East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 16th - 20th October 2006 - Week 38
East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 16th to 20th October – Week 38
As I remarked last week, I love getting feedback! I’ve had several comments about the lack of readability in recent weeks, with text and photos overlying the tasteful blue band at the left hand side of the page. I must apologise for that. It’s all part of a learning curve, as they say. I think we may have solved it now by making the photos only 450 pixels wide, but let’s see what you think! If you’re short sighted like me you may find yourself peering at the screen to make out what’s going on in the dinky little pictures. We also had a very useful suggestion about setting up links to allow direct navigation between the week-by-week reports. We’re trying to organise that this week, so I hope you find it helpful.
Last Saturday was our final open day and we must have had more than 200 people on tours and many others who just dropped in for a look. You can see some of them in the next two photos. The first one shows a group being introduced to the history of the East and West Kirks, by Chris Croly, our Assistant Keeper, Research.
They’re sitting in the beautiful surroundings of St John’s Chapel, otherwise known as Collison’s Aisle, with its fine 20th century window celebrating Aberdeen’s connection with the oil industry. Below the window, to right, is one of the 15th century funeral effigies in the church - which together form one of the most significant groups of such sculptures anywhere in Scotland.
In the next picture, the group has reached the vantage point of the East Kirk gallery.
It’s slightly strange being down on the dig with about 60 or so pairs of eyes watching you (or so it feels), but after a while you get used to all the camera flashes! Here are Alison Cameron, the dig director, and I working away on Saturday.
You’ll perhaps notice that I, on the left, am leaning rather heavily on a large stone (to take the pressure off my knees). But that is no ordinary stone, as you will see in the next photo. The stone was sitting right above the head of a burial and Ali and I both wondered whether it might have served as a simple grave marker. This grave was one of several which lay outside the east end of the church as it was up until the time this section of graveyard was covered over by the much larger 15th century choir. We suspect that the grave itself was quite shallow and gradually, as the coffin decayed, the stone sank to this position almost touching the skull.
We know for certain that the person was buried in a coffin, because several of its nails were uncovered in a particularly well-preserved state. You can see four of them, upstanding, immediately in front of the skeleton’s right arm.
Ali and I were working on the south side of the late 12th/early 13th century east end. In the photo which follows now, you’ve moved over to the north side, where we’re still recording parts of the ‘sacristy’ structure, which you may remember seems to have been added on to that same east end, perhaps in the 14th century.
The big wall at the back is the foundation of the 15th century north choir wall, with the wall of the present 19th century East Kirk on top of it. Jutting out from that, near the left of the picture, partly hidden by a steel upright, is what remains of the west wall of the sacristy. We’ve taken most of that wall away and Dave Harding, in the red jacket, is drawing the section across it, stone by stone. Across the middle of the photo, with some bags on top of it, lies the east sacristy wall, with Andy Robertson making a measured drawing of its elevation. To right of the red Hilti box is the point where that wall joined the north wall of the late 12th/early 13th century east end.
Away from the dig itself, work progresses on the exhibition ‘Early Glimpses: excavations within St Nicholas Church, 2006’, which opens at Provost Skene’s House on 11 November. The poster’s about to go to print, labels are being written, text panels are being designed….and Margot Wright at Marischal Museum is still conserving objects for us. Here she is, in the next two photos, cleaning some of the coins from the dig, using both mechanical and ultrasonic means.
This week Stewart Thain, our numismatist, spent a couple of hours in her lab examining the ones she’d finished. With the corrosion removed, he was able to identify most of them with relative ease, even the one with the detail almost totally worn away, which he suspects is a halfpenny of George I, II or III! Most of the 20 so far conserved are from the reigns of either James III (15th century) or Charles II (17th century). Stewart was surprised to see quite a large group of small Scottish copper coins of James III, more than you’d usually expect on an excavation in Aberdeen: but then the St Nicholas dig, the 84th site dug in the city since I came here 30 years ago this week, has been superlative in every aspect – of which the sheer number of coins (over 100) is one!
For further information and comment, please contact judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk: 01224 523658.
East Kirk of St Nicholas Week 37
