Wildlife Watch - The Striped Lychnis moth at Butser

Dark Mullein Flowers

Over the years Butser Ancient farm has become a site of great environmental importance. Situated amongst forests and fields, with our ancient farming methods and wild hedgerows we have attracted various wildlife and rare species. One of these rare species being the Striped Lychnis moth which has increased in number greatly over the past few years in particular due to our Dark Mullein, a tall wild flowering perennial plant, with yellow flowers and purple stamen. The striking caterpillars feed on the yellow flowers and can be found throughout July and August.  The fully grown larvae crawl off and find a safe place to pupate in the ground nearby and emerge the following spring. 7 Striped Lychnis larvae were found at Butser Ancient Farm in 2017 and there were 78 in July 2018 so let’s see if we can keep this upward trend going!

If you have a passion for wildlife and want to encourage Striped Lychid moths into your garden follow these tips!

1. Do not cut Dark Mullein plants between May and September.

2. Leave unmanaged areas for wild flowers to flourish

3. Disturb the soil periodically or cut areas in the winter to stop them getting overgrown.

4. Shake seed out from the old flowers in the autumn or winter.

Striped Lychnis Moth caterpillar

If you live locally to the site you could collect seed with permission and grow it in your garden, visit the Butterfly Conservation website  or contact Fiona at Butterfly Conservation for more advice;  fhaynes@butterfly-conservation.org

Mosaic project update!

Week 8  of the Butser Sparsholt Mosaic project - an update from projects coordinator Trevor Creighton.

We are two months into the Butser Mosaic project and everything is going well and gathering pace. As we move into week 9 we should have ‘squared the circle’ by completing the decorative corner patterns around our central, circular designs. These four…. let’s call them ‘corner pieces’ (although, as they are around a circle, that’s a bit dodgy)…. consist of two separate ‘motifs’. One we’ll call a lotus and the other a scallop shell.The two motifs are diagonally opposite each other in the original mosaic. One recent head-scratcher was figuring out which one goes on the left and which the right as you walk into the room. There are a few photographs of the orientation of the mosaic in the original excavation but, on close inspection, a couple of these appear to have been reversed when printed into the reference books! Fortunately, we were able to reference the monograph – the book, published by the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society – authored by David E. Johnston and Johnathan Dicks. This features beautiful illustrations by David Neal, including a plan of the villa with the orientation of our mosaic. Interestingly, David Neal, along with Stephen Cosh, produced a four-volume survey of Romano-British mosaics with hand-painted copies of the majority of known examples. One key reason for doing this was the inadequacy of photography to accurately record detail…. now we know why.

We have also had two new recruits join the team: Linden and Richard, both keen field archaeologists. Now they get to experience what it’s like to lay the things they dig up!

Once our scallops and lotuses are complete we will have laid around 4 square metres of mosaic. We have done a few back of the envelope calculations: about 35,000 tesserae laid and 500 kg of mortar mixed by hand and laid (ouch). The next phase is to move on to the 4-strand guilloche. Here’s a photo of the mock-up version…. only 2 square metres of that to lay!

Here's a video showing our progress!

Summer of Science and Sorcery draws to a close

As our Summer of Science and Sorcery draws to a close we're looking back on all the fun, crafts, demonstrations and experiments that have happened this summer across the farm.Here are a few photos from our themed activity days to share, we'll add more as they come in!Awesome Earth - July 31st 2018

Fearsome Fire!

It's been great fun at the farm this summer as we explore ancient crafts, skills and knowledge through our Summer of Science and Sorcery.Heres a few photos from our Fearsome Fire day last week - we had blacksmithing, fire-lighting, charcoal drawing, bead making, cooking and more!Thanks to Eleanor Sopwith for the fantastic photos! Next Tuesday we'll be celebrating powerful plants with a range of activities from 10 till 4. Normal admission applies.

Summer activities are hotting up!

As we prepare for our Fearsome Fire day as part of our Summer of Science and Sorcery here's a look back at the activities this summer so far.The holidays kicked off with our Festival of Archaeology on the  24th July with a day full of demonstrations, crafts, digging, finds identification and more. We had a brilliant day in the sunshine with lovely crowds joining us to find out more about Butser and archaeology. Here's a selection of our favorite photos from the day...

