Some great news! Thanks to a donation of £1550 from the Gamlingay Community Turbine Tithe Fund, GamArch has now ordered a display board for the Meadows, to finish the Saxon re-interment project. Funding and placement of a boulder and plaque memorialising the Saxon forebears of Gamlingay has already been undertaken and the Turbine grant will provide a handy info display board standing close by the Saxon memorial stone. The boulder marks the spot where Saxon remains were re-intered earlier in the year, the remains having come from some of those excavated nearby ahead of the Poppyfields housing development. So, a big thank you Turbine people for granting us this money.

Together with the History Society, our efforts to memorialise the village’s ancestors will finally reach fruition. We couldn’t have gotten this far without the help and generosity of many others and we’ll acknowledge all of those who have helped when the info board is put in place. For now, though, one person in particular deserves some credit at this stage – Chris Toomsett, the chair of the GamArch group. It is largely thanks to his sustained effort, determination and diplomatic skills that the Saxon Heritage Project was a success – well done Chris!

Meanwhile, academic research into the rest of the Saxon skeletal remains continues and we’ll keep you up to date on the findings.

About a month ago now we decided it was time to reach a wider audience by using social media and so we have lately started up Facebook and Twitter accounts. One thing leads to another doesn’t it and we’ve also given the website a new lick of paint, reorganised the menu structure and done a few other things under the hood to make the website a bit more welcoming and easier to navigate. We’re still tidying up and tinkering with the layout and this may disrupt your viewing for the next week or so but the major changes have all now been implemented. Please let us know if anything is blatantly wrong so we can sort problems out.

One of the new things here at the website is what you’re reading now, the GamArch blog, and this post is the first of what will be many more to come. Posts will touch on a miscellany of topics – including archaeological news of things beyond our area – and sometimes the posts will add to stuff we’ve covered in the fieldwork and articles pages of the website. For a more straightforward listing of events (and some local news), see the News & Events website pages.

Contributions are always welcome so do make use of us if you want to publicise an event or would like to write about anything of an archaeological nature, preferably having a local slant. Contact details are over on the Welcome page.