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The Bradford Kaims excavation team, part of the the Bamburgh Research Project, are keen to involve the local community and wider Northumberland in our excavation work. We are opening the site to volunteers on Wednesdays and Sundays for the next 6 weeks.

Excavation at the Bradford Kaims

Sun 21st June , Wednesday 24th June are the first two dates and then every Wednesday and Sunday, until Sunday 26th July which will be be our final community day for the season.

Access to the site is limited, as it’s a working farm. The site is located approx 15 min walk from parking. Our facilities are limited to chemical toilets and cold water. It’s basic, but a lot of fun. And the archaeology is excellent. Peat, flint, Neolithic pottery, wetland wood and prehistoric general goodness. What’s not to like!

Volunteers can come for a whole day, or half day, but numbers are…

Landscapes are made up of lots of different things and one of the most fascinating aspects of earth buildings is the cyclical ways in which they are made, un-made, remade and un-made. The process of making is linked to the geology of the landscape and the unmaking creating the ‘product’ of those human:nature interactions – cultural landscapes.

This year’s Earth Building UK conference (Clayfest) ran in partnership with the Tay Landscape Partnership and so lots of different activities and events took place to celebrate the vernacular building heritage of the Tay Landscape. One of these, un-melting is a series of interventions in the landscape undertaken by The Red Field (a community interest company). It explores the process and loss of habitation – here the sense that buildings ‘melt’ back into the landscape from which they were made.

This ‘melting’  lies at the very heart of the creation of landscapes. This ‘process’ of…

Join us tonight at the Bell View Centre in Belford for the first in our series of lectures this season: The Bamburgh Blade: Was it the best sword ever? Presented by Director Paul Gething.

A large but rather puzzling piece of ironwork has emerged from Trench 3 at Bamburgh Castle over the weekend. Hopefully you will be able to see from the photos that its a substantial iron strap curved back on itself through 180 degrees, with an iron pin passing through it. There is a gap between the straps of 20mm and the metal itself is over 6mm thick, where its curved, tapering down to near 3mm closer to the tips. It seems far too heavy to represent a piece of personal adornment, like a sword hanger, so its more likely to be a tool or fastening.

The best interpretation we have so far, suggested by Simon in our finds team, is that it is part of a pulley for lifting. If this is correct then a wooden wheel would have been present between the iron strips rotating around a pin that may…

The season has just begun, in bright sunshine, and already the teams working in Trench 1 and Trench 3 have found a variety of interesting finds relating to the daily lives of the castle’s occupants.

This year’s excavation team includes staff and volunteers with a range of interests and backgrounds.

Matthew Fisher, a sixth form student from Northumberland, has been finding animal bones, which help to reveal the diet and status of the castle’s early medieval occupants, as well as evidence of metal working.

Sam Serrano Ferraro, originally from Italy but now studying with the University of Edinburgh, found a small button which had been hand crafted from sea shell with four small four holes for stitching it onto clothing.

Harry Francis, who is studying archaeology at the University of Leicester, found one of the more enigmatic pieces; it’s a small segment of a glass bracelet which dates to the…

Things are well underway at Bamburgh Castle and the Bradford Kaims. Our supervisors and assistants are busy pouring over last seasons plans and reports. At each site the students were given a fascinating health and safety lecture followed by a tour of the trenches and an introduction to our previous years finds. Soon we will start to remove the tarps! Today we will hear from Director Graeme Young who will give us an in-depth look at the plans for the castle tenches this season.

Graeme Young

I was one of the two archaeologists who wrote to Lady Armstrong back in the winter of 1996, asking for the opportunity to do some research at the castle. It does not seem all that long ago, but mathematics tells me otherwise! A great deal has changed since then but our aims of good research, education and engaging with the public remain at the…

Reviewer Sharon Bennett Connolly offers an insightful look at Men of the Cross at The Review. What a wonderful way to start my day.

“The long and winding journey of the Lionheart’s crusade…is skillfully re-told in such a way that you will feel the highs and lows – the joys and desperation – and the excitement of two young men learning the art of war, love and friendship through their experiences.”

Please check out the review. Comment on the post or on the group’s Facebook page for a chance to win a copy of the book (epub or Kindle versions).

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Sweeping battles, forbidden love, and 2 knights fighting for Richard the Lionheart
MEN OF THE CROSS
A 2014 B.R.A.G. Medallion honoree and Readers’ Favorite
Get it for Kindle & Nook and at Smashwords.
Book II of Battle Scars: For King and Country
will be published in 2015.

I had my cover designers slightly modify the Rise of the Wolf cover, you can see the finished article below (the bow is slimmer and his fingers are closed up). My editor will be going over the book around the start of June so, fingers crossed it will be published around end of June/July this year. Not long to go!

In the meantime I’ve been working on my Friar Tuck Christmas novella – about a third into it so far. If you enjoyed Knight of the Cross you should like this although this is more like the regular books without the Lovecraftian horror. Should be a fun read for Yuletide 2015.

Stay tuned for the RotW publication date and, if you haven’t already LIKED my Facebook page please do so – I plan on running some giveaways for the new book and Facebook is the easiest place to do it…