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ACE ARCHAEOLOGY CLUB 
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ACE is now Officially ten years old. Our first AGM was held on the 13th September 1997 at Wembworthy Village Hall. So much has happened over the years, we have grown from a small club working away on small projects to a small club working away on very large projects!
To celebrate this occasion I would like to give my report in two parts:
ACE, the past 10 years (in note form, I will fill out later);
ACE, the next ten years?ACE: the past 10 years.
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Here I will talk about some of the activities that ACE have organised or been involved with, I am bound to have left some out or got some of the dates wrong! I could not find them when ACE initially went on to the Beehive web site for instance. So apologies.
ACE was officially formed and held its first AGM on the 13th September, the founder members were: Lesley MacLean, Janet Daynes, Gordon Fisher, Philip Tonkins and Pat Tong. The club was formed because although there is large amount of archaeology in this area of Devon very little work had been done recording it.
We received grant of £500 for equipment from Winkleigh Community Book, this enabled us to buy an automatic level, tripod, staff and ranging poles etc.
Our first year was spent identifying sites to work on, trips out, talks and field walking.
Our first level survey took place in Winkleigh, in a field by Court Castle called Great Well Park, we also carried out a resistivity survey using an ancient Martin/Clark meter borrowed from Exeter University, having found a rather strange anomaly, we persuaded Oxford Archaeotechnics to carry out a magnetometer survey and just to make sure we hadn't missed anything we also dowsed the site! The results were lodged in Sites and Monuments as it was then.
A large flint scatter was found by a member at Handsford Farm in Chawleigh, so ACE arranged a gridded fieldwalk, this work continued for the next 2 years, over 4,000 flints were picked up, processed and identified by Ann and Martin Plummer, the majority were found to be late Mesolithic.
ACE's first attempt at experimental archaeology took place at Handsford Farm were we had a go at flint knapping, it made us all appreciate how clever folks were in the Mesolithic!
As part of this project a training day in basic surveying techniques was given to ACE members by Rob Wilson-North, we spent a happy day learning offset and plane table techniques and produced a plan of one of the aircraft and personnel blast shelters.
Some ACE members joined in with Dr. Sandy Gerrard's Dartmoor Archaeology and Bracken Project, excavating a Bronze Age roundhouse at Teigncombe.The Handsford fieldwalk continues.
In January we published the Airfield survey and deposited a box full of "white sheets" with Sites and Monuments. In the Autumn we were invited to hold an exhibition of the Airfield survey at the West Country Vintage Vehicle Open Day, which proved very popular.
Our first meeting of the year in January was the start of our now traditional Exmoor walks guided by Philip Tonkins, each year he takes us to his favourite places, what finer way to blow away the cobwebs of Christmas excesses!
With a grant from the Council for British Archaeology we commissioned a magnetometer survey at Handsford Farm, we had found lots of heat treated flint there and wondered if there would be any evidence of this. The results were very interesting, areas of burning showed up, mostly where we found the heat treated flint! Also what looked like a drip gully of a roundhouse. At this point unfortunately the landowner became worried about the implications of what we had found and did not want us to do any more work there which was a real shame.
ACE hosted the Devon Archaeological Society's summer picnic, where we toured the Airfield and the two Norman earthworks in Winkleigh, ending the day with a cream tea at the Community Centre which all went down rather well.
A detailed survey of the Water Works that served the Airfield was carried out, this was done as the buildings do not show up on any OS map! Just as well we did as the best part of it was demolished this year (2007).
One of our members Judi Clarke was teaching GCSE archaeology as an evening class, part of the course involved making prehistoric pottery, so ACE joined in and had a go at making pots, we provided the clay dug from a garden and the Clamp Kiln to fire the resulting pots in. We had 98% success rate which we were very pleased with.
A terrible year for everyone, due to the outbreak of Foot and Mouth, Devon shut down and so did ACE mostly.
Before the outbreak we did get a trip to Hennock in where the local history group there had discovered a similar flint scatter to Handsford, they showed us their collection and the site where they found them. The topography was very similar to that of Handsford, high up but not quite on the top of a hill with nice views!
Despite Foot & Mouth, we carried out a training dig at Seckington in a small field called Plat. This field had been used to spread the rubble from the demolished Seckington House and with part of its garden on top made for a wonderfully confusing stratigraphy.
Masses of medieval pottery came out of from just under the turf, according to John Allen we have the largest collection in the area outside Okehampton Castle! Under this layer we found the building rubble and 20th C junk but having got down to the original turf layer we discovered a piece of Saxo-Norman pottery, proving that Seckington had been used for a long time.
ACE's experimental archaeology phase really started to take shape this year, we made a wooden forge from riven oak and having lined it with clay had a go at Iron Age blacksmithing making penannular brooches with Benny Venn. We helped Cookworthy Forrest Centre build a roundhouse as well as starting to build our own at Yeoford.
