THE CANEWDON PROJECT

The Canewdon Project is foreseen as a long-term, multi-period, multi-disciplinary exercise. The project’s main objectives are:

• To identify patterns of human settlement within the Parish of Canewdon.
• To determine the foundation of the village of Canewdon and record its development from its origins to the present day.

The methodology for this involves fieldwalking, surveying streets and boundaries, and digging a series of one-metre square test pits in any available areas within the village, such as gardens and verges.

We launched our series of test pits at the local primary school, where the children helped us to dig three test pits in the school field. The children were a joy to work with – well-behaved and enthusiastic, even when the ground was hard and the finds few, and they were particularly good at spotting changes in soil colour.

We were able to spend several weeks working in the grounds of the vicarage before it was sold at auction in September. During that time, we undertook auger core sampling across the ‘moat’, carried out resistivity testing on the lawn and dug a total of five test pits, where we found artefacts dating back to the Roman period.

Digging in the Vicarage Garden (photo by Lewis Fitzpatrick)

The residents of Canewdon have shown a great deal of enthusiasm for our work within the village, and many are keen for us to dig in their garden. Our team of test-pitters are not just concerned with collecting evidence of ancient changes in land use; they also record evidence from the more recent past. One of the test pits undertaken in 2004, for example, was close to the site of the old village hall, and although no evidence of its existence now remains above ground, we found artefacts that are, almost certainly, remnants of the days when it acted as the social centre of the village - the top of a large, brown beer bottle with a screw-type stopper, and pieces of a 78rpm record. In the deeper layers of the same test pit we recovered medieval and post-medieval pottery and a quantity of clay tobacco pipe, presumably from the time when the site formed part of an arable field.

In May 2005, RHFAG was invited to undertake a resistivity survey in the churchyard of St. Nicholas' Church to locate the foundations of a vestry which once stood to the north of the chancel. The results (below) show the outline of the vestry quite clearly.

The resistivity results showing the outline of the demolished vestry

None of the above fieldwork would have been possible without the help and co-operation of the people of Canewdon, and we sincerely thank them for their enthusiasm and encouragement.