Week 3 of the 2025 dig was a very busy one from the community engagement point of view.
A highlight was a visit from Slough Refugee Support. A group of 29 adults and children joined us for a wide variety of activities. These included tours of the site, a runes scavenger hunt, visiting the finds tent, a musical reading of the Chronicles and lunch at Cookham Library thanks to Jacky Lamb and Anna Jones, Project Development Manager at the Museum of English Rural Life.
Our visitors were then given a tour of some local allotments by Keith and Sue Le Page and were treated to a special workshop by Hippopot herbalist Alice Nugent and her colleague Rowena Paxton.
SRS’s visit to Cookham was a great success and built on previous visits to Montem Mound and Salt Hill VR in Slough.
Another significant highlight was a major two-day Art and Archaeology Symposium (with over 50 attendees in person and on line) led by our Artist in Residence Phyllida Shelley.
In addition, there were creative workshops on the excavation site, featuring Archaeology and Printmaking, as well as creative mindfulness with archaeological finds. Also a Young Archaeologists’ Workshop, a return visit by Berkshire Vision and a Press Day (making the ITV News!).
We also ran a 3-day exhibition in Holy Trinity Church called “River & Earth: Contemporary Art Meets Ancient Ground”.
Public tours of the site continued to be very well attended and great interest was expressed in the skeletons and the emerging finds.
