Context One Heritage & Archaeology

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Context One Heritage & Archaeology Context One is a an archaeological contractor and heritage consultancy company based in North Dorset

Weymouth Excavations. Meet the Archaeologists at County Hall.Richard and Tara were behind the finds table today for the ...
14/10/2026

Weymouth Excavations. Meet the Archaeologists at County Hall.

Richard and Tara were behind the finds table today for the first of two lunchtime ‘Meet the Archaeologists’ sessions in the foyer of County Hall, Dorchester on behalf of Dorset Council. Visitors handled a sample of the 26,000+ finds recovered from St Nicholas Street and North Quay, and learnt about the two excavations revealed on either side of the harbour.

It was lovely to see some familiar faces too, with DIG the Street volunteers dropping in to share their own experiences of the dig. Steve Wallis, Senior Archaeologist at Dorset Council, was also on hand to welcome visitors and answer questions.

The foyer display stays up until 23 October, and we will be back next Wednesday, 21 October, for the second session.

So if you didn’t make it today why not pop in and see us next week!

13/10/2026
09/10/2026
09/10/2026
Weymouth Dig 2026. The dig might be over but the work continues...The clink of trowels may have fallen silent but the wo...
02/07/2026

Weymouth Dig 2026. The dig might be over but the work continues...

The clink of trowels may have fallen silent but the work on what we all found is only just starting. Welcome to what we're now calling the Found Station!

Boxes are stacked and will soon be ready to leave our store, bound for specialists who will spend months assessing and analysing what eight weeks of digging turned up.

Several thousand sherds of pottery. A similar number of animal bone fragments. All manner of other finds. Hundreds of context records. Nearly 2,000 photographs. Every one of these represents a question that awaits an answer.

Several talks on the excavation are already pencilled in, with the first preliminary results to be shared in the autumn. Watch this space!

DIG the Street Dorset Council

Weymouth Dig 2026. What We Found When We Kept Digging.The volunteers left us a week ago. The Context One team stayed on ...
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

Address

East Stour
SP85JS

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Thursday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Friday 8:30am - 4:30pm

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+441747839851

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