Parishioners and admirers may have noticed yet more holes being dug in the old school playground, and neatly filled in again. All of that was the engineers wanting to know exactly what is going on below ground, so they can plan the foundations without interfering in the drains, or plan drains without interfering in existing foundations, and they can be sure it all rests on a firm foundation so we don't have embarassing collapses and subsidies in fifty years' time.
So now we know exactly what's down there. The "gravel terrace" remains neatly at 1.2 metres below surface, except for that mysterious round hole which the archaeologists identified last summer, and which we thought might be a Bronze-Age burial pit. We now know it's 4.5 metres deep, and therefore certainly not a B.A. burial pit - it must be a post-mediaeval well. Oh, well. We did find the footings for an old garden wall, running just beside the church wall, which must have been recycled as the back wall of the cottages which stood where the playground now is. At the top is the old wall, crumbling, beside the church wall.
Here is the foundation-laying ceremony in 1873. The cottages are on the left, the brick wall visible behind the crowds. Oscar Wilde is lounging on the scaffolding in the foreground; Bishop Ullathorne is the one in the mitre in the middle.
