Cookham monastery site excavation 'more successful' than last year, professor says

A professor leading the excavation of the site of an 8th-9th century monastery in Cookham said this year’s work has been ‘more successful’ with more found and more questions answered.

Archaeologists from the University of Reading have been back excavating the Anglo-Saxon monastery, with permission from and in collaboration with Holy Trinity Church, since the beginning of August and concluded their work for the year on Saturday.

During their excavations, the team discovered an additional 20 intact human burials and the disturbed remains of many more.

These burials are in addition to the human remains of 50 people found during last year’s excavations.

Professor Gabor Thomas, professor of Early Medieval Archaeology at the

University of Reading, said: “We know now that this is a fairly extensive cemetery.

“We recovered 20 more intact burials, but the disarticulated or disturbed remains of many, many more.

“We know there’s many, many more. It’s not just 20 more, but the disturbed remains of about another 50 more, I would say, from what we have in the ground.

“We’ve got much more analysis to do, but quite a lot of the disturbed remains show signs of what we call pathologies, so diseases of various kinds, a bit like the intact ones.

“So that’s giving us an impression that there are many generations of

diseased individuals that have been buried in this cemetery, it’s not just one generation.

“It’s a theme that runs through this population.”

This supports the theory that those who were ill and dying received care at the monastery.

The team also discovered various other elements including what they believe to be a watermill, built by the monastery for its use.

“[It’s] incredibly rare to get these,” he added.

“We think we’ve actually got the mill building.

“So, we’ve got evidence of what we call the leat, the woodline channel and we think we’ve got the wheel pit, but the wheel building itself or the foundations of [it], and that’s exceptionally rare.”

The team have also been excavating a large timber building at the site, believed to be one of the communal buildings for the monastery.

Several preserved wooden objects, including a very rare lathe turned wooden bowl have also been recovered from the bottom of a 9th century well, which was first discovered in 2023.

Over the last four weeks, an array of groups and figures, including schools, community clubs and politicians have visited the site, with the last of the tours taking place last Friday.

Saturday marked the last day of the excavation and saw a multi-faith group, some of whom included

Holy Trinity Church,

Maidenhead Mosque and Maidenhead Gurdwara, take a tour of the site and join Father Stephen Mills, vicar of the Benefice of The Cookhams, for a blessing of the graves.

During the day, University of Reading archaeology student Jonathan Charmley led a tour for a group of visually impaired people from Berkshire Vision.

The 23-year-old, who is severely visually impaired after losing his eyesight in 2021, said the tour was more hands-on than others, with visitors able to hold the archaeological finds.

“We want everyone to be able to come and look at and experience not only the archaeology that’s going on, but to find out a bit more about the local history and disability should not be a barrier to that,” Jonathan said.

Reflecting on this year’s excavation, Professor Thomas added: “I’d say it was more successful [than last year]

“We found so much more this year. We’ve answered many more questions, I’d say.”

The university’s department of archaeology started its excavations at the site in 2021 and will continue in 2025.