It was suggested by the EH monuments warden Helen Gerrard that we might like to survey the earthwork at Stone Barton at Chulmleigh because it was a very interesting and needed doing. So we did, it was a very large site to deal with but the resulting drawing looked fabulous! It is now in Helen's hands for her to interpret.
Much development was taking place on Winkleigh Airfield, ACE alerted EH to this and as a consequence the Control Tower was Scheduled.
More experimental archaeology takes place; the highlights this year were making Viking hack or clip silver, a trip to Trewortha Farm on Bodmin Moor where we were taught flint knapping by Nick Wright in one of the beautiful granite roundhouses that they have built there, and a "Fun day with the Romans" at Brayford where ACE ran a Romano/British iron smelt and demonstrated ancient blacksmithing.
Over the years an increasing number of ACE members were taking an active role in the Dartmoor Archaeology and Bracken Project so it was decided that we should join forces. This we did and has proved most successful, Dr. Sandy Gerrard the director now has a raft of talented folk that he can call on for help with the project.
ACE helped the Winkleigh Society develop a heritage project "House Scouts" a DIY version of the BBC's House Detectives and community archive; this was launched in February this year. The project has been most successful and has raised the awareness of local heritage in Winkleigh enormously. At the Winkleigh Fair cream tea we were asked to hold an exhibition from the archive of past fairs, this we now do every year with a different theme each year.
The building of our roundhouse in Yeoford made slow progress with the first layer of daub on and the shingles on the roof started.
Our experimental work continues with the construction of a Pole lathe, this and ancient blacksmithing was demonstrated by ACE at a fair in Taunton and as part of the St Boniface celebrations in Crediton. We also had a go at tablet weaving lead by David Purnell and carried out another iron smelt in Brayford, but this time for Exeter University students.
ACE advised the protest group against the Winbeg Biomass Project on the archaeological implications of the proposed development which are disastrous for archaeology, we even managed to get EH involved who extended their National mapping programme in Cornwall to include parts of Devon.
ACE and the Dartmoor Archaeology and Bracken Project, our work continued with the usual two weeks excavation.
As well as the winter Exmoor walks run by Phil, this year Anne and Tim Whitbourn stared the (now annual) walks on Dartmoor, both walks are always very informative with tours through time from the prehistoric to modern industrial period.
A chance flint find by a resident of Winkleigh and a regular attendee of the heritage kiosk at the Mini Market lead to the discovery of a flint scatter at Heath Hill Farm. The field was gridded up and walked over two weekends. The assemblage (Mesolithic and Neolithic) was numbered and partly measured in 06, this work will continue later in 07.
We continued to roof the roundhouse at Yeoford, having gone over to thatch from shingles on the lower part. During the building sessions other experimental activities went on especially involving ancient culinary and brewing skills!
ACE and the Dartmoor Archaeology and Bracken Project carried on. Having found a roundhouse on the Kestor settlement which looked a as if it might be a suitable control for T 1, a Bracken stipe survey was carried out, the positions of over 3600 stipes were recorded in all!House Scouts had the opportunity to get the archive (which now has thousands of images) out to a global audience by joining the Explore North Devon (END) project. It is internet based and is part of the National Archives; Archives 4 All project. We have forged links with the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon and the North Devon Record Office who instigated END.
We helped organise two heritage walks with the Winkleigh Society as part of the National Heritage days, the walks finished at the Community Centre for cream teas and an exhibition by House Scouts and ACE.
At Winkleigh Fair this year we re-enacted Viking crafts such as Blacksmithing, basket making and various other crafts.
This year, the tenth year of ACE, has been as busy as ever. At last we finished thatching the roundhouse at Yeoford. The straw rope that we made several years ago was used to finish off the top; there was much celebration!
House Scouts and the END project are progressing nicely; at the various exhibitions that have been held this year more local information is has poured in to go onto the database.
To carry on our experimental work this year we built another iron smelting furnace, cloam oven and started digging out a pit for a clamp kiln. We have also made a good number of pots to fire in the kiln. Unfortunately, the season was far too wet for us to have our smelt, kiln and cooking day. That treat is yet in store for a future date.The Winkleigh Fair theme for the year was the air, so our exhibition for them this year included our airfield survey which gained a lot of interest; just as well David Purnell is in the process of updating the survey report for ACE to re-publish.
The inclement weather also seriously curtailed our activities at Teigncombe this year but we did manage to get a 20 X 20 meter @ 20 cm intervals level survey done and a very detailed earthwork survey of T 2 and surrounding area, all thanks to the dedicated team that we have. The interim for last years work was produced by Dr. Sandy Gerrard, and hopefully the information from our work at T 2 will help to inform the final report of T 1, as well as identifying what work needs to be done in the future.
