Sunday 18 October 2015

World War 2 Excavation



Weekend with good friends led to an extra ordinary weekend. 

At the invitation of the organisers we went with our friends  to an open  day event at Holmewood Conference Centre just south of Peterborough to meet Wildlife and Wetlands Trust  and the Oxford Uni archaeologists who have just excavated the Spitfire crashed by a distant relative of our friends  in 1940 before the Great Fen is flooded to make a conservation area. 

The Great Fen is the lowest point of the UK and the plane remains were another 7 meters down!  A few hundred yards away is  the famous iron post is that measures the loss of peat in the fens over the last 100 or so years.
Image result for measuring the full in land level in the fens

The actual dig for the Spitfire was filmed and is being shown on Countryfile on 9th Nov. Great event where the family was welcomed by all the team with great enthusiasm and emotion as they had connected with the young pilots story.

Holmewood house is a lovely Victorian Gothic country house.




This is the dig site filled in over the weekend.




The log was under the plane and is 1000's of years old. We also met a lovely old chap who witnessed the crash as an 11 year old in 1940.

Super weekend and we sent our friends away with bags of tomatoes, chills, peppers, butternut squash and beetroot.   Enough to keep them until they depart for the trip of a lifetime to New Zealand in a few weeks time.

1 comment:

  1. It sounds like a good time was had by all. I bet they were thrilled with their food hamper.

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