Warley Woods Excavation

An excavation in 2005 had revealed the remains of the building

For our 2007 National Archaeology Week event we helped in the excavation of the so called "Abbey" within Warley Woods Park in Sandwell.

In the 1790’s Samuel Galton Junior purchased the site to build a new family home. Galton commissioned Humphry Repton, a landscape architect, to convert the existing field-systems into a fitting setting for the new house. Galton’s son completed the house, known as the Abbey, in 1819 although much of Repton’s planting and landscape features were probably in place before this date (Yates 1996), with some still visible in the Park today.

Our main aim of the day was to clean-up the site so that it could be better evaluated prior to further excavation. However, we unearted some interesting finds such as painted wall plaster, broken pottery and various materials used in the construction of the building.

A piece of painted wall plaster

Birmingham YACs cleaning-up the site

The site will be further excavated during the summer holidays as part of a community dig [details].

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