Dig Diaries – Erddig Hall

This summer, members of the YAC have been joining excavations across the UK as part of our annual Dig It! competition. Here we find out all about the dig day at Erddig Hall, near Wrexham.

A team of archaeologists from Heneb, Clwyd-Powys Archaeology was conducting the excavation and they invited the YAC along. Two winning YAC members, Idris and Emily joined them for the day.

Find out how they got on below.

First, Idris, from Wales Online YAC, told us:

I loved my day at the Erddig Hall dig.  The archaeologists made me feel like part of the team and I really liked the biscuits. 

I found a piece of pottery called agateware and it fitted to other pieces of a bowl that they found before. Because of the layer the bowl was found in we could know the date of the building.  We also found some glazed roof tile which was interesting because it is unusual to find such a fancy tile on an outbuilding. I will be an archaeologist when I am older! 

Emily, from Mersey and Dee YAC, also shared that:

I first came to the dig and got shown around by an archaeologist called Ian. We walked around for a while then we came back to our area and we looked at a map of where we were going to be digging.

After that we looked at some pottery and tiles from the site. We were digging where there had been a house knocked down in the 1700s. So Ian led us down to the site and I met all the workers and also met another winner called Idris. So we started digging for a while until Idris found a piece of pottery to fit in with one of the pots from earlier. We kept digging up tiles from the roof. Then we went for a lunch break, I just wanted to get back to digging!

After a while we got back to digging and kept digging up slate and tiles again until I spotted a white piece of pottery and carefully dug it out of the dirt using the tools that I had won as part of the competition. Not long after I found a gigantic piece of the same pottery and it turns out that it was a pot from the 1720s. Soon after we were on the way home.

I can’t believe I got to participate in such an amazing thing, I loved it.