An archeological dig has commenced at Glasgow’s Govan Old Church
Searching for additional stones, volunteers have undergone an archeological dig at Govan Old Church.
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00:00It's the first day of our excavations and we've got this interesting combination of a team made up of local community volunteers and Glasgow University students or recent graduates as well.
00:15So we're just getting back into an area where I originally came in the 1990s and we discovered a roadway which is deep in that trench and about a metre below ground and it's a very hard packed gravel surface and layers of gravel and fortunately at one point a bunch of charcoal material got incorporated.
00:39So that's given us radiocarbon date which takes us back to the early middle ages.
00:44This we think is the original entranceway into the churchyard which is why we've come back here and fortunately the whole perimeter of the churchyard is free of burials so we don't have to deal with that.
01:00The reason behind all the people and visitors there is this square foundations of a square stone building and this in its latter kind of use and when it's recorded in the 19th century it's used by the guys who are maintained in the graveyard.
01:18It's also where when they start getting interested in the stones it's stored there. Some of the sarcophagus is there, I think one of the hog backs is in there as well.
01:30So there's a couple of stones in there but it's not built for that, it's much earlier so we don't quite know the date, we don't have any dating evidence for it yet.
01:41So I think it's quite likely that it's a kind of gatehouse, my kind of fantasy is that maybe it's a chapel and the reason I'm thinking it's maybe a special chapel for the sarcophagus is because it's in this corner of the churchyard, in the southeast area of the churchyard where the sarcophagus was discovered in 1855.