Bradgate Park Archaeology Fieldschool, Part Two

Last week I blogged about my visit to the Archaeology Fieldschool, where I met Richard Thomas, the lead archaeologist.  There was a lot to take in, both information and atmosphere.  Richard is clearly a great communicator, explaining the site to me as well as leading the work of the students.  The job requires incredible attention to detail as well as the interpretive imagination: Richard has a look in his eyes that is calm but intensely focused.  I can do the imagination bit, but not the attention to detail – and I was immediately grabbed by a find at the dig for which there is not, as yet, a clear explanation.  To the right of the entrance, where the porch would have been, is a large, dense pile of horse bones.  Not whole skeletons, just legs.  And buried with joints still intact.  As I stared at the find, I could see hooves sticking out; a fibula, a stifle joint, a tibia…  Why would the legs be detached and buried intact?  Some macabre building material? Superstition? It’s not clear.  For an archaeologist, it’s a conundrum.  For a poet, it’s a gift.

 

On the Discovery of a Cache of Horse Bones at the Stables in Bradgate Park

 

The horses are waiting.

Under the floor, their legs still-jointed,

running from the dark dream of the stables.

The grooms have gone; the stone has been robbed out

but the horses are waiting.

 

They are waiting to click monstrously upright;

shaking off the rubble, to play

their hooves on the cobbles,

cracking coronets.

 

The horses are waiting to find their heads:

to flare their nostrils with phantom breath and turn

towards the outer door.

 

The horses are waiting in heaps of bone, marrow and pulse

sealed in gravel and clay

for a July day when the dig will find them,

and drive them across the water-meadows

 

to barrel onto moss and bracken,

drumming up Bowling Green,

in the summer drought where the undergrowth dies,

herding revenge under the sun at Tyburn.

 

For a charge of fury, throat-latch at the cry,

by the paths and riverside

in a rake of metal shoes and wild eyes,

the skeleton horses are waiting.