Today, Smallhythe Place in Kent is best known as a bohemian rural retreat once owned by the Victorian actress Ellen Terry and her daughter Edy Craig. As this month’s cover feature reveals, however, the surrounding fields preserve evidence of much earlier activity, including a medieval royal shipyard and a previously unknown Roman settlement.
Our next feature comes from the heavy clays of the Humber Estuary, where excavations sparked by the construction of an offshore windfarm have opened a 40km transect through northern Lincolnshire, with illuminating results. We then take a tour of Iron Age, Roman, and medieval Winchester, tracing its evolution into a regional capital and later a royal power centre.
Leaving urban surroundings behind, we next head out into the uplands of South Wales, searching for late Bronze Age and Neolithic rock art. What can recent discoveries tell us about how this landscape was used more than 4,000 years ago?
Our closing feature turns the spotlight on the Cerne Abbas Giant, an imposing outline cut into a Dorset hillside. What have the last few years of fieldwork revealed about the hill-figure’s date and the development of its design?
Finally, the summer digging season is rapidly approaching, and we are taking a slightly different approach with our ‘Digs Guide’ for 2024. We will be running several spreads across successive issues, with the first of them on pp.60-61; if you have a project you would like to include in the next one, please email [email protected].