East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 13 - 17 November 2006 - Week 42
St Nicholas Kirk excavation diary – week 42
This week Judith Stones is on holiday so the task of the weekly diary has fallen to me, Jan Dunbar. I’m one of the Archaeological Unit’s two illustrators and have been involved in the St Nicholas excavation from the beginning, mainly planning but also doing a bit of digging.
This week marks a return to the site for me as I’ve been busy for the last few weeks with our exhibition ‘Early Glimpses’, which is now open in Provost Skene’s House. With ‘Early Glimpses’ we’ve tried to put on a ‘work in progress’ rather than a ‘finished’ exhibition - after all the site is still being excavated! We aimed to show the processes behind a major excavation and will change the exhibition over its run of a year, including new finds, new information as we get reports back from specialists and new objects as they are returned from the conservation lab. A major publication and exhibition will follow in due course, once we’ve had time to process the information and all the finds – something to look forward to!
Putting up the show was, as always, good fun – if a little hectic at times. Those of you who are regular readers of this diary will recognize many of the exhibits and also many of the photographs. In addition to the excavated objects, we have borrowed from the City Archives, a chartulary of St Nicholas Kirk - a collection of 14th and 15th century documents pertaining to the business of the Kirk. These were copied into this volume, probably in the 16th century. I think I’m right in saying that this is the first time that this beautiful book has been on show to the public and we only have it for one month - don’t miss it! Other borrowed items include the commonplace book of Andrew Melville, whose gravestone was discovered during the dig and which is displayed alongside.
Now to the dig! Last week, in a stop press, Judith mentioned that we had found a flight of stairs in one of the little stone structures around the doors leading to St Mary’s Chapel. Below is a photo of the excavation looking through the newly opened entrance hole.
Inside there is the door similar to the one on the south side, which appears in last week’s diary. It has masons’ marks all the way round the arch – on virtually every stone, and there’s also at least one on the wall. The photo shows a large piece of a pillar base in the foreground and the stairs leading round to the left where they are blocked off. The roof is vaulted and, in the end (north) wall, it looks as if there is a window that has been blocked up, which would match the south wall. You can also see a pile of collection boxes that have been left there – presumably the space was used for storage once the stairs went out of use, possibly in the 19th century.
It has been suggested that the little vault could be kept and incorporated in some way into the development.
The following photograph shows the door on the south side, which you saw emerging last week, now completely exposed.
Also this week we started to excavate the apse at the west end of the site. Stewart began by taking down the area beneath a toilet next to the viewing window, and found the continuation of the curved wall of the apse – both the inner and outer faces. The photo shows him standing on the curved bit of wall – the oldest piece of standing wall in Aberdeen!
To finish I’ll show you two lovely bone finds from the northern part of the site.
The little decorated pin was found by Sheena who can be seen in the next photograph sieving soil from a ditch that she and Aidan are excavating in the north-west corner. The dark soil filling the ditch can be seen quite clearly above Aidan.
A little to the east in the area of the ‘sacristy’, Gemma found the other piece of decorated bone, which looks as if it might be quite early in date.