The Hemley project: a student-run archaeological dig on the Suffolk coast
By Durham Archaeology Society and Archie Robson
Student groups rarely have the chance to make a real difference to the wider community, one that is not just fun but also rewarding in the long term. Over the years, Durham University’s Archaeology Society has organized field trips, museum visits, and hosted talks from professors, which have been fantastic venues to learn, connect with peers, and think about the discipline from new perspectives. However, chances to build on these flashes of opportunity, and make a lasting contribution to the field, to local communities, and to professional development, are few and far between. This is what makes our new project so exciting: an ambitious, multi-year mission, led by Durham students, to survey and excavate the archaeology of a farm only a few miles away from the world-famous site of Sutton Hoo.
The society has led digs before; a good example being an excavation of the hillfort overlooking the Maiden Castle Sports Centre in the 1950s. However, this is something different. We were contacted by a Durham doctoral student, Erik, on behalf of a farmer, Patrick Bowden-Smith, who manages a farm on the south-east Suffolk coast in the small village of Hemley. Erik and Patrick have previously worked together on a community dig in Scotland, where St Andrews’ University tackled a medieval site on farmland owned by Patrick, over some fifteen years. Long story short, he was keen for a group of Durham students to investigate the archaeology of his Suffolk plot.
An ambitious, multi-year mission, led by Durham students
Patrick has a lifelong passion for the past, having taught Landscape History at St Andrews for many years. As a farmer, he is particularly interested in how the landscape was used over the centuries, and in the material connections between Suffolk and the wider world. The farm is under severe pressure from climate change, with stormy weather and rising salt-water levels making acres of land impossible to farm in the last five years; making archaeological work a race against time. His interest makes this a unique partnership between a student group and a working farm and helps to challenge the negative stereotype of farmers being pitted against archaeologists.
So, what do we know about the farm? Scatters of stone tools in the wider area give us glimpses into the lives of the earliest humans to settle East Anglia, through to Neolithic monument-builders and Iron Age craftspeople. The Romans left their stamp on the landscape with forts, villas and field systems, leaving coins and fragments of pottery for us to piece together. The region was home to the Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, whose early elites were buried at Sutton Hoo. In later centuries, the village of Hemley was part of an important medieval port called Goseford, which historians have shown was a major trading hub, bringing in French wine and Belgian wool. In the Domesday Book, the lost villages of Guthestuna and Struestuna are mentioned close to the modern farm, of which nothing are known. Today all that remains is a handful of farm buildings, a few cottages, and a parish church.
This potted history has many gaps, which we hope to answer. Surveys and construction projects in recent years have discovered artefacts which give clues as to the land’s importance before the medieval port, yet these are only pieces of a much larger puzzle. Patrick has found artefacts in ploughed fields which span thousands of years, but their context has been lost. There are wooden structures across the saltmarsh area of the farm, many of which have only recently been re-exposed after storms and erosion, along with traces of medieval sea walls.
The view from the coast of High House Farm, Hemley, looking out into the saltmarsh where wooden structures and prehistoric flints have all been reported.
Our project began last spring, and since then a crack team of volunteers have delved the archives to identify what we could target. We undertook two site visits to get a feel for the landscape, scout out promising archaeology, and chat with Patrick about what he would like to investigate. On the second site visit in October, we dug a little into a creek on the marsh edge where prehistoric flint tools had been found, embarked on a boat trip across the river Deben (which Hemley faces) to get a sense of the maritime heritage of the farm, and spoke to a saltmarsh ecology specialist to see how our project about the past could benefit the future. We followed this by visiting the Suffolk Archaeology and Suffolk County Council archives, working with local heritage authorities to explore every record we could about Hemley’s history.
A platform for anyone to develop their skills and make friends along the way
This year we’re focusing on the pre-historic archaeology of the farm, together with an effort to document the changing landscape. We’ve received a generous grant from the Royal Archaeological Institute to do exactly this, through surveying, coring, digging and recording. Just before Easter Term starts, we’re hoping to field-walk an area to find flint tools and pottery and run a drone survey to capture the landscape and the newly exposed wooden structures. In the summer, likely in late July and August, our aim is to follow this up with test-pits, cores, and a geophysical survey over a possible prehistoric enclosure. None of this would be possible without the enthusiastic support of Durham’s Archaeology Department, Suffolk-based archaeologists and historians, our volunteers, and the farmer Patrick Bowden-Smith.
If you’d like to be a part of this project, drop by in term-time on Mondays at 6.30pm, where you get stuck in with developing our research and outreach. We have a mailing list to keep you in the loop, and our email at hemleyproject@duarchaeologysociety.org is yours to fire away any burning questions you might have. This project is for everyone – for undergraduates and postgraduates, for archaeologists and non-archaeologists – and we want it to be a platform for anyone to develop their skills and make friends along the way.
It’s not a degree, or a part-time job, but something that we hope will last much longer and inspire people for years to come.
Image Credits: Archie Robson and Tom Buckton
