by G.B. Bailey
In the three week period following 14 January 2002 Falkirk Museum undertook an excavation at Weedingshall, Polmont, in advance of an extension to Grandsable Cemetery (with breaks for snow storms and gales – particularly that on 28 January when five trees in the avenue to Weedingshall House were blown down). Cropmarks had been noted on aerial photographs taken by the RCAHMS, which suggested the existence of an Iron Age enclosure with at least two ditches. In the event, these cropmarks turned out to be a combination of late medieval field boundaries and the nature of the underlying geology. Some of the marks were created by water seeping out at the junctions of the interleaved bands of sand and gravel. However, three long trial trenches were machine dug along the upper contours of the field and two features of archaeological significance were observed. In the central trench a small patch of oyster shells was encountered and the trench was first expanded downhill to the north with the help of the machine to capture any eroded material and finally by hand to the south (NS 9246 7906)
Falkirk Local History Society 