Highlights of the 2003 Season
One of the aims for 2003 was to find out if the curved arc of a gully revealed in 1999 in Trench 3 and in 2000 in Trench 16 was in fact the drainage channel of a Roundhouse.
Trench 21 to the north of Trenches 3 and 16 traced a J shape round a clump of trees back to the Rhodedendron bed. It was difficult to make out where the orange brown boulder clay was replaced by Natural Sandstone Bedrock but just possible to follow a line where the plated bedrock had been levered out to form a shallow channel, until the boulder clay, with higher charcoal content appeared again, revealing an almost perfect horseshoe shape around 13 meters in diameter
There were in fact no Iron Age finds in the ditch, but a number of Flint flakes were recovered, bringing the total to 97
Flints found between the seasons, in an area 5m square. Specialist identification has confirmed that they are characteristic of the Mesolithic period, suggesting the use of the hilltop as a seasonal camp around 5000 years ago.
Trench 22 found the Eastern arm of the enclosure unexpectedly continuing straight accross to the Eastern wall rather than following the trackway.. Fortunately, ploughing of the field prior to re-seeding gave opportunity for a series of nine trial trenches of stripped topsoil 1.5m wide to the East of Area B, which enabled us to pick up the continuation of the enclosure ditch running East for at least another 120 metres towards Mellor Hall.A core sample from Trench 22 was examined by scientists from Durham University for plant microfossil and pollen assesments, who reported "The pollen indicates woodland dominated by hazel, with lime, oak, alder, birch and holly also present. Cereal type pollen (including wheat) and weed pollen suggest a mixture of arable and pastoral farming, with a waterbody and wet meadow nearby".
The Outer Ditch in Trench 18
In 2003, we were able to return to the edge of the ditch which had been found at the East end of the garden in 2002 and reveal the whole of the ditch to the South and East.
Over 4m wide and on average 2m deep, the Ditch had a a parallel stone lined gully, 1.4m to the West, which may represent a slot cut to take a wooden palisade, providing a formidable defensive arrangement.
The 5m stretch of Trench 18
produced an abundance of finds including: Quern Stones used to grind corn,
and the Remains of 5 Roman Brooches These were all mainly from the top two fills of the ditch, these suggest a later and deliberate back filling
and indicate that Mellor was quite probably a High Status site during the Romano British Period.
Trench 23 covered the short stretch beween the SW of Trench 16 and the Rhodedendron bed (which was out of bounds for excavation!) The dark grey fill of the gully could be clearly followed running into the Rhodedendrons. One of the finds here was a large notched and grooved stone, very similar to prehistoric hammer stones found on other sites.
A new interpretation
By 2003 we were beginning to realise that we were finding sections of a deep defensive ditch roughly enclosing the Old Vicarage garden and the old part of the graveyard and a narrower and shallower outer ditch, possibly just a boundary marker but extending East right up towards the top of the hill.A new understanding of the Topology:
Trench 25 excavated late in the season in the bare vegetable garden showed us that the almost perfectly flat garden of today is the result of substantial landscaping. The Eastern end of the trench, near the house, has topsoil and subsoil 0.5m deep, similar to that found in other trenches in the garden. However, the natural bedrock slopes away so much that at the West end this rises to 1.2m, revealing the steep drop down from the garden to the graveyard to be an artificial construction.
It now seems possible that both the ditch and possibly a palisade would have run right along the contour line of the break of the slope, making the defences of the hilltop a much more visible statement of ownership to anyone approaching the settlement.