At the end of week nine our trenches look like strange rectangular scars in concrete. What follows is borehole sampling and post-excavation analysis and reporting.
Before I say farewell, I need to do one thing.
I had an amazing experience. Rewarding, overwhelming, emotional, exhausting, demanding and educational. But more than anything – it was fun. It was great.
I need to say a very big thank you to everyone.
(This is dangerously looking like an Oscar speech…but I will try to contain myself…and say it clear...)
Thank you to all our volunteers and all our visitors (schools, universities, historical and archaeological societies, ex, current and future archaeologists, youth clubs, councillors, birthday girls and boys…). I am glad you were there; a good chunk of this project was done for you and because of you. I am sorry we had to cancel the last two open days, the rain got the better of the site.
Thank you to Frazer, Joanna and the first-year illustration students from Sheffield Hallam University for doing an amazing street art work on the fencing around the site.
Thank you to our subcontractors who provided plant machines, shoring, welfare units and fencing. To Matt and the lads from Westmoreland and to Owen, Joe and the gang from HB Tunnelling.
Thank you to Chris from SYSS who provided the security (free of charge, just because he likes archaeology!).
Thank you, Sheffield City Council and SYAS (Helen, Simon, Steve, Richard, Andrew and Dinah) for all your support and advice.
Thank you to the Friends of Sheffield Castle and to the University of Sheffield (to Martin and to John for all your advice and for being great, supportive and enthusiastic friends).
A massive thank you to Georgina, Isabelle, Paul and James, the University of Sheffield students who worked with us. I hope you had a good time, I hope we were good teachers.
Thank you to Andy who started all this and who managed the project and supported us throughout, to Ivan who managed the logistics and health and safety and to all my great colleagues at Wessex Archaeology Sheffield office and Wessex Archaeology Salisbury office for being lovely.
Thank you to Liz, Jess, Lizzy, Laura and Jenny for the help with volunteers and for all the post-excavation work that is to come.
Thank you to Pippa and Bob for looking after the editing of blogs (I am sorry for the last-minute ones). To Kitty, Nancy, Rob and Karen for making blogs and videos available to the wider public, to Sam for setting up the booking page, to Patrick for all that jazzy tweeting, to Katy for the media management and to Paul for 3021 photos of the site – thank you.
Thank you, Jack, for flying the drone and flying the flags and for sorting the layout of the trenches.
Ian, thank you for believing in us being able to do the videos, for filming and editing the footage and for putting up with my last minute ‘can we please change this’ ideas.
And a very, very special thank you to Ashley Tuck, Amy Derrick and Sam Birchall who, in 2018, excavated a site in Sheffield, South Yorkshire and who found Sheffield Castle. I am immensely proud of you.
Yes, dear reader, this was team work!
Trenches are backfilled.
(If I don’t see you before, see you here for an update on the post-excavation results).
Over and out.