 

Mosaic project update week 3/4

Trevor Creighton, projects co-ordinator gives a further update on the mosaic progress;The mosaic is moving along beautifully. In week 3 we completed the wave pattern and a dry layout of the ‘swastika meander’ – the next pattern in the design.The swastika is an incredibly widely distributed symbol, across time and the globe. It appears in Bronze Age art, in Hindu, Buddhist and Jane religious representations and in Greco-Roman art (among many others). It is almost everywhere a positive symbol. It was only in the 20th Century that it became associated with the horrors of Nazism.The meander is a more straightforward pattern to lay (yay!) and we have been able to make quick progress. If you would like to see a little movie that reviews our progress over the past 4 weeks click on the link above in the heading strap – ‘Butser Mosaic – The Movie’Here’s a photograph of the progress to date…We've been making a timelapse of our progress so far; if only it were this fast in reality!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUSRvalo_4sWe also have a dedicated Butser mosaic blog here where you can follow our progress. 

Mosaic project update

Trevor Creighton, projects co-ordinator gives an update on the progress of our mosaic project...We have taken some big strides in week 2. In the picture below you can see Emily, Maria and Jess hard at work finishing off the ‘second feature’ in our mosaic: concentric rings of black, white and red tesserae encircling the central ‘flower’ motif. It grows and grows!The job is still rather painstaking but we hope it will speed up as we go. One sticking point – literally – has been the mortar we have been using to bed our tesserae in – and ‘stick’ the thing to the floor! We are about to start working with a revised mortar, much closer to the ‘Roman’ original and based on quicklime. It’s not as strong as the mortar we have been using but, hopefully, it’s a lot easier to work with.A huge thank you must, again, go to all of the people involved in the project. A special thanks to Arthur for making the timber formers we are using to hold the mortar in place as it sets.

The Mosaic project at Butser

Trevor Creighton; Projects Co-ordinator introduces our exciting new Roman Mosaic Project;The Romano-British villa at Butser Ancient Farm, completed in 2003, is a replica of one discovered at Sparsholt near Winchester and excavated in the late 1960’s. We are now involved in installing a mosaic floor in the reception room, inspired by the splendid original – which resides in the Winchester Museum.Unlike the 4^th Century, though, this mosaic isn’t being made by slaves. Instead a dedicated team of FABULOUS volunteers are on their hands and knees laying the new mosaic. The team includes volunteers from Liss Archaeology and Bignor Roman villa. While replica mosaics have been constructed in Britain and elsewhere across the Roman world (as well as many painstaking restorations of originals), we believe it is unusual for them to be laid by the ‘direct method’. That is, straight onto the floor. Most are laid on segments, sometimes later placed on a floor. The direct method is (as our crew will confirm) more physically demanding. However, one of the main aims of recreating the mosaic is not just to take the Butser villa a step closer to the original but also get a sense of what working conditions were like for the makers of Roman-era mosaics; perhaps we can even foster a sense of empathy and camaraderie with the mosaicists of 1600 years ago.In an important way, our laying technique is experimental and experiential. The techniques we use to form the patterns of the mosaic and the materials used to bind them to the floor are also designed to further our knowledge. Lime mortar will be used in the mosaic construction. Unlike modern cement, this material is ‘faithful’ to Romano-British technique. Over the course of the project we will vary the types of lime and other ingredients in the mortar, to help us examine which mixes are optimal for both laying and durability. This floor, like its Sparsholt ancestor, is to be walked upon. Unlike its ancestor we expect tens of thousands of feet each year… hence our interest in durability!This won’t be a tile-for-tile (or tessera-for-tessera) reproduction of the original. The hand-cut marble cubes we are using are a substitute for the original native stone and terracotta. The aim is to reproduce the original design, dimensions and colours as closely as possible. At about 8000 tesserae for each square metre of floor, there will be about 86,000 tiles in the central geometric design section and another 30,000 larger tesserae in the surrounding single-colour border.The team at Butser Ancient Farm have also been repainting the villa inside and out to enhance the rooms and give visitors a stronger sense of what it would have been like to visit a villa during Roman times. The bright colours and geometric designs would have created vibrant interiors that are startling to visitors today and will be complemented by the colour and bold designs of the mosaic.Work on the mosaic will continue throughout the summer at Butser Ancient Farm, and visitors are welcome to come and observe the progress. There will be a series of talks for visitors to explain the ideas and techniques behind the project.The team at Butser Ancient Farm appreciate the support they have received from the Winchester Museum, Fishbourne Roman Palace, Bignor Roman Villa, Liss Archaeology and South Downs National Park. Each of our organisations showcases significant elements of Romano-British history and heritage and this project is facilitating a co-operative approach between all stakeholders to help foster a broader public understanding of the fantastic Roman heritage of Hampshire and West Sussex. Butser Ancient Farm would like to especially acknowledge South Downs National Park for their generous support through the Sustainable Communities Fund.There is also a dedicated blog all about the mosaic project here.