Our second trip out this season saw Rob and I checking out two permissions in two days, JHF1 & MC whilst stopping over in this ancient market town. I must say, the Indian restaurant we tried was excellent!

This happened by chance as the first permission went well until the second day when we found that the OSR and wheat stubble fields were just too challenging to detect and fieldwalk.
Luckily a nearby permission MC was a possibility and of which we hadn't visited since 13th March 2016  and thought we'd get an update on a potato field that's been planted and was due for harvesting in October.

Back to the first permission JHF1, we looked at a disked wheat stubble field that has a Medieval village on it but didn't find a huge amount, just a Tudor dress hook and a Medieval strapend and Medieval pottery.
The next field was a newly rolled field that has a DMV at one end and a Roman shrine at the other.
The decision was to look at the Roman shrine site.  Sure enough more Roman coinage emerged and pottery, mainly grey ware.
Twenty-three Roman coins were recovered some of them in superb condition.
The main fields we are interested in have yet to be harvested, one has another DMV, one has a market and the other has several Roman shrine sites. These fields will be done in the next two weeks. 

Anyway, we dropped in to the next permission, MC. 
We arrived to find that the potato field was still in crop as expected.... but to our surprise the field next door (80 acres) had been harvested, ploughed and drilled with OSR and it was as flat as a pancake! 

The first signal was a LEAD Celtic toggle fastener! Something we'd never seen before. The next signal was a superb Celtic woad grinder.
Ten Roman coins were recovered, one being a silvered coin of Gallienus 160 AD and pair of coins fused together so there may be a hoard nearby.

The sun got the better of us and we decided to go for a beer and fish & chips at the brill chippy in the village.
We reflected on the past couple of days and agreed that it was worth the stop-over.

After a very short interlude we were invited to explore a brand new permission to kick off the new 2016 - 2017 season.
This permission came under the PAST radar in May 2015 and permission was sought and granted in August of that year.

The weather was quite good and kept cool with the constant breeze.
Our intelligence hinted that the area had a Roman camp in the vicinity as well as other enclosures and possible habitation.
Unfortunately the fields under scrutiny were OSR! This proved to be quite a challenge and something Rob and I are not used to as a majority of our permissions are surveyed whilst newly drilled.

The first recovery was a tiny fragment of a Roman fibula in the form of the catch plate end of a brooch. The next find was a Roman bronze coin followed by a second Roman coin. A base sherd of Samian Ware was the next piece of Roman history to come to light.
A third Roman coin found and was a sestertius, possibly of Vespasian with a fourth coin soon after that was quite corroded.

Our verdict was that the field was possibly used as a temporary Roman camp in the first and fourth centuries.

We finished the day earlier than planned and reflected on the days' findings on the way home. Also on the agenda was our next move for the following weekend with a few options that may be available to us. This was due to the very wet winter resulting in the team missing at least TEN outings!

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