Mia, a young archaeologist, sits on a map in a shallow rectangular trench. She is using a large trowel and brush to excavation and is sitting next to a bucket of small archaeological finds such as bricks and stone.

Dig Diaries 2025 – Moira Demesne

This summer, members of the YAC have been joining excavations across the UK as part of our annual Dig It! competition. Our first Dig It! day took place at the community excavation at Moira Demesne, near Lisburn in Northern Ireland, in partnership with Queens University Belfast.

One of our lucky winners, Mia from YAC Belfast tells us more…

When the haversack of archaeological tools arrived, I immediately began opening it up and checking what’s inside. I couldn’t wait to use my very own trowel for the first time and hopefully find some artefacts! 🙂

I got really excited when I arrived at Moira Demesne. It was really sunny and I was very eager to start digging! At the beginning, the staff told us all about the history of the demesne. Then we went into one of the smaller trenches and removed the top bit of the soil.

While we were excavating, I noticed a large white rock sticking out of the ground. I took off all of the soil around it and Brian told me that it was an important find, as it might’ve been one of the slabs of limestone that was used to build the mansion that used to stand there. Later on, I also found some pieces of knapped flint, red flint, a piece of an oyster shell and smaller pieces of limestone. Brian said that children are better archaeologists than adults because they’re closer to the ground. 🙂

I’ve been on a few archeological digs with Belfast YAC before, but never for much longer than 2 hours, which didn’t feel enough for me. Being one of the winners of the Dig It! competition and spending a whole day excavating at Moira Demesne was a dream come true! I really enjoyed my day out and learnt lots of new things. The archeologists and students were very friendly, helpful and had a great sense of humour! 🙂

This year’s Dig It! bursary was made possible by the kind generoity of the Marsh Charitable Trust. These £80 bursaries were created to help cover the costs of travel, accomodation and/or subsistence for each winner. We are also grateful to Past Horizens for providing our Dig It! winners with havisacks full of archaeological tools to use on the day of their digs.