We’ll be digging at Basing House from
27th July – 15th August 2015

This summer the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Centre for Digital Heritage, University of York, and Hampshire County Council Museums Service, will be excavating at Basing House.

We are lucky to have volunteers from the Basingstoke Archaeological and Historical Society on site with us.

Please come join us on site between the 27th July and the 15th August to see what we are uncovering at Basing House.

Follow our Twitter account (@BasingHouseDig) and our *NEW* Facebook page (www.facebook.com/BasingHouseProject) for behind the scenes info (our old page is still there if you’d like to see what we got up to in 2013 and 2014 – www.facebook.com/BasingHouseCAT).

Season 2015 Aims

The major areas of investigation for the Summer 2015 season are:

— the New House, for which the University generated some geophysical data in 2013

— the newly discovered fireplace area within the ringwork

— a section of ditch adjacent to the excavation area from 2013.

Research Questions for the New House Excavation

1. To gain a better understanding of the form and arrangement  of the New House and to think about different phases of building.

2. To consider the appearance of the house within the landscape.

3. To connect plans from the early excavations to the archaeology and see how accurate the original plans were

4. To better understand how the New House was destroyed and whether there were multiple stages to this process.

Spring 2015 Geophysical Survey

In March-April 2013 and Summer of 2013, staff and students worked at Basing House to carry out an extensive geophysical survey. We were delighted with the amount of data we were able to collect. Read all about the survey here: Spring Survey This year we are hoping to continue the survey on Basingstoke Common that we started in 2014. Read the Interim Report 2013 to find out about previous years’ results.

Quick Links (to be added soon)

• Events Calendar
• Planned Activities
• Interim Report from 2013 Season
• Join In Digging
• Meet the Team
• Basing House has its own blog, which we encourage you to also read. The team at Hampshire Museums share behind the scenes information about developments at the site, and new discoveries: http://basinghouse.wordpress.com/ 

Other Activities & Events Calendar

We’ve got lots of other activities planned, including a digitisation project and the opportunity to see our Artist-in-Residence at work; you can read more about these plans and more on our ‘Other Activities’ page to follow later this month. You can also check out our Events Calendar once it is online for this year’s season.

Meet the Team

There are many people involved in making this excavation possible. We’ve been adding profiles to this website, so that you can meet us here and find out more about our specialisms, and more importantly, about what we are helping with at Basing House: Meet the Team