Hanwell Park

Join this year’s excavation of Hanwell Park, led by Polyolbion Archaeology. This year marks the final season of work at the site of the seventeenth-century garden pavilion: ‘The House of Diversion’ with its extraordinary collection of garden urns. Further areas of investigation will be opened within the park to further understand what the layout of the garden may have looked like, and to bring the site to life.

Additional survey work will also be undertaken in order to search for the semi-industrial water mill that was once located in the gardens and was described in Robert Plot’s 1675 Natural history of Oxfordshire. Work on the project to date has been published in Seventeenth-Century Water Gardens and the Birth of Modern Scientific Thought in Oxford: The case of Hanwell Castle, available from Oxbow Books.

The excavation will run between the 3rd of April and the 14th of April, and two days per week in May and June. The summer excavation will run between the 3rd of July and the 14th of July, with two days per week in September and October. There is a Living History Event scheduled for Saturday September 10th.

Participants must be over 16yrs old to join the dig.

The excavation itself is free. Accommodation, transport and food must be organised by participants.

The details above are provided by the organiser, for more information about the dig, please see the links below.