Hello 2021 - we're back!

The top-soil has been stripped back, the trowels readied and the hand-sanitiser bottled. The amazing medieval archaeology is peaking out at us, and everyone's excitement is brewing - tomorrow sees the start of DUACE21. We're back. More of Auckland Castle's mysteries are about to be uncovered.

But where are we digging? And what do we hope to find?

This year we're looking at two locations - both picking up our unfinished business from 2018. One trench is right next to the Castle's main driveway, the Broadwalk, and here we're looking for what could be one of the earliest buildings on site. We discovered half of it in 2018, but it evaded us under the nineteenth century Wyatt Screen, so this year we're back to see if we can identify the rest of it, and particularly any evidence for how old it is or what it might have been constructed and used for. There's already lots of walls poking out of the ground for our student team to look at, which will hopefully begin to answer these questions.

The illusive building in 2018 vanishing under the Wyatt Screen

Our other trench is between the old Scotland Wing and the Castle's new extension, where we're searching for the final piece of the puzzle of Bishop Bek's amazing two-storey fourteenth-century chapel. We're seeing some beautiful carved, in situ pieces of this wonderful structure already, so will hopefully be able to cast more light on it's interior, confirming (or very probably challenging) our interpretations from the several previous excavations of the chapel.

All the bits of Bek's Chapel we've already dug - the big gap along the 'extrapolated line of north wall' is where we're targeting this year

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