Newtown Excavations

*FULLY BOOKED*

Our summer excavation on Newtown Mound is scheduled to run between Monday 7th July and Friday 25th July, 2025. This will be our second excavation in Newtown this year which forms part of our ongoing research into the interpretation of the earlier history of the town. 

Earlier this year we revisited the ‘Curious Earthwork’, or linear bank within the town park, re-investigating and enlarging our 2022 trench. The excavation proved to be quite a challenge in very hot working conditions and we are grateful to our small team of volunteers who helped this year. We managed to retrieve many more bottle seals with the Pryce family coat of arms and other tantalising fragments of pottery dating from as early as the Medieval period (possibly c. 13/14th century). Samples were retrieved from the base of the bank for c.14 carbon dating and we also established that the ditch (which we now believe is defensive and of medieval origin) was at least 2m deep and possibly up to 8m wide!

This summerwe are returning to the Castle Mound to re-open and enlarge our 2022 trench to hopefully reveal further evidence of medieval occupation and the later defensive works of the Civil War. In addition to this we will be opening up a large trench across the adjacent Park with a view to looking for further medieval occupation, possibly the site of the Castle Bailey.

Once again we would like to reach out to you for expressions of interest to come and join us on site and/or to help in the Finds Workshop which will once again be supervised by our finds specialist Sophie Edwards, based at the Oriel Davies adjacent to the site.

We can accommodate 15 volunteers on site per day with an additional 2 volunteers in the Finds Workshops. The workshops will only run on the 16/17th July and 23/24th July. We plan to put together a rota to allow as many people as possible to join us.

Dates

Week 1 – Monday 7th July to Friday 11th

Week 2 – Monday 14th July to Friday 18th

Open Day Saturday 19th July

Week 3 Monday 21st July to Friday 25th

Please note that Saturday July 19th will be an open day as part of the Festival of Archaeology. We will be continuing with the excavations on the Saturday, with the addition of heritage stalls in Newtown Park, with re-enactors, activities and displays. On Friday 25th July will be backfilling the trenches, but if you can spare any time to help us re-instate the site we really do appreciate it. 

If you are keen to join us, please could you complete our volunteer registration form for the event via this link https://forms.office.com/e/sdZEk0sR32