Category: News (Page 5 of 5)

MAYA is back! After 15 months we had our first session after lockdown on Saturday 3rd July! Our celebratory first session was a walk around Taunton Town Centre to discover the hidden history and archaeology of the town. After welcoming everybody back, we split up into three groups which would follow three different routes around the town. The groups rotated throughout the morning so everyone got chance to explore the town’s hidden history.

Starting at the Castle, we tried to spot what still remained of the Medieval town within the modern buildings and roads. We followed the route of where the walls would have been and discovered where the main entrance into the Medieval town was. We talked about how the town had developed and how things had changed so much over time, including burgage plots off the High Street which had eventually turned into slums, and where the town mill had been with its pond and ducking stool!

We also looked in more details at the area around the Castle, including where the keep and the moat would have been. We talked about how this had changed over time and how the River Tone next to the castle had been bustling docks in the nineteenth century with timber mills, wharfs and warehouses. We ended this part of our journey of discovery at St Mary’s Church where we had great fun spotting gargoyles, angels and other weird and wonderful carvings on the outside of the church.

The final discovery tour explored the area around the Market Square in the town centre where an archaeological excavation in 1974 had uncovered evidence of prehistoric and Medieval occupation. We were able to look at plans from the excavation to see what the archaeologists had recorded. We looked some of the more unusual buildings and talked about how electric trams had once run in the town.

For each different tour we had a photo sheet showing small details on buildings such as carvings and signs and it was fun seeing how many of these we could spot as we explored. But the most exciting part of the day was when Rob who had organised the session told us he had arranged for everyone to have a free ice cream from the stall in the Market Square! This was a special treat to celebrate MAYA starting up again after lockdown! A great big Thank You to Rob for all his hard work organising our first session back and to all our helpers and members for getting MAYA getting up and running again!

For our March session we went on a visit to Dawe’s Twine Works at West Coker, the only surviving rural twine works with its original machinery in England.  We started out with a talk about the history of the twine works and then split into two groups to look around the site.  We saw how spun flax was twisted into twine and then used twine to make our own pieces of rope.  It was fascinating to see the old equipment and machinery being used.

The staff at the twine works then started up the 1927 Shanks diesel engine which powers all the machinery at the works which is all still in perfect working order.  We went upstairs into the huge 100m rope walk and saw how the twine was made on an industrial scale.  We learnt how it was dipped into preservative made from boiled animal guts (!) and had a go at doing this on a much smaller scale but using wall paper paste instead!

One room had a lot of old ledgers and books, cabinets and desks donated by another similar local twine works when it shut down.  Underneath this room was a huge reservoir of water which was used by the original steam engine and also to wash the twine.  We could see down into this through a glass window in the floor.  There was a fake human skeleton down there too which caused a lot of amusement, as did the old outside toilet which had an old shop manikin sitting on it!

This was a really interesting visit to a fascinating site and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.  The twine works volunteers made us feel extremely welcome and for a small donation offered us lunch, drinks and cakes.  A big thank you to Ross, Chris and all the other people who made this such and enjoyable visit.

Our February session was run for us by Sue Coates who is a member of the Spinning Guild and demonstrated how to use spinning equipment through the ages.  Sue started off by showing us Neolithic stick spinning and then went through all the different methods right up to the modern spinning wheel.  Sue then concentrated particularly on Viking spinning methods and she had brought along some beautiful lead spindle whorls dating to Viking times.  She also had an incredible range of genuine and replica spinning equipment and an array of different fleeces too.  She showed us how to card the wool and then spin it using a spindle and spindle whorl.

After the break, we had a go at actually spinning ourselves!  It wasn’t as easy as Sue made it look but some of the MAYANS managed to get the hang of it quite quickly.  We were able to take the spindles and fleece home so we could continue to practice.

A big thank you to Sue for such a different and interesting session.

MAYA started off 2020 in a magical, mystical way as our first session of the year was about Roman Curse Tablets! The session was led for us by Chris Webster, who started out with a PowerPoint presentation all about Roman gods and goddesses… what they looked like, what their special symbols were and what they were the god or goddess of.

After this Chris told us about the mysterious Roman Curse Tablets that are found in temples like the one at Bath. These were written on behalf of someone who had had a crime committed against them, asking a particular god or goddess to wreak vengeance on the person who had wronged them. They were usually inscribed onto thin lead sheets and thrown into the sacred spring.

We then made curse tablets of our own out of coloured card. The MAYANS were very inventive about who they wanted to curse and why! I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of some of our members! We ended this fascinating session with a quiz about Roman gods and goddesses.

A big thank you to Chris for creating such an unusual and interesting start of the year!

