7235/19755
There are no rules to stone clearing, that’s the first rule of stone clearing. But the second rule is that you should only clear stones from your chosen field. But rules that aren’t rules are made to be broken and I clear stones wherever I may be, for I am the Lord of the Stony Sea. Today on my dog walk round a different field - the one you will be aware of if you are a badger and know about the fecret field - and as it’s just been harvested I allowed myself a Hasselhoff and came across something a little bit interesting. It wasn’t a stone, so it wasn’t that interesting, but it was not organic so it still needed clearing. It was a large, heavy brick that looked handmade and was full of impurities and no dimple in the top and was thus probably decades or centuries old. Like the woman who just had a feeling that Richard III was under a car park, I have a feeling that there used to be a huge Roman villa on this field, that I will one day discover. I have no evidence at all for this, but archaeology is more about feelings that evidence. I’ve checked aerial photos and there’s nothing to see (whereas there are some interesting circles on my actual stone clearing field), but maybe the Romans hit all evidence of this villa because they knew that people would one day come looking at it from the sky.
Might this brick be Roman? I tried to google Roman bricks, but couldn’t find anything where they just showed you individual bricks. So, despite knowing that it would lead to me getting hundreds of “funny” tweets where people said it was from 1983 or made last week or some such (barely a joke at all, but still one that most people went for) I gave it a go. Amongst the chaff there were a few sensible suggestions and possibilities ranging from 1700s to 1920, which matched up with my own vague guess.Plus a couple of brickies who doubted that it was a brick at all. I don't know what it was if it wasn't a brick, but brickies know bricks. Maybe not really old ones.
But Twitter being what it is - mostly a sewer exclusively full of diarrhoea, where even the regular turds are taken out, because they are not shitty enough for the users, but peppered with chunks of gold - my request did get to a few experts and James Wright, a buildings archaeologist who has worked on Time Team and specialises in bricks who got in touch to ask me where I found it and what the dimensions were. The brick was already on a cairn - even if I find actual treasure on any field, my job is to simply clear it to the side. Rule two of stone clearing is that all cleared artefacts must remain on the perimeter of the field they came from. And I never break rules under any circumstances. So on the last dog walk of the day I went back with a tape measure and ascertained that it was 2 and a half inches thick, 4 inches wide and somewhere between 8 and a half and 9 inches long (the end was damaged but it seemed likely that it wasn’t much longer than that). I also told James via DM where I’d found it. He said "I'd estimate it to be mid-later 18th century based on manufacture, dimensions and form. Its this period when brick ceases to be an elite material and becomes wildly common as a building fabric in England.”
What an absolute delight.
I thought it was unlikely there had been a building on this farm land as recently as that, and James’ search of maps confirmed that there was nothing near there in 1840 which was the earliest online map. So the mystery of where this brick comes from remains. But what fun to have had done my own mini and slightly boring Time Team. If anyone wants the brick, I know where it is and will sell it to the highest bidder. Though obviously you’re not allowed to take it off the field, but you can come and look at it whenever you like and know that it’s yours.
Will let you know when I find the Roman villa and have set up a tourist attraction. If anyone is interested in paying to see loads of rusty broken bits that have come off various ploughs and farming equipment then we can set up a museum already. There’s loads on this field.
