Survey of Basing House Day One

The great thing about this time of the year is the start of the survey season for the second and third year students and postgraduates at the University of Southampton. Every year Tim Sly, Dominic Barker and other members of staff take the students on two weeks of survey in Hampshire. This year we are taking them to Basing House, a fantastic site, crammed with Iron Age, Roman, medieval and post-medieval (civil war in particular) archaeology, on a new project run by Nicole and Gareth Beale, postgraduates at the university.

Canon on the earthworks of Basing House, pointing menacingly towards the spires and high-rises of modern Basingstoke - this one really needs a caption competition

Canon on the earthworks of Basing House, pointing menacingly towards the spires and high-rises of modern Basingstoke – this one really needs a caption competition

This week the students will be doing total station and GPS survey at the site, with some resistivity. The excitement of more geophysics is still to come, with the third year students in the second week of April. However yesterday work commenced and seemed to run smoothly, with the students getting to  grips with setting up and surveying with total stations, including some pretty snazzie new Leicas.

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Team surveying within the inner bailey of Old Basing House

The first full day of survey is today (after orientation and work starting yesterday) so will hopefully be posting up new images and news as it happens. Also please visit Gareth and Nicole’s blog at basinghousecat.wordpress.com for further details of the project and day to day accounts of the work now, and on excavation in the summer.