On Saturday, we are going in completely the opposite direction to last weekend and heading to Shropshire to investigate a Roman fort there.

The landscape is full of different time periods but we're looking for mainly Roman evidence and the possibility of a little Medieval history too.
At the corner of the Roman field is farm that used to be a hall back in the 1200's and was still in use as a hall in the Tudor period.
A quick recce revealed C16th pottery so thats the Tudor box ticked.

The fields are all harvested and are in the process of being drilled.

This is another new permission on a shooting estate and covers quite an area and one which I wrote to about 5 years ago!

​So, fingers crossed, we may find some of that Roman and Medieval evidence just below the surface of the new crop.....

We headed up to Scotland via Edinburgh to a site that may have been an Early Medieval monastic settlement.
Unfortunately, we didn't find any evidence outside the existing farm buildings of any Early Medieval artefacts, or  indeed, any artefacts of note.

There are however some lovely crop marks that now look to be prehistoric.
We're sure that a full excavation will reveal its secrets.

On a brighter note, the chap we are working with (Dr James) had other sites that require investigation.
One of these jumped out as a great contender with super crop marks and further supporting evidence.

We set off for the new destination and arrived 35 minutes later at a church just above the field of interest.
The church itself 'looks' quite modern but actually dates back to at least the C11th.
We tracked down the landowner and had a very informative chat with him.
He agreed to an initial survey and gave us some great intel about the field and the general area.
He also mentioned that other detectorists had been on the field and found some items there.
One of these items was a gold artefact he said dated to the Celtic period so we'll look into that to verify its date and identification.

There is also evidence that the Vikings were here too!

​We'll have a report on this site after we visit it in three weeks time after the crop has been harvested.