2023 turned out to be an exception year at Bridge Farm.

For a start we only lost half a day to rain. There was a lot of cleaning back of the trench surface as we tried to see features in plan before excavating. Whilst this can seem tedious it eventually reaps rewards, like the 6 postholes forming 2 sides of a rectangle, as well as defining blurs of darker soil into separate pits with clear edges that can then be excavated. We resolved not to start excavating any feature that would not be complete in this season and by and large this worked, although some of our BF22 features are still frustrating our resolve mainly due to their extreme depth. One of these (F48B) started to reveal a timber structure below the water table which looks very like a lined well. This had to be left as the timbers ran into the ground which will necessitate major excavation works to investigate safely and some hard thinking over winter as to whether the gain in knowledge will be worth the effort in 2024.

Several other pits were half sectioned and left after recording with no gain from removing the remaining half. A curious surface find was the 160+ nails scattered at the mid-east end of the trench. These were individually marked with plant labels until they could be recorded in plan in case a pattern emerged.

The finds team had an interesting year under the supervision of Nancy and Julia which included some pottery reconstruction works and some skilful photography by Mike. It was a great year for finds with several whole or nearly whole pots being recovered plus more decorated Samian sherds, including our first piece of erotica. The star find however must be the green intaglio, still awaiting specialist analysis.

We were once more joined by the Canterbury Christ Church undergrads to undertake the practical element of their degree course and were also lucky to have two post-grads, Rich and Blake joining with Andy in site supervision and recording.

As always there is a busy winter ahead, working through the gathered data, drafting summaries and articles, before getting down to planning next year’s season; which is said by Rob to be the last in the present trench.

Thanks to all our volunteers, students, CCCU staff and the regular CAP team members who made this such an enjoyable and productive season.

DHM 22/07/23