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Hanley Swan Excavation

The Worcestershire Young Archaeologists Club carried out an excavation at Hanley Swan near Malvern in November 2006.  npower gave us a grant with which to buy excavation equipment including trowels and buckets, and staff from the Worcestershire Historic Environment and Archaeology Service came along and taught the YACs about excavation and recording techniques.   

Documentary evidence tells us that Hanley Swan was the centre of a major pottery manufacturing industry during the Medieval period but no one has ever found the place where the pottery was made and fired.  Large quantities of Medieval pottery have been dug up in the back garden of a 17^th century (or earlier) Listed farmhouse over the last few years.  This pottery included a number of ‘wasters’ (poorly fired pots that were thrown away), suggesting that the kiln site could be located here. 

On the 4^th and 5^th November 25 of our members, armed with our new trowels, excavated a series of testpits in the garden of the farmhouse in an attempt to find the Medieval kilns.  Sadly we didn’t find them during the excavation, but we did find some 15^th century pits confirming that there was activity on the site during the Medieval and early post-Medieval periods.  The YACs also found large numbers of Medieval pottery fragments, including ‘wasters’, suggesting that the kiln site is very close by.   

Everyone had an excellent time and learnt a lot. We also proved that this is an exciting archaeological site and we hope to be able to return and do some more digging to see if we can find those elusive kilns! 

We’d all like to say a big thank you to npower for providing the digging equipment and the staff at WHEAS for helping us to dig and taking care of washing the finds and writing an excavation report. Also, most importantly, to Mark and Sara for allowing us to come and destroy their garden with our muddy boots and trowels!