This week, we are announcing an above inflation rate pay increase of 5.1% for all our 170 staff! This follows on from a profit-share bonus given to staff at Christmas.

We were visited by the children of Ballogie Nursery, who learnt about shoemaking, and made our conservators a homemade thank you card!
Want to discover more on the Ballogie Souter’s Workshop? Visit the website of the funders of this project, the Birse Community Trust website: tinyurl.com/birsesout

AOC conservators have been assessing objects left untouched since the death of James Merchant, Scottish cobbler, in 1941. Items left in his souter’s workshop include top hats in metal tins and shoebuffs with radium treated fabric! 🎩✨

Volunteers were learning about lithics with Kristian Pedersen this month as part of Uncovering the Tweed @DestTweedUK. Cataloguing the lithics found in the fields around Paxton, they found several nice platform cores and a thumbnail scraper were the stand out finds of the day!
#destinationtweeduk

Come to our FREE archaeology pop-up event at the 🌱Singleton Environment Centre☘️, in Singleton, Kent on Saturday the 26th of April, and discover what #AOC and the Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group have found to unearth the history of ‘Chilmington in Wartime’

From the Palaeolithic period onwards, British peoples have had millennia to shape the land for farming, home life, and defence. Flint specialists, however, can date finds displaced by these processes by matching core dimensions to undisturbed blades found nearby!🏺✨
#Archaeology #FindsFriday

In 1914, the Friends of Great Chart (Kent) created this 'Roll of Honour' for its soldiers. Steven Bartlett's genealogical investigation explores the lives of these Chilmington families in 1911, before tragedy struck 👇
#WWI #FirstWorldWar #Kent #AshfordKent #Chilmington #LocalHistory #HistoryLovers

#FindsFriday flint again! Thumbnail scrapers such as this are characteristic of the early Bronze Age, often found alongside Beaker pottery🏺✨
#Archaeology #BronzeAge

🍊 Ye shall know them by their fruit! 🍐
What can we tell about the everyday life of soldiers from WWII from these items they stashed away in the floorboards of Singleton Manor brought in by our intrepid Chilmington researchers last week?
#ashfordkent #kent #history #WWII #wwıı #Archaeology

Last week, AOC Archaeology participated in University of Edinburgh Fieldwork Fair, organised by the 👩‍🎓 Edinburgh University #Archaeology Society. This marked the third consecutive year that AOC has participated in this event, which was attended by one of our fieldwork project supervisors!

A ha-ha was a popular earthwork in the 18th century, built to provide a seamless view of rolling lawns, and this week AOC staff and volunteers teamed up with @habsandheritage.bsky.social‬ to clean up, properly date, and assess damage to a ha-ha wall at Kew Gardens! 🌴🌳 #localhistory #community

An Express Dairy's 1950s 1/3 pint milk bottle! 🥛It may have escaped from a local school's milk delivery, a key part of the Education Act 1944 in ensuring free milk was provided to all primary school children even during nationwide rationing #londonhistory #SecretLondon #historicbuildingconservation

🔍 #FindsFriday kicks off our 5-part series on... flint! This year, AOC #Archaeology assessed 7,500 individual flints. But where did they come from? Over the next few weeks, we’ll uncover their surprising findspots and long afterlife. 🏺✨ #Archaeology

Before the headlines of 1914 declared "Britain in a State of War," life in the rural hamlet of Chilmington Green seemed peaceful, predictable—a place where "everyone knew their proper place." 🏡🚜

Exciting find! We’re sharing some never-before-seen #WWII photos on our Chilmington Community Project website. Stay tuned for a glimpse into the wartime history of #Kent!!

Volunteers were recording a recently discovered #graffito (possibly from WWII) in the porch of St Mary’s Great Chart for our #Chilmington Community Project this week. This recent discovery is yet another addition to the church’s almost 1000 years of #history!

“Friends, Romans, Country House: lend me your labour!”: the LAMAS lecture given by AOC’s Les Capon on the preliminary results of the #community excavations at Cranford Park #Hillingdon is now up on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg0R....