The second phase of the project took place as planned from 4th to 9th July 2011. Twenty-one volunteers took part, including three students from UCL Institute of Archaeology and three local sixth-formers. They all had a great time and learnt a lot about medieval pottery and how to study it. We studied nearly 16000 sherds of pottery, about 9000 of them being Cheam ware; the rest relate to the later use of the house and its garden. This brings the total up to nearly 25000 sherds, of which 14000 are of Cheam ware.
As last year, there were a few surprises among the usual Cheam jugs. Most unusual was a small bowl or dish built from slabs of clay: the first example we have seen of a Cheam ware pot not thrown on a wheel.
Work continues: the data has been successfully loaded onto an Excel spreadsheet, and will be combined with last year's results to tell a fuller story.
A small amount of pottery remains to be catalogued; we estimate that this will take about a day's work.