1. Historical Archaeology at Ovenstone Miner’s Cottages
Sheila Newton
with thanks to Dr Jane Webster

2. The limits of history What are primary sources? Who wrote them?
Did everyone write or get written about in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?
Who didn’t?
Women, children, working classes, slaves
But writing isn’t the only document!

3. Material culture documents
We document ourselves through the things we make, buy and use
What are your documents?
People in the past documented themselves through objects as well as words

4. The site and finds
‘Rubbish’ from the midden (rubbish tip) made by families living at Ovenstone, Northumberland in the 19th century
What resources can we use to date and identify these objects?
What can they tell us about the people who made and used them?

5. Ovenstone miners’ cottages
Grasslees Valley
Near Elsdon, Northumberland
Within Northumberland National Park

7. What can be seen today? Low walls of a line of stone cottages…
Surrounded by a banked enclosure and a large rubbish tip (midden)
In the past this was a flourishing community, supplying coal for a nearby tile manufacturing site.  
Evidence of coal mining lies all around the site, from the bell pits spreading north west and south east to the lumps of coal littering the area.

8. Bell Pit

10. Documentary evidence Earliest written records 1770s
Census returns in the 1800s show a thriving community, 1841 three families, headed by George and Thomas Proudlock and John Telford
Four mining families living and working the site by 1851
The later half of the 19th century shows a gradual decline in the site - the houses were abandoned in the 1880s and Ovenstone is not mentioned in the 1881 census

11. Feb 2007: 3 day dig Three trial trenches across the midden
1m grid surface collection over midden
To assess its extent and depth
To see if it had clear stratigraphic layers
To see what was in it!
And a gridded walk-over survey across the whole midden

14. June 2007: bigger excavation
Excavation of the central house row
Local archaeology group with the help of NNP staff and The Archaeological Practice, Newcastle (Richard Carlton)

16. View of houses 1 (foreground) and 2 Flagstone floors in both
Detailed view of house 2 fireplace

17. Summary of excavation findings
2 phases to cottage block:
Earliest and most substantial at W end, starting later C18th
Houses 2 and 3 built onto east end of House I c. 1830
At this point mining of the bell pits began in earnest, and tile works built soon after
?Earlier structural remains to W of House 1
1871 census last ref. to miners living here

18. The finds Assemblage mid-late C19th Ceramic categories:
Coarse red earthenware
Buff & yellow glazed wares
Whitewares –some with transfer prints (‘willow pattern’), some with sponged decoration, some with Methodist tracts
Clay pipes
What else is in the bags?
Sort through your bags and put material into the groups above
How might it be possible to identify the producers and date some of these objects?
What do they tell us about life at Ovenstone?

19. Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his maker
Identifying the finds
Primitive Methodist ceramics – dateable
Hurd Collection -
Sunderland manufacturers
Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his maker
(Proverbs 17.5)

20. Makers’ marks
GR Turnbull and John Wood: Stepney Bank Pottery (Newcastle) 1860s
Maling: Sunderland
Scotts of Sunderland
JA Carr

21. Recognisable wares Sunderland Lustreware
Spongewares – cheapest was to get decorated pottery in this period
Scottish examples are sometimes easy to identify: but NE examples not well studied

22. Bo’ness and Britannia Spongeware

23. Smoking pipes
Clay pipes – many made by Tennants, Berwick (TW): dateable 1840s-1870s
What else?