XArch Project: Samford Peverell Archaeology Group

The Archaeology Group in Sampford Peverell is part of the Sampford Peverell Society, and has been exploring our unwritten heritage since 2004.

SP1
We started with field walks, and the digging of metre square pits

In both we found flints, (the nearest flint is at Beer,) slag from Iron Age forges, mediaeval pottery and such items as fragments of clay pipe. Having established that our parish has been continuously inhabited since Neolithic times, we turned our attention in three other directions.

Figure 1: Digging a 1m pit in a garden

Aerial photography. Amongst our number is an expert amateur photographer Mr David Curnow, so finding a pilot with his own plane nearby, we sent David up one fine summer evening in August 2006. When we sent his excellent photos to XArch, we found that we had all sorts of interesting things in our parish, including an Iron Age fort Figure 2 and possible barrows in Figure 3.

SP2 Figure 2 (right): Round field is suggestive of an Iron Age hill fort

Figure 3 (left): Three barrows appear in the top right-hand corner of the picture.

(There are more amateur pilots about than you would think possible. We found that the way to get our pilots involved was to play on the fact that they have to get flying hours in maintain their licenses. Flying for a purpose is much more interesting than stooging around the sky).

2. Lee Ditch. In one of the more remote areas of our parish, (a very beautiful place too) there is a deserted farmstead. Its last inhabitant is reputed to have committed suicide in the early 20th century. Initial explorations have laid bare an area of extensive cobbles, (Figure 5) so we feel a more thorough examination will give us a feel for the way subsistence farming ran at a time of great West Country poverty. Sampford is next door to Halbe SP4 rton where Canon Girdlestone unearthed poverty to equal anything found in Ireland at that time, (See W G Hoskins’ entry for Halberton in his “Devon”).

Figure 5: Revealing a cobbled surface at Lee Ditch

This coming winter, weather allowing, we hope to start on a Hedge Survey of the parish.

The XArch project undertook two geophysical surveys with the Sampford Peverell Archaeology Group. The results of these two surveys can be found here:

for East Holelake Farm use this link and for Prison Field this link