I have discovered a subterranean wall in my garden!

On Sunday, Ben and I went to pick up some plants for ... planting ... because we haven't done anything with the garden yet, and if we don't get our arses into gear soon summer will be over and there won't be time for flowers. Yesterday, I began digging out a flowerbed along the dividing fence between our garden and the neighbour's. Towards the end of the fenceline, and about a foot into the garden, my spade hit something hard and, when I investigated further, I discovered a block of reddish stone. At first I thought it was a paving slab, and I left it with the intention of getting Ben to help me haul it out later; but, as it turns out, it is the end of a wall. The top of it is a few inches beneath the lawn and I dug down nearly two foot and couldn't find its base, so it's been buried deep.

I'm kinda excited about it. Presumably it extends further across the garden, but is it just a small bit of wall or part of a larger, surviving structure? The flats were built in the 60's, so it must be at least 50-years-old and the stone itself didn't look particularly antique; but to be buried that deeply...? That's an exciting thing, right?

What I really wanted to do was dig up the entire freakin' lawn so that I could see how long and how tall my wall was, and maybe get a better idea as to its age. What I actually did was fill the flowerbed back in for planting. :( Sigh. I would do anything right now to have a geophys team come up and do a survey...

I wonder who built it, and what they were like. Maybe it was part of a farmhouse, or a little cottage. This village dates back to Saxon times (although obviously the wall isn't that old, as awesome as that would be) and has excellent arable land, so it's viable that a farm used to stand here long ago ... although elsewhere in the village, houses and cottages two-hundred-years plus are common place; so it would be odd for this one to fall into disrepair, I guess. There's a local history society, they might have some old maps I can look at.

Maybe I'm just letting my imagination get carried away. Regardless, I dedicate Sunn O)))'s My Wall to my wall (I love this song, so it's great to finally have my own Wall! Ha!).