MAYA celebrated Christmas Roman style this December! We started out with a PowerPoint presentation about the Roman Festival of Saturnalia which used to take place on 17th -23rd December. We leant about how we could celebrate the Festival at home with appropriate decorations, presents etc.

After this we made special amulets called bullas which Roman children used to wear until they became adults. These were a small pouch that children wore round their necks, and inside they put a special lucky charm. At our MAYA Christmas session we put small wooden Christmas decorations inside that could also be hung on our Christmas trees.

After this we had our usual Christmas party with lots of food, crackers and party poppers, followed by pass the parcel and lucky dip. It’s hard to believe another year has gone by and we have a lot of great sessions planned for 2020! Thank you to everyone who has supported MAYA over the past year and to all our members and helpers for making it so successful and fun!

This month the MAYANS visited the Somerset Rural Life Museum in Glastonbury.  We were taken on a guided tour around the Museum by MAYA volunteer Tash who works there.  We started out looking at the buildings outside and how the original small farmhouse had expanded into the impressive building it is today.  Tash then talked about the Mapstone family who used to live on the farm before it became a museum.

Our tour around the museum included the kitchen and the impressive 14th-century tithe barn.  Other attractions included the museum’s two horses, one made entirely of old farm machinery and equipment, and xxx, a taxidermy stuffed horse who is something of a local celebrity!

As it was so close to Halloween, the museum had a special Pumpkin Trail where we had to find the answers to a series of questions by exploring the museum and collect special stamps on our Trail information sheets.  We ended the tour in the Remembering Gallery with recordings of local people reminiscing about countryside life, accompanied by simple but compelling animated images.

A big thank you to Tash and the staff of the Museum for making us so welcome.

This October Chris Webster from the South West Heritage Trust took the MAYANS on a guided walk along the headland at Brean Down.  This fascinating site includes archaeological remains dating from prehistory up to the Second World War.  We started out by climbing the steep track up to the top of the headland where Bronze Age roundhouses have been found in the sandy cliffs.  At the top we saw remains of WWII activity, including gun platforms and a large concrete arrow which was used to direct planes to their practice ranges.

We then moved on to look at the banks of an Iron Age hillfort, plus eroded Bronze Age round barrows, and then the site of a Roman Temple where the stones of the wall at the corner of the temple could be seen poking out through the grass.  We continued our walk across the low banks of prehistoric field systems and, coming across further gun emplacements from WWII, before finally ending up at the impressive Napoleonic Fort at the end of the headland!

This was a fascinating visit covering an amazing range of archaeological sites and we are extremely grateful to Chris for arranging such a great session!

This month the MAYANS were invited to return to Exeter University’s excavation of the late Roman site at Ipplepen in Devon.  We have visited this site twice before and so it was great to go back and see what new discoveries they had made.  The visit was again made possible by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society’s Gray Fund who very kindly paid for the coach to take us there.  We are extremely grateful to SANHS for giving our new members this wonderful opportunity and our long standing members a chance to build on the skills they learnt last year.

We arrived onsite at about 11.30am and met the members of the Torbay Young Archaeologists Club who are also invited to the dig every year.  It’s always great to get the chance to meet members of another local YAC club.  We also met Professor Steve Rippon who was in charge of the dig and Cat Farnell who was had organised a number of activities for us.

Cat started out with giving us a tour around the site which included Iron Age and Roman enclosures, ditches and roundhouses. We were then divided into four groups, one to start trowelling back the plough soil looking for features and artefacts; the second group to sieve the spoil heap looking for anything the diggers had missed; the third to practice recording and planning the site; and the fourth to look at what finds had been discovered and how they were processed.

It was great to have the chance to visit and work on such an exciting site.  A big thank you to Steve and Cat and all the other team members from Exeter University for inviting us, and for such a fun and interesting day!

MAYA and SANHS joined forces at the beginning of August for a Family Archaeology Day at Taunton Museum.  Special guest was Phil Harding from the Time Team who has been a great supporter of MAYA from the start.  Other guests included Celtic and Viking re-enactors who set up camp in the museum courtyard and in the Learning Room downstairs.

The day included artefact handling and a pottery display, tours of Taunton Castle, make your own Roman bulla amulet, mini archaeological dig, geophysics display and lots more!  There was a steady stream of people throughout the day, including MAYA and SANHS members.  It was great to have Phil there, chatting with everyone and posing for photos and signing autographs.

We were also delighted to meet Del Mason who has raised a significant amount of money for MAYA by auctioning hand knitted figures of members of the Time Team, and who had come all the way from Leicestershire especially for this event!

The day was a great success with a lot of positive feedback from members of the public.  A huge thank you to everyone who helped out!