Magazine


Joining the people who dig history

by Conrad Astley
7/ 7/2005

I HAD assumed working on an archaeological dig involved crouching on the ground for hours, meticulously brushing aside millimetres of dirt to see if any Roman coins lurked in the gravel.

But as I found after heading down to an unlikely-looking site in Northenden, the image I had from TV's Time Team was far from accurate.

I had come to the spot in a car park by the River Mersey to look at the Dig Manchester project, in which volunteers are given the opportunity to have a go at raking up the city's past.

Experts from Manchester University were leading the project, in which an old mill was being uncovered.

As with Time Team, they were given just a few weeks to find out what lay beneath the Tarmac, before the findings were carefully logged, the earth they had spent hours removing put back into the ground, and the whole site covered over once more.

I arrived towards the end of the month-long dig, but was surprised by the progress that had been made.

An army of volunteers had carved their way about 9ft into the ground, and the old building's remains could easily be seen.

Victorian brick walls, looking in surprisingly good shape, were proudly sticking out of the soil in places, while in others the volunteers had got down to the paving slabs that made up the floors of rooms.

Organisers wasted no time in giving me the tools I needed to get on with the job.

But instead of the tiny trowel and brush I had been hoping for, a heavy duty spade was thrust into my hand. When they call this a dig, they're not joking.

I was placed with a veteran volunteer who had been involved in similar events for decades, and was cutting away at the soil where an archway - once forming the area around a mill wheel - was beginning to emerge.

The soil had been dug out into step formations, and as he attacked the earth several feet beneath me, I passed it back up to a wheelbarrow before carting it to the top of the huge mound nearby.

After several visits, I begun to feel slightly frustrated, realising the soil I was toiling to remove from the hole would be put back in just a few weeks.

This hard labour wasn't quite what I'd had in mind, but it was fascinating to watch the wheel arch slowly emerge further from the ground as more earth was removed around it.

As I wiped the sweat from my forehead, the dig's leader Simon Askew told me this was what archaeology was all about, and his favourite tool was not a tiny trowel but a large machine used for breaking Tarmac.

He showed me old drawings of how the mill used to look, pointing out the areas where I had been digging.

Although the building we were looking at was Victorian, and had remained derelict before being covered over in the 60s, there had been a mill there since the 12th century, and Simon pointed out a huge wooden beam he believed was part of the original medieval structure.

He even showed me a map, made just before the English Civil War, showing the building's exact location.

And as well as having been a grain mill, he was convinced it had later contained a separate turbine for generating electricity - the first of its kind nearby.

He pointed out a shaft opening which was protruding from the ground, where he thought the turbine had been, and said he was preparing to venture down wearing a safety harness - strictly a job for the experts.

Just a few weeks earlier, nobody apart from Simon and his colleagues would have had a clue such a fascinating piece of history lay beneath a Northenden car park.

But very soon, the whole thing will be covered over once again, and motorists will park there without any idea of what lies just beneath their feet.

The site, off Mill Lane, is open to the public from noon-5pm on Saturday and Sunday. Another community dig will be held at Moston Hall from July 25 until August 19.

Anyone wanting to get involved should call 275 2314 or e-mail simon.d.askew@manchester.ac.uk.


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