Get off my land.

I was napping, sorry digging, on the plot the other day, when I was startled by the sound of a low flying aircraft overhead. It was that low in fact, it had me running for cover thinking I was in bloody Pearl Harbour!

Luckily I had a brown paper bag in the shed, and after I’d stopped hyperventilating I realised it was on a training run, testing the radar at nearby Staxton Wold RAF Station which is just to the South of us. Night and day these people scan the skies over the North Sea, protecting our territory from those nasty Russians. Don’t they know that they can come over here on ferries now, with visas.

As it happens, just to the North of our allotments (See above photo) I can see an archaeological site where people were doing a similar thing, 4000 years ago. Here there are ancestral burial mounds and massive boundary earthworks, that were meant to send out a clear message to any newcomers, that this was their territory, “Keep Off”.

Now when we first got these plots they were marked out just with pegs by the council, and the first thing everyone did was to put up a fence around theirs, and woe betide anyone who tried to pinch a bit from someone else.

Of course it was to keep those damn rabbits out, wasn’t it ? Well no, I suspect there was a little more going on than that. It was that same vital urge to claim their territory, that’s been going on since those first farmers settled this land.

So I sat back down in my little bit of territory, keeping a wary eye out for any more suicidal kamikaze pilots, and thought, “nowt’s changed much as it”.

Are you digging on my grave ?

It was good to be able to do some digging the other day, and following on from my "Victoria to the Bronze Age" blog, I found some teeth !


No, not somebody’s long lost dentures, but real “tussy pegs”.



Obviously they were animal teeth, which I suspect were from some old sheep that’s probably been buried here when it was a field, many moons ago. But I have to admit it did get me going for a while, and kept a wary eye out for any other signs that I was perhaps digging up someone's resting place.

It reminded me of this little poem which I find quite moving, and yet funny at the same time.

Ah, are you digging on my grave ? by (Thomas Hardy)

"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
--"No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"

"Then who is digging on my grave,
My nearest dearest kin?"
-- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death's gin.'"

"But someone digs upon my grave?
My enemy? -- prodding sly?"
-- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie.

"Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say -- since I have not guessed!"
-- "O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog , who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?"

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave...
Why flashed it not to me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog's fidelity!"

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting place."

From Victoria to the Bronze Age

So who's been here before you ?
As promised earlier, here’s a bit of a diversion from the usual allotment type blog, which you may find interesting, about finds on my plot

Being interested in history and archaeology, I couldn’t help noticing the man made things that turned up as I was digging the plot for the first time. Most of it was just broken 19th and 20th century pottery, glass and clay pipes but there were a couple of earlier items that pushed the history of man’s presence on this piece land even further.

As you know, up to last year this was farmland, that I presume has been cultivated for hundreds of years, being close to a very old and important village and town. So most of the items found, probably came to be here through the activity of spreading night soil on the land. Night soil was the name given contents of household “privies”, from the towns and villages that was collected and sold as manure to farmers, before the days of sewers.

Given that they were basically a hole in the ground into which all sorts of rubbish, as well as sewage, was deposited, it is not surprising that broken bits of household items turn up, and here is a selection of them. Some things were a little more personal, like the little pot lid perhaps from a toy teapot and the opaque class bead possibly from a brooch, at the bottom of the photo.



However, some items will have been dropped by farm workers whilst working the fields, and I’m sure this is how the clay pipe bowls, come to be there. If you’re lucky you may find a bowl with a makers’s mark which can be researched.



Pushing things back even further, there was a piece of 17th century slipware from the English civil war period, aptly nicknamed Mr Kipling ware, and a couple of pieces of Medieval glazed earthenware from around the 15th C .



Now for the surprise!!!
Having studied Archaeology for a short while has enabled me to identify worked pieces of flint, from the many that you find in the soil. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found this piece.



It is not exactly a flint tool but what is known as a core, from which pieces of flint have been knapped (knocked off) to form small tools such as knives and scrapers. You can plainly see where the pieces have been struck off from the main body. As for its age, it was dropped or lost on this site by its owner during the Bronze Age, when flint was still being used, probably around 3500 years ago !

So keep an eye out when you are digging you never know what might turn up, and I’ll keep you posted on anything else I find.

By the way, I would love to hear what any of you have found on your plots or gardens, just post in the comments.