Author: Admin (Page 1 of 17)

A few pictures from our recent trip to Brean Down with the National Trust!

For our May session we visited Fyne Court on the Quantock Hills which was once the site of a Georgian mansion and landscaped gardens.  The house was destroyed by fire in the 19^th century and the traditional garden has been largely lost.  Our job was to read the clues left behind in the landscape to try and find out what the site had been like in the past.

We had been invited along by Cat Lodge and Jess Midgley from the National Trust who now own the site.  We started out by looking at lots of maps of the area, including tithe maps and old Ordnance Survey maps right up to modern day LiDAR.  We compared the maps to see what had changed over the years.

After this we ventured out into the grounds and surrounding fields to look for clues about what the gardens and landscape had looked like in the past.  We quickly realised that the house had been under the lawn just outside, now full of deckchairs and picnickers!

As we explored further afield we found a ha-ha which was constructed to stop cattle getting into the formal gardens.  We also found stone pillars which had once supported a bridge along a footpath where the occupants of the mansion had walked to church.  We ended up in a beautiful buttercup filled field where we spotted a rectangular bank forming some sort of enclosure, which was probably part of a Deserted Medieval Village.

After this we walked to the site of the old walled garden where fruit and vegetables to feed the owners of the mansion would have been grown.

It was a lovely sunny day, perfect for a bit of landscape detective work. A big thank you to Cat and Jess for inviting us and for such an interesting day!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since we first launched MAYA back in April 2016! We wanted to go somewhere really special to celebrate, so where better than Avalon Archaeology Park where we have had so many amazing sessions over the years.

The session was run for us by Marc Cox who manages the Park. He had prepared two great activities for us – painting the Iron Age round house using authentic methods, and woodworking with Neolithic and Bronze Age axes.

We started out making the paint for the round house by mixing different colours of ground ochre with egg yolk and milk curds. We then made our own paint brushes from willow and horse hair. Mark had sketched out a design on the outside of the round house for us to decorate. Half the group did this while the others had a tour around the rest of the Archaeology Park, looking at the amazing Roman dining room and Saxon Long Hall. We then swapped over so everyone could take part in all activities.

After this we stopped to celebrate our 10th anniversary with a special celebration cake! A big thank you to Pam for making this for us.

For the last activity Marc handed round a variety of flint, copper and bronze axes. We then took it in turns to use the copper axe to chop a silver birch tree trunk in half. Marc explained that this method would have been used to construct the prehistoric wooden trackways found across the Somerset Levels.

A big thank you to Marc for organising such a fantastic session for our special celebration and to everyone else who has supported MAYA over the past ten years!

We were back in the Museum of Somerset this month for a session which was all about a very special object in the museum’s collection – the Cheddar Brooch.  This unique item is over a thousand years old and is one of the most important objects every discovered in Somerset.

The session was led for us by Dan Broadbent who talked about the history of the brooch and how it was found by a metal detectorist.  It is decorated with intertwining animals and plants, including different types of dragons.  After conservation the brooch has been put on display in the museum.

After Dan’s talk we split up into groups.  One group went to visit the brooch in the museum and the others made replicas of the brooch out of gold and silver card.  We were also lucky enough to be visited by Nessie, a re-enactor who brought along Saxon artefacts, weapons, clothing and other objects for us to look at.  The groups rotated so we could all get chance to do all the activities.

At the end of the session Dan told us some Saxon tales and legends which included dragons like the ones on the brooch.

A big thank you to Dan and Nessie for coming along to give us such a fascinating session!