This excavation work has proved to be highly successful. It is the first occasion that we have as a society dug up a 14th century Mediaeval building.
How did we come to be digging here in the first instance? It was as a result of a watching brief.
We had observed Mediaeval pottery lying amongst and beneath rubble and it was the presence of this pottery that aroused our interest.
This was an area immediately adjacent to a trench excavated by a J.C.B by A.O.C, an archaeological unit that does contract work.
During their brief inspection of the site they did not find much.
Our intentions to excavate in this area (shown in the photograph above) and by the entrance to the site
(shown in the photograph below) were duly mentioned to Hugh McBrien, a representative of the West of Scotland Archaeological Service.
The excavation work on the first area started in June of this year and we did not finish work on the site till the end of September. We are greatly indebted to both the developers and to the firm of Robert Hogg of Carluke who showed great interest in our work and allowed us to dig. Without their cooperation there would have been no opportunity to make the finds we did.
In the course of the work we did in June, we found various artifacts but no structures.
We did our first piece of work on the area adjacent to the machine dug trench created by A.O.C. I was interested in digging this area as I had previously noticed that there were several sherds of Mediaeval pottery floating around on the surface. There were basically three Mediaeval layers - a rubble layer - a layer of sandy soil and a layer of black soil. The rubble layer contained some very interesting Mediaeval items including a piece of Mediaeval stained glass , several fragments of glazed floor tiles and a clasp
of a Mediaeval prayer book. An illustration of this is below, David Brown was over the moon when he made this find.
Interesting though these finds were, they were basically mixed up in the demolition level. Underneath this layer, a sandy layer was found over most of the area. This contained items that were 13th-14th century in date. No exceptional finds were made in this layer apart from some animal bones and pottery.
The most interesting layer which stretched over part of the site, was the black layer. In this layer which we were not able to fully explore, we found evidence of leather working. Two fragments of leather were found and they appear to belong to the 12th/13th century if the associated pottery is anything to go by. Also found in the same area was iron ore and some gilded wire. It would seem from these tantalizingly interesting discoveries that we have had a glimpse of some of the early industries of Lanark.
On the site of the lower half of Cox's garages, other discoveries were made in the area adjacent to the back wall of the Greyfriars. These were not as old as those made at the Clydesdale end of the site.
Our trench at the entrance to the site revealed a number of very interesting finds, most significant a large section of a mediaeval wall.