07/06/2026
Weymouth Dig 2026. What We Found When We Kept Digging.
The volunteers left us a week ago. The Context One team stayed on for some final recording but the archaeology had other ideas!
What we thought was natural sand beneath the medieval walls turned out to be a deliberate levelling layer, around 100mm thick, sitting on top of something older. Beneath it, a thin burnt surface. Patches of red and black. Fragments of cooking pot still embedded in the floor. A roughly circular ferrous stain that may mark the seat of a fire. This appears to be the floor of an earlier building, and it's the earliest trace of activity we've found on the site.
The sequence that followed is becoming clearer, though our interpretation of it is still evolving. The thick wall along the northern frontage appears to have been cut through the levelling layer after the earlier building went out of use. A side wall followed. Then an enormous cut for the well, which may have destabilised the corner of the main wall. Large stones were thrown into the backfill of the well to reinforce it. Possible buttresses were added against the northern wall. A further wall was built along the western side, possibly an outshot covering the well.
What we're now looking at may not be three separate properties along the frontage after all. It could instead be a single building running parallel with St Nicholas Street, possibly a merchant's house covering three plots. The pottery associated with all these elements still points to a 13th and 14th century date. A modest dwelling at first, perhaps, followed promptly by something considerably larger and better appointed as the town grew quickly.
DIG the Street Dorset Council
