team had a full day of registered finds and got stuck into three site archives as they completed Chaucer House (CH75) and Cannon Street (CS75) & Clerkenwell Close (Cl75/76). Amongst the finds were a rather nice glass bottle, 6 boxes of clay tobacco pipe and a box of faecal remains!

The rest of the week was mainly spent on General Finds, with Glynn and the teams starting a new site, Ludgate Hill (LH74). To begin each session, Glynn showed the volunteers some of the sections and plans from the excavation to help put the site into context. The site had been separated into several lettered trenches and all the pottery had a prefix before its context.

Tuesday and Wednesday’s teams all spent the whole day on the pottery and highlights included an almost complete pipkin and one of the more unusual objects we’ve come across, a ceramic ear. This originally would have made up part of a medieval face pot. We didn’t find the rest of the face though…

Thursday’s volunteers had a mixture of both sides of the project, working on pottery in the morning and then moving onto registered finds in the afternoon. And the good news was that they reached the first target of the project as we audited all the remaining finds from Cannon Street (CS75) & Clerkenwell Close (CL75/76) and then went on to complete two more sites; the District Heating Scheme, Montague Close (DHS75) and the tiny Eastminster Street (ESM75). A whole spectrum of objects were looked at from a small decorated token to a weighty iron cannonball, to a bizarre sculptured egg.

The final round of specialist workshops completed another fine week, with the excellent Prehistory workshop starting the week and many objects shown during the metal finds workshop completing the set.

Next week, we’ll see if we can complete our target in the leather finds project and see how far we can get into the Ludgate Hill archive, plus…

EVERY DAY NEXT WEEK THERE’S AN OBJECT OF THE PROJECT COMPETITION!!!

Over the course of the week, all the best objects from VIP5 will be competing for the coveted title of Object of VIP5. each day 4 of the 16 chosen artefacts will be put up for a daily vote and it’s you who gets to decide which is your winner. At the end of the week, the four daily winners will compete in the grand finale. Which will you go for? Be sure to revisit these pages on Monday to make your decision.

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