Silchester 2004

My first season was by far my best experience at Silchester for many reasons. It was great to be out in the field with my fellow 1st years and to actually get to meet them for the first time properly outside of lectures in a more informal setting.

This was also my (and a lot of their) first experience of an excavation and due to the material culture richness and functional setting of the site, it was an absolute pleasure to work on. The staff were fantastic, the site worked well on and off the dig - the cohesion was brilliant.

The UK weather, as anywhere in the British Isles, is another matter altogether...

I had started in the last four weeks of 2004 to do my 2 weeks compulsory (with 2 weeks on top of this because I wanted to gain experience) and the weather was gorgeous. I remember driving in (eventually) on one of those lucky occasions that the first time you get to see Insula IX and the campsite is in glorious sunshine.

As many of us know, though, the summer storms at Silchester are incredible and often destructive - never have I desired more walls that did not move when the wind blows and a space to dry out sopping wet clothing than after a season at Silchester!

The fifth week of the 2005 season saw a significant downturn in the weather, building to a rather peaceful-starting Thursday. The clouds gathered, the wind picked up and the temperature cooled. The clouds swirled around the low-lying hilltop that we called home and work and closed in.

I was on the spoil heap next to the south-east area and looked across the field to see the long grass move in a slowly approaching wave, a wave that I thought first to be the blades bending uniformly in the wind but then to determine that the darker, wetter colour was due to a wall of heavy rain moving in. I have seen before and since 'fat rain' but never in such an exposed location.

Site was abandoned and I scurried back to where Tim Ivil and I had been planning. As delicately as possibly he and I ripped up our planning equipment (a decision made for us by the previous weeks of being reminded to tidy up our tools). Tim carried soaked permatrace and a tangle of string and nails, I hoisted aloft a planning frame, we made our way off site.

We hadn't noticed the ferocity now of what could only be called a storm but the first flash of lightning and the almost immediate retort of thunder should have informed us, by the second (as we delicately picked our way through a 'safe' track between features) it had fallen to Duncan Sayer to inform us of our folly.

"What are you doing?!"

"Packing up!"

"Leave the frame before you get struck by-"

Queue flash of lightning.

Very indelicately we dropped our equipment and ran for the Finds hut, which Tim noted shortly after entering was also made of metal....

Aside from this I have a fond memory of forming a HI! on the campsite during backfill with people to say hello to Dan Wheeler and Nick Pankhurst as they flew over site in 2006.

Mike Shaw

Silchester TownLifer 2004