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More Questions than Answers
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More Questions than Answers
Location: Oxfordshire
Jane Cooper of the Uffington White Horse project keeps us up to date - and finds out that when delving into history there are more questions than answers.
While putting together the information for the grant for our project application we began to realise the vast nature of our proposed project. However enthusiasm won and has carried us through the many facets of our undertaking.
We started by trying to establish who might have lived here and been able to look after the Horse. This research seems to have developed into an outline history of the village on which a number of people are at present busy working. We began at the beginning and last October we had a fascinating weekend, filmed by BBC 1, when over 100 local residents took part in an archaeological dig. The site of a possible Iron Age village had been identified from aerial photos on the northern outskirts of the present village. The LHI grant enabled us to employ the necessary professional help in the shape of Oxford Archaeology, who had also guided us through the procedures necessary to gain permission to dig. We did indeed find evidence of an Iron Age settlement and of even earlier people in the area. This means that people were about before the Horse was created.
We then knew we would have artefacts to display in our Museum and the next task was to refurbish our small gallery, to make it worthy of displaying our very own prehistoric pieces of pottery, flint and animal bones. First we had to remove the existing boards and showcases, unfortunately a large piece of loose plaster came away with the boards but, with the necessary funds, we were able to employ a local craftsman skilled in lime plastering. The redecorating followed – the less said the better. We then had the exciting task of choosing new fixtures and fittings and everyone is most complementary about the final result.
With the refurbishing complete we set about designing and setting up an exhibition on the theme of our dig. This explained how we found where to dig, the pre-excavation research on the site and the excavation itself. We used a mixture of text, photos and artefacts. Our future plans include an exhibition on the development of the village next year to be augmented with a touch screen giving information on the village at six different periods. Space is at a premium, as we are such a small Museum, so it is marvelous to have the funds to be able to create different ways of presenting our past . The new box files in which we have our indexed information also help.
In both 2002 and 2003 we have held fund raising events in our village hall. A local resident who runs a popular group kindly put on musical evenings and on each occasion a hot supper was provided, The first evening was about the time of our dig so there was an Iron Age theme with food from a recipe book giving modern interpretations using ingredients that would have been available in the Iron Age. Some of us were to be found in flowing robes driving around the village with torches, we have no street lights, collecting large “pots” from peoples’ ovens as the village hall kitchen had become a 21st century bar!
Another aspect of our project is a survey of the graves in the churchyard. We have a very fine Early English church, St Mary’s, built on the site of an even earlier one. There are two previous surveys, one an accurate plan with no key and the other, done in 1988, an excellent description of the graves with an accompanying diagram. The task is to integrate the two sets of information and bring them up to date. This is unlikely to be finished when our main project is due for completion in October 2004.
The research for our booklet on the development of the village has taken us far and wide. We are delighted to again be able to pay for some expert help as the study of old documents needs its own expertise. The village is a source of many skills but this one has eluded us. One thing we have all been able to do is to follow an expert in walking our Anglo-Saxon boundaries. We have an excellent 10th century charter and the boundaries appear to have hardly changed to this day. We are keenly looking out for any references to the Horse and its care and are finding various interesting pieces of information which we hope will allow us to answer our original question of “Who looked after our Horse”
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