Excavation

Date 15 June 2013 - 5 July 2013

Event ID 994236

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/994236

NO 01905 14490 Three trenches were excavated, 15 June – 5 July 2013, along Kirk Wynd outside the N and W boundary wall of St Serf’s Parish Church to find evidence of the suspected early medieval origins of the site. This area was formerly the site of a 20th-century Scout Hut, and before this, the village midden and outbuildings or sheds visible on the 1st Edition OS map. The churchyard wall in this area encloses the late 19th-century graveyard extension.

Trench 04 was a narrow slot along the N face of this wall, adjacent to the findspot of a fragment of early medieval cross slab found by SERF excavations in 2012. This trench revealed that the churchyard wall had been rebuilt at least twice on the same alignment, and the lowest courses consisted of coursed dry stone boulders with smaller pinning stones in the interstices. These lower courses abutted a series of linear arrangements of boulders set at right angles to the wall, which seem to represent the footings of early modern structures similar to those found in 2012. These structures and the churchyard wall foundations rested on a layer of rich garden soils containing abraded fragments of medieval ceramic including redwares and Scottish White Gritty Ware. Sealed by this layer was a massive N–S wall of unmortared sandstone blocks up to 0.75m wide and 0.86m long, standing up to three courses high (0.8m) and resting directly on bedrock. This was backed to the W by a layer of rubble and clay with larger blocks of sandstone probably representing the slighted remains of the massive wall. To the E, facing toward the Dunning Burn, was a layer of loose river gravel containing occasional fragments of gritty ware ceramic. The wall would appear to be a revetment against the floodwaters of the Dunning Burn.

Trench 05 to the E towards the Dunning Burn revealed a shallow stratigraphy beneath the Victorian midden layer. Spreads of coal and fence posts seem to relate to the outbuildings depicted in this area on 19th-century maps. Sealed by the midden layer were sterile river gravels, shallow spreads of medieval cultivation soils, and the heavily truncated corner of a dry stone structure similar to those seen in Trench 04.

Trench 06 was a narrow evaluation trench running from the churchyard wall to the Dunning Burn, exposing the modern embankment of the river and the artificial raising of ground in this area. Trial trenching also continued in the back garden of Castle Cottage to locate the supposed 8th-century monastic vallum ditch discovered in Dunning Primary School in 2008. Two test pits and a longer slot trench confirmed the position of a large cut feature in line with the supposed vallum, but this could not be fully excavated.

Archive: University of Glasgow and RCAHMS (intended)

Funder: Historic Scotland

Adrián Maldonado, University of Glasgow, 2013

(Source: DES)