Dig Diaries 2026 – Cookham

This summer, members of the YAC have been joining excavations across the UK as part of our annual Dig It! competition. In July three lucky winners spent the day Cookham near Maidenhead, East Berkshire. Winners were hosted by the team at the University of Reading and explored the site of an Anglo-Saxon monastery!

The University of Reading have been kindly hosting YAC Dig It! competition winners at Cookham for a number of years and the site has yielded many fascinating discoveries. This year’s summer dig has investigated the site of a large wooden hall and a cemetery showing signs of care and healing.

Let’s find out what the competition winners got up to…

Florence, 11, from Fulham Palace YAC told us:

When I arrived at the archaeological dig at Cookham, we started by cleaning, which was actually quite fun! At first I was a little bit scared because I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do, but everyone was very friendly and showed us around the site and explained what was happening.

One of the things we did was a special type of cleaning. There was a lot of soil from one area of the site, and we had to move it around carefully so that the tiny pieces and finds were separated from the soil. The soil was incredibly soft — it felt a bit like wet sand, but even softer!

We were then split into different groups with the other children and volunteers. My favourite part of the whole day was digging and finding bones. It was really exciting when we uncovered something, and I also really enjoyed chatting with the other volunteers and learning from them.

I learnt that there is a proper way to dig so that you don’t hurt yourself. Instead of just using your wrists, you should use your whole arm when digging. I also learnt some interesting things about how different religions and cultures have different ways of burying people. As this was a Christian burial site, the graves were laid out so that the people were pointing west.

The day made me love archaeology and history even more. Seeing real archaeological remains made history feel much more real and exciting than just learning about it in a book. It also helped me feel more comfortable with the idea of death and understand how archaeologists can learn about people’s lives from what they left behind.

I enjoyed the experience so much that I would love to go back and volunteer at the site all the time — even 24/7 if I could!

Overall, it was an amazing day, and I’m really glad I got the chance to take part in the Dig It! experience. I definitely want to do more archaeology in the future.

Luca, 9, from Bedford YAC told us:

On July 31st I joined the excavation at Cookham in Reading after I was lucky enough to win the YAC’s Dig It! Competition. I was really excited to find out I had won and so on the day, I couldn’t wait to get there.

As soon as I arrived, I met the other winners and the dig team came over to speak to us and tell us about our day and the work we would be able to take part in.

The first thing we did was take a tour of the site, which was really interesting. There were three trenches that had lots of people working in them. In one was a deep well and rows of post holes and our guide told us how we could look at the colour of the ground to see where other post holes might be. Another trench was a burial site and the guide told us that the remains were of the people who were looked after there. We also saw where all the artefacts are cleaned and sorted.

Eventually we got to work, and I really enjoyed using the great archaeological tools that the YAC sent to me. All three of us were working in trench 1 with a really helpful archaeology student from the university, who taught us how to use our trowels to clear the earth. I found three animal bones and my friend found a tusk!

Next, we were shown how archaeologists sift through the earth removed from the trenches. Bags of earth were poured into water tanks and we were finding small pieces of charcoal and cracked flint that showed people were cooking food on the site.

After lunch, we started working in trench 3, which was the burial site. We were told how important it is to be respectful to the remains because they were real people and we used our tools to slowly and carefully reveal the bones laid in the ground. It was so interesting, the whole day was brilliant.