A quick note: Back to Windermere this week!

A bloomery mound located at Cinder Nab, Ridding Bay on Windermere

After an enforced absence posting on here due to the pleasant repercussions of a new addition to the family, it is my pleasure to start posting again, starting with my first volunteer-orientated project of the year. We are going back to Windermere for the next few weeks for a fourth and final season of archaeological work as part of the Windermere Reflections Project. Again this is in conjunction with the Lake District National Park and the National Trust. For this year we are going to be exploring the theme of metal, and we shall be investigating four separate medieval or later iron production sites, called ‘bloomeries’ that are located around the lake.

I will be undertaking the field survey element of the project with the volunteers of the four sites, which are at High Stott Park; Cinder Nab/Riddings Bay; Ghyll Head and Blelham Tarn. As part of the project we will also be doing some geophysical surveys, and a small excavation of the latter site, which has the potential to be a more complex water-powered bloomsmithy.

Contour data for Cinder Nab, Windermere