However, yesterday, if you were walking or cycling in the warm sun along Alban Way, you may have come across something completely different. A short while previously a series of rectangular patches were scalped of vegetation on both sides of the path – the line of the former branch railway between St Albans and Hatfield, closed for passengers in 1951 and freight by 1968. You might have taken a mild interest in that clearance.
Yesterday morning you may also have spotted a small group of keen young children with trowels and some excitement at one of the cleared patches one hundred metres or so east of Smallford railway bridge. Viewers of Time Team will have noted the tell-tale sign of a square line pegged out beside the former track: the standard area for a one-metre square test pit. The calm Sunday morning atmosphere was regularly punctuated with squeals of delight as objects of interest were encouraged to the surface. Among the more obvious finds of brittle plastic and stones within the soil, were revealed an old bolt, small pieces of coal and the bottom of a small 19th century clay jar or pot. No doubt many other objects were transferred to the finds tray during the course of the morning, all supervised by the children's parents and the project leader.The children were all members of the Young Archaeologists' Club and were exploring there on behalf of the Smallford Project ( www.smallford.org ), raised to investigate the history of the hamlet, collect a number of stories about the place and restore the former railway station still standing behind a contractor's mech fence.
Children are natural archaeologists, and during the next few weeks they will be making sense of the objects they have found, and no doubt, will continue to find.
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