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St Olave Archaeological Project
Location: Suffolk
HLF funding was obtained in 1999 for the Creeting Churches Project, a village history initiative undertaken in celebration of the millennium. The aim of the project was to locate the remains of the two ‘lost’ churches of the parish, that of All Saints church, demolished in 1802, and St Olave’s church, recorded in Domesday Book but no longer extant.
Remote sensing by the late Peter Cott and Fieldwalking surveys conducted in 1998–9 revealed the ground plan of All Saints which shared the same graveyard with St Mary’s church and indicated that St Olave’s church had probably stood opposite Woolney Hall, a mile north of St Mary’s & All Saints churches. Trial trenches at St Olave’s revealed a pattern of flint rubble footings beneath the plough soil, as predicted by the remote sensing survey, and fragments of medieval painted glass provided confirmation that this was the site of a church.
This first project was successfully completed at the end of 1999 with the erection of information boards near the sites of the two churches.
Flushed with this success the volunteers felt that they should excavate the field where St Olave once stood. The group, guided by professional help & supervision, undertook an archaeological excavation, at weekends during 2000–2, to reveal the ground plan of the church.
Apart from the rigour of the physical and exacting recording work the volunteers managed to bring back to life a long forgotten church which had been abandoned as far back as the late 16c. The effort and dedication of the volunteers, most of who hadn’t ‘dug’ in their lives before was further tested when work was halted by the outbreak of foot & mouth in 2000. Undaunted by this untimely interruption the excavation was completed in December 2001.
One of the conditions of undertaking the ‘dig’ was that the site should be recorded professionally and the records lodged with the County archive. In order to do this the group had to commit themselves to a post-excavation program and so in 2003 the St Olave Archaeological Project (SOAP) applied for, and was granted an LHI grant to pay for post-excavation analysis, publication of a popular booklet and exhibition boards.
Group Name |
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St Olave Archaeological Project |
| Address |
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Creeting St Mary, Suffolk |
| Project Postcode |
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IP6 8LZ |
| Grants: |
Heritage Lottery Fund: £5,390
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