Back to the East End (Toilet Area)

Well, the wheel pit was really hard work so we headed back to the East end of the mill for some light duties!

Our idea was to clear a good area of floor from the whitewashed "toilet" stones South and also South East into what looked like another room. What we thought would happen is that we would pass through a doorway similar to the one we found in the first room. We didn't!

In fact we found no sign of a wall at all that corresponded with the chunky wall adjacent to the midden. Instead the floor deteriorated in quality (more like a cobbled outside area than an indoor floor), started sloping downwards and then ended abruptly.

At this stage we have no idea what this area is. There were however 3 interesting features chiselled into the stone. (In the picture above, not very clear, is marked points A, B and C)

A.

B.

C.

South Side West End - The Wheel Pit?

On the South side of the first room we excavated (the river side) there's a chunky bit of wall sticking out about a metre towards the river so I started digging down at the intersection of this wall and the main building wall. At the same time Sarah started trying to follow the Mill wall as far as she could in a Westerly direction.

After digging down about 600mm I had found more slag than all the other areas put together then this hole appeared!

It's difficult to describe why one gets excited about this but I certainly did (sad I know), it's probably because there's an expectation that something "not natural" is underneath.

So I dug down further and found more slag, and more and then some more. While certainly not exciting, and actually really hard work to excavate, this does show that the pit I was sinking had once been fresh air and had later been filled by someone for some reason with slag!

While I was doing this Sarah was stealing all the glory by finding this!

An 1870 Victorian penny. Found in the top soil, it tells us little, but was really quite a find. 

The following picture gives a good idea of where we are. Photo taken looking East.

And this picture shows the depth to which I have dug so far.

My theory is that we are digging where the original water wheel was housed and that when the process changed from using water powered bellows to using the reverberating cupola, the wheel became redundant and the big hole that was left was simply filled with slag.

What I'm hoping to do is to dig deeper until I find some sort of stone floor on the bottom of the pit, but it's really hard work and I'm not sure how safe the walls of the trench will be if I widen and lengthen it as I will need to if I'm to get deeper. We'll see! 

Further East along the North Wall

Having found the doorway to the mill we decided to move a few feet further East to where we thought the corner of the mill was. Sarah started excavating here. About 15 feet even further East, past what we believed to be a gap, is a corner of another building; this is where I started digging.

If you watch the short video you'll see what we found.

Bower's Mill North wall excavation.

So, the building is one big one rather than the two as we had previously believed.

The one thing we did find here that I forgot to mention in the video is what we think are parts of floor tiles.

Also when a friend visited the site he found, on the spoil heap, some whitewashed wall plaster.

Is it a Cauldron?

The big chunk of metal we found in the hole in the middle of the floor in the "first room" was all crusty and stones had welded themselves to it with rust, so, we took it home and cleaned it up and this is how it looks:

The next picture, though not very clear, shows the profile of the rim.

....and this picture shows what we think is where a leg joined the cauldron before it was broken off.

...and finally, this is what we think it would have looked similar to:

North Wall Doorway

Moving Easterly along the North wall there was a clear gap that we assumed was a doorway - so we started digging...

There is a good deal of lead slag a few roof tiles, both clay and stone, loads of brick and lots of mortar. The stuff here is much more like building rubble than the other places we've excavated so far.

Anyway, this is what we found....

The door step is substantial; 4 feet wide and chunky! It's well worn being smooth and rounded on the outside and inside edges. It was quite a feeling standing there thinking that probably no one has stood there for 200 years and 250 years ago Joseph Whitfield would have been regularly crossing the threshold during his daily visits to the mill.

Finds from the North West corner of the first room.

While we found loads of stuff within the first room, during the excavation on the outside NW corner we found almost nothing, except, there was masses of lead slag.

This area was really difficult to interpret what was happening; the end (W) wall of the first room was clearly an afterthought. It was badly built and was not linked in to the North wall, so we thought the Noth wall would just carry on in a Westerly direction. It did for about 300mm then stopped.

One thing we did find which was of interest was a big chunk of metal....

As yet we have no idea what it is.

The Hole in the North Wall

In the bank on the North West side of the ruins is visible a wall with a hole in. Clearly this is not just some random hole caused by stones falling out as it is quite regular and has a lintel above it. Our plan was to dig into the hole and also chase the wall left as far as we could. The success was limited; we had to abandon digging out the hole as we feared it may become unstable and there's a massive ash tree in the way. Also the wall pretty much stopped after a few feet. In fact it probably did go further and has collapsed.

 

So, what we did next was to move about 3 metres left and started a trench into the bank hoping to pick up the wall further round (to the South).

Unfortunately this proved to be a waste of time. What we did discover (we think) is that on top of the natural clay there is a grey layer of "stuff" which we think will be some sort of spoil from the industrial process. It contains brick fragments, coal and bits of pink sandstone. On top of this layer is more clay and broken sandstone which we think was probably tipped there when the big pond was excavated. (on the East side of the ruins)

About another 3 metres left (South) of this trench Sarah started scratching about around some stones that looked like they could be a wall. Before long she had found that it was indeed a wall and she started chasing it right (North)

It soon became clear that her wall was heading for my trench and so I started digging down to where it would intercept. This next picture shows what we found....

These 4 stones were perfectly in line and were all pink, showing that they had all been heated to high temperature. The following picture gives a better idea of where they sit in the overall context of the wall.

We have now stopped excavating this area and are awaiting the visit of Lynn Willies who will hopefully be able to make some sense of what is happening here.