Archaeologists uncover further remains and ancient artefacts at Cookham monastery site

Archaeologists excavating the site of an eighth century monastery in Cookham have uncovered further remains and more ancient artefacts from the site.

The team from the University of Reading has been excavating the site adjacent to Holy Trinity Church in Cookham each summer since 2021 and have uncovered a number of artefacts and remains to build on the rich history of the site.

The monastery was led by Queen Cynethryth more than 1,200 years ago and experts believe it may have been one of the UK’s earliest hospices.

Based on initial analysis of the 23 skeletons excavated from 80 burials found on site, it is believed the site was used as a care centre where surgeries, herbal remedies and other medical support was offered to the sick and dying.

Archaeologists are now more than halfway through this summer’s excavations and have uncovered yet more remains and ancient artefacts.

Professor Gabor Thomas, early medieval archaeology professor and lead on the project, told the Advertiser: “We’ve made progress in all of our key objectives of what we are hoping to find this year, so I’m very pleased.

“We’ve got a mixed demography represented in our cemetery, so we have found some juveniles, some young-aged children, along with adults as well.”

He added: “They will certainly help to improve our understanding of the different kind of patterns that we’ve preliminarily identified so far.”

As part of this year’s work, the team have been exploring a structure believed to be a watermill.

Professor Thomas said: “We’ve been doing much more work on our mill leat and also the archaeology around it where we think we’ve got our mill building.

“So, it’s really connecting the leat with the building itself.”

He added that the discovery of the mill building is ‘hugely exciting’ because ‘you just don’t get that kind of evidence surviving’.

The team has also been doing more work in the large timber communal hall.

“We’ve got more evidence for the wall alignments and all also some of the archaeology that we’ve got around and adjacent to the building as well.

“So that’s all starting to come out and be clarified,” Professor Thomas said.

He added that the team has discovered some ‘great artefacts’ from the 8-9th century, including bone comb, fragments of glass, pottery, and animal bones.

Professor Thomas said the team have ‘so much archaeology still to do’.

He added: “We know we’ve got a second well, which is one of our big features that we excavated last year, we’ve got another one of those that we’ve identified this year.

“We’ve got more buildings we think, adjacent to the one which we’ve been opening up this year and previous years. There’s loads and loads more.”

Professor Thomas revealed that the team will not be excavating the second well ‘in any depth this year’, but they will be exposing enough of it, so they know what to do next year.

On Wednesday, community groups and members of the press visited and toured the site, including Berkshire Vision and Slough Refugee Support (SRS).

The groups were taken on a tour of the site by Jonathan Charmley of the University of Reading.

TV presenter Sandi Toksvig was also present on the day. 

Louise Sprackling, chair of Slough Refugee Support, said: “It’s really lovely to see the children particularly really excited about history, learning about Anglo-Saxon history at school and coming here today to see it in action.”

The excavations will continue until Saturday, August 9.