Remote, Derelict and on the Market- By Regular Love My Wales blogger, Tim James

The derelict  farmhouse known as Pemprys,  twenty minutes from Aberystwyth is currently on the market.

If seclusion is what you're after then this house is the one for you! This Grade II listed  building is sited on a small plot of land and it sits in a secluded valley  up a long and bumpy track.

After negotiating the fallen trees and the pot holes I reached the farmhouse. It was dusk and the light was fading fast. The ground was wet and there was  a cold chill in the air.

The walls of the house were thick and seemed to be in a good state, but the roof had many slipped slates and there were no signs of any activity to patch the holes up.

Walking into the house I saw a layer of mud covering the ground floor.  Some attempt to make the house semi- water tight had been made, but this was purely by blocking the windows up with whatever  stones or pieces of wood  had been lying nearby.  In the main room a large inglenook fire place took up the majority of  one of the walls, but the large wooden beam  that held up the chimney  had a great  crack in it and had consequently shifted  allowing the  wall above it to drop.  A rickety staircase led to the first floor, and I had to avoid the holes and rotten floor boards to take a look. There was evidence of wildlife, of various kinds, making the cottage their home. 

There are six rooms in total,  as well as a barn which is built onto the end of the house. This is a good size cottage sitting in the most beautiful position.

Sadly,  planning permission has already been refused twice, with the local authority suggesting  that a better use would be to use the building to house animals! Surely this is not the right answer!   Further worries from the council  include access and the presence of bats at the property. The lack of facilities at the property and  its remote location are factors that could put off many perspective buyers, but for someone wanting to live off-grid this could be perfect!

I will watch and hope that someone who can take on the many challenges of this property will appear and bring it back to life.

-Post courtesy of Tim James

The Archaeological View: A few of my Favourite Finds

I thought in this guest blog post I would share with you some of (in my view) my most interesting finds. It is a question often posed to the archaeologist, aside from the shudder inducing “Do you dig dinosaurs?”  immediately replied with a resounding “NO!”  I have had the good fortune to work in various sites as an archaeologist and ceramicist, both in commercial and research projects, in a variety of locations including the UK, Romania, Egypt and Sudan. I have been lucky enough to dig in some of the most incredible sites of the ancient world.

However, it is often the most every day, mundane item that can inspire you. On my first job as a commercial archaeologist, fresh out of university in 2008, I worked on a site in Shoreditch. The area was about to be developed into a hotel extension and so needed to be checked for archaeology. London is well known to contain a variety of building activities, particularly during the Roman, Medieval, and Victorian periods. We hoped that the site that I was worked at would be Roman date. However, I came across a sole of a leather shoe belonging to a young child in the middle of a soggy London grey clay ditch. It proved to be medieval and so the feature was dated accordingly. The shoe had been beautifully made, formed in a delicate point. (I have rather unevenly drawn it for you within the water it was stored in to conserve it in case you can’t see it). 

The medieval shoe found on Shoreditch high street, London excavations (ASE UCL)

Egypt

An exciting puzzle came during excavations at the site of Heit el Gurob, el Fayoum, Egypt in 2011. I was helping the team to document and record some of the looted tombs in the area. Many had been sadly trashed and human remains lay scattered all around. We sought to record as much as possible of what was left. We came across a gloriously decorated ceramic coffin that had been smashed to smithereens. We found 72 bits in all, and managed to fit most together. See http://www.gurob.org.uk 

Virpi displaying one of the uncovered painted ceramic coffin pieces

Sudan

More recently in February 2013 I was lucky enough to join the British Museum team at their site of Amara West, Sudan. The site dates to the Late Bronze Age and was an Egyptian town within Northern Sudan. At that time, Northern Sudan was part of the Egyptian empire and Amara West was a key administrative hub for the area. I was assigned to excavate one of the houses, which was remarkably well preserved including mud floors, benches, plastered walls, ovens and hearths all surviving. As an Egyptologist, I'm often asked if like Howard Carter when he discovered Tutankhamen, I’ve seen “the glint of gold.” Well I have to admit in Sudan, I did, albeit a very small piece within a necklace. 

Some of the rooms of the house (containing the circular hearths). Courtesy of British Museum. Click here 

I found the necklace (F6925) laying curled up on top of a piece of pottery sherd within a layer of debris of ash, animal bones and pottery. It comprised of around 100 very small beads made of Egyptian faience, 2 of carnelian and one beaten gold bead in the centre. Within this same room an incredible stone schist bowl, a metal chisel and a large sheep/goat skull was also uncovered in a room with three large bread ovens.

The partially excavated gold, carnelian and faience necklace. Courtesy of the British Museum.

Selim with the beautiful stone schist bowl he found on top of the oven in E13.16.2

Within the largest bread oven, deeply embedded into fired clay was a large storage pot, the most exciting find for a ceramicist! It is exceedingly rare to find a complete vessel within an ancient house, whereas they are comparatively common within graves and tombs. It proved tricky to excavate, as it had been completely cemented into the base of the oven, perhaps even heated, and then crushed slightly as sand blew in after the house was abandoned. In the end, I was forced to (carefully!) hack away underneath it with my hand mattock for days before it finally could be released. Before it could be lifted, I had to empty it of windblown sand. Sand can be surprisingly heavy believe me!

Adly, Micki, Camel train, Large Pot and I within the oven where it was excavated from, Amara West

So far, I have been remarkably fortunate in my fieldwork opportunities. I hope you enjoyed this short blog post on some the highlights of my short career in Archaeology and Egyptology. I’ve only recently graduated in my PhD in Archaeology, and have plenty of new opportunities for fieldwork in 2014. Funding and job opportunities allowing, who knows what the future might bring for an Early Career Archaeologist?

Many thanks for reading!

Sarah