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XArch Project: Brayford Community Archaeology Project

Brayford is a sparsely populated parish on the south west edge of Exmoor National Park. Until the 20th.century it was mainly populated by farmsteads and their associated agricultural workers. Now the number of agricultural workers has reduced significantly and they have been partly replaced by retired persons. The population of 900 during the 19th. C. has reduced to 374 in 1998.

During the last 12 years evidence has slowly been unravelling, of a large Romano Iron industry in the parish. Acres of iron slag heaps have been recognised from what locals previously believed to be natural stone. The discovery has been made more intriguing, because while the area has for a long time has been recognised for its late Celtic occupation, the Roman invasion activities, were thought to have been isolated to two lookout fort-lets on the coast of North Devon.
Seven Archaeology digs have confirmed the industrial activity, and have yielded over 2,000 Romano pottery sherds, but as yet no evidence of associated settlement has been found.

The community project hopes to provide Roman settlement evidence.  

The smelting and associated processes would have produced a lot of smoke pollution in the base of the Brayford steep sided coomb’s. Some of the smoke would have had a lead content, and it seems likely that settlement would have been located some distance away from the 24 Hour operation.

A search for earthworks and a review of aerial photography has not shown any likely sites. However a Geophysical Survey carried out for a planning application at the local Quarry did suggest an Iron Age hillside multivallate enclosure. As this type of site was frequently in use into the Romano period this was thought worthy of further investigation. In 2006 the Community group excavated the outer ditch and found the ditch had been back filled with a carbon rich matrix containing 1st -2nd. Centaury Romano-British pottery sherds.
 
The Community Project Group then carried out further Geophysical surveys using a Resistivity Meter, which included an area to the north of the enclosure. The results revealed more features within the enclosure and a number of low resistance linear features running in a North-West/South–East Direction north of the enclosure. XArch then carried out a gradiometer survey of the north field and this showed an intermittent linear feature that coincided with one of the resistivity survey features

   Our Celtic chieftain tries his hand with the
    XARCH Gradiometer.

Follow this link to see the results from the resitivity survey and an artists interpretation of what the site may have looked like.

As part of their community work Brayford Community Archaeology Group hosted an eventful Roman Fun Day

Brayford Community Excavation April 2008