With only a very brief little shower this afternoon, we had a great day for archaeology in the 'Boro. The front wall of the church is shaping up nicely with a lot of hard work by the crew.

The brick feature in the yard directly in front of the church is only partially preserved and remains something of a mystery (see photo below). It seems to be a remnant of a brick pathway or small "patio" area - but when it was constructed is uncertain. At this point, we don't believe it dates to the period of the construction of the church. The low quality of the work in the pathway/patio (broken bricks pieced together) doesn't compare well with the extremely high quality work evidenced in the church itself. While it would have been functional as a pathway or patio, it certainly wouldn't have been very "pretty" compared to the church. In addition, a feature we think does relate directly to the church -- either a pillar base or posthole -- extends "under" the bricks. If forced to hazard a guess at this point, I would suggest that it is a feature added by soldiers during the Civil War.

Work continued today towards full exposure of the north foundation walls. The two images below show "before" and "after" of the same excavation unit -- the arrows are pointing at approximately the same point on both images. The image on the left ("before") is from June 16 showing how the foundation trench appeared last week. The image on the right ("after") is after excavation -- a number of the stones in the upper courses were missing, but the lower courses were preserved. What a difference three days can make!

Work continued on the "belltower foundation question" today as well. The first photo following is from June 9 and shows the "brick wall collapse" cleaned up just inside the north wall foundation.

When we started removing the brick rubble today, it turned out not to be just a shallow scatter of demolition debris. As you can see in the photo of the same area below, we have discovered what appears to be a small cellar (about 4 feet wide and an as yet undetermined length and depth). The cellar is completely filled with rubble from the demolition of the church during the Civil War. We have already removed a pickup truck load of brick rubble (including 12 whole bricks), several hundred pounds of limestone blocks tumbled into the pit, many pounds of wall plaster and mortar, and lots of nails and window glass. At least four courses of limestone blocks are already exposed in this excavation area.

If the weather predictions hold true -- the strangely wet few weeks of weather we have experienced to date are over. Friday promises to be a good day for work -- check back with us tomorrow to see what else is happening!