Archaeological dig starts at 'time capsule' canal

Archaeologists are looking at the remains of a 200-year-old canal to try and understand what the purpose of it might have been and examine changes to the landscape over time.

Pinkery Canal near Simonsbath on Exmoor was built in 1819 by the Knight family, however, its purpose remains a mystery.

An archaelogical dig is now taking place on the site, to help us better understand the history of the peaty upland.

Kimberley Colman, heritage ranger at Exmoor National Park Authority, said: "The canal is like a time capsule. Through this excavation we can look at the layers of sediment and track how people interacted with the landscape through time."

"The Pinkery canal runs for 8km (4.9 miles) across Exmoor but doesn't seem to connect to anything," Colman said.

"We don't know how it was filled with water, which makes it so interesting," she added.

"It was an area once owned by the crown for a thousand years and then it was sold to the Knight family in 1819."

The family started one of the biggest agricultural reclamation projects in the south west on the land, as part of which they built the canal.

"We do have the original Knight family letters and it refers to this feature as a canal. But they don't fully explain why it was built or how it functioned," Colman said.

"What we think it was probably designed for a small, bathtub-sized tug boat."

Now, 50 years since it was last examined by archaeologists, they are looking at it again.

"We think of Exmoors moorland as this wild and untouched place but it's been shaped by thousands of years of human activity," Colman said.

She added that looking at the sediment layers by the canal will show how those activities shaped and changed the landscape.

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