Our image today shows that Archaeology doesn’t have to  be buried in the ground, or to be  ancient, to reveal an important story of the past.

In celebration of the recent long spell of warm summer weather, we want to show that one of Thanet’s important seaside landmarks Margate Pier preserves much archaeological evidence of its us for industry and pleasure over the last 200 years.

Just look carefully for the fixtures and fittings that demonstrate that there were once many different uses for the pier, all related to Margate’s rich and diverse history. Even the stones of the pier tell a story, they were quarried at Aislaby in North Yorkshire.

If you can get down to Margate Pier this weekend, see if you can identify any of these or any other clues to the pier’s past history:

The picture shows clockwise from top left:

1. Metal crane track, used from the late 19th and early 20th for coal deliveries to the Margate Gas works

2. Scars of the tracks off the miniature railway that ran along the promenade in the 1950’s and 60’s

3. The original quoin stone and pier surface dating from the c. 1840’s at the landward side of the pier near the Turner Contemporary. This has been covered by later structures.

4.  Mooring positions inscribed into the edging stones along the inner harbour c. mid 20th century. NCB  probably stands for the National Coal Board.

There’s more information about Margate Pier in the Virtual Museum pages about our survey of the structure that was carried out in 2005, for the earlier design of the Turner contemporary – if anyone remembers that!

Let us know what you find if you visit the pier this weekend.

Today’s image is inspired by a visit today to the excavations at Randall Manor in Shorne Wood Country Park, where a complex and prestigious medieval building is now only represented by the footprint of its foundations and low walls.

Although parts of the building may have been constructed in stone, the walls would have supported a superstructure built in timber, none of which survives. In common with buildings excavated on archaeological sites from the Roman period to the 19th century, the work of the carpenters and the spaces that were created within the structure can only be reconstructed now by using surviving examples for comparison, or in the case of more ancient structures by analogy with later joinery techniques.

The picture today is of one of the complex joints in a later medieval timber framed barn the Trust recorded at Chambers Wall, Birchington, when the cladding of the barn had been stripped off prior to the conversion of the structure to a house. The exposure of the skeletal frame of the barn allowed the complex carpentry to be examined in detail, revealing the clever engineering that was involved in using timber to build a structure to enclose a very large space.

The picture shows the complex jointing involved to bring together elements of the frame and the roof of the barn and to join long sections of timber beams while retaining the strength of the structure. All the elements were fixed using only wooden pegs.

A close look at the image will also show the numerals that were carved into each timber to  identify its position in the frame when the pieces were manufactured elsewhere and brought to the site to be assembled on a supporting foundation of low brick and flint walls.

Like much of the evidence that archaeology provides, the walls exposed on a site like the Randall Manor excavation only take us part of the way to the story of the construction of the building. We need to stop and consider the elements that would be needed to complete the structure, which now only exist as a body of comparative evidence which we can bring to bear on our reconstruction of the missing elements.