Dig 2021: #8 Lifting the Slabs
The damp day dawned to this view of Hoy from John Rae’s family home.
With the rain, our trench by the North entrance to The Hall and the drain, had standing water in it, which we dubbed ‘Lake Como’ All suggestion of excavation was abandoned for the day. ‘Patience brings a better day,’ I once read that on an abandoned Coastguard toilet wall. Patience will pay.
Instead we went indoors… The West Pavilion’s flag floor had to be recorded. We certainly believe that this floor is not original!
We think an earlier floor lies below this. If so, this would be a feature of major importance as it would shed light on the original height of the pavilion. This may well influence the architectural design of our finished Arctic Centre. Here is one of the real values of our archaeological investigations.
Photo: Gail Drinkall and Sue Dyke carefully drawing each stone flag.
Duncan McNeish trowelling round the slabs to accentuate them. 
Painstaking measured drawings of the slabs from the East and the West sides. 
Taking accurate levels of each stone flag. Some of them are cracked and slightly subsided. Even the slants of these are recorded. 
Here we are removing the sticky detritus between a subsided stone and its neighbour. 
The half slab is here lifted. Beneath, secrets of Clestrain might well lay. Tomorrow we will find out.
Thank you for reading these blogs. It is a pleasure to write them and inform you.
If tomorrow’s weather has any sort of clemency, we will have much more to show.
Digits entwined… Andrew.
#ScotlandDigs2021
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