Day 2, Archaeology of Queen’s Park Conservatory

Our second day started off with a visit from the Vice-Chancellor of USQ Professor Jan Thomas, and a number of media representatives. Many thanks to Rhianwen Whitney from the USQ Office of Corporate Communications for being instrumental in the organisation of the media opportunity. 

Today was all about continuing down through the 2×2 m square that we set up in the south-east corner of the building. In doing this, we found two distinctive features – a rough slab of course concrete, mixed with blue stone (on the left of the image) which may be associated with the construction of the chimney; and a narrow section of very loose, sandy rubble in front (inside) of the eastern foundation, pictured just behind the tape measure.   

 This rubbly matrix consisted of a combination of sand, the local blue basalt and broken bricks, some appearing to be hand made, as opposed to the bricks used in the construction of the conservatory which were mass-produced. We excavated to the bottom of this section and it turned out to be a narrow trench, some 50cm deep. There are a number of explanations for this trench, but I’ll need to do a bit more research before I can say what purpose it served, with any certainty.  

 All in all, it was a very good day, with a lot of interest from the public. No doubt the warmer (and drier) weather was instrumental in this. Many thanks to today’s volunteers Peter Stainton, Fredrick-John Santos, Drew Rickard and William Rutherford!