One of the most interesting finds is a pair of bronze spurs which date back to the Civil War. They were only about two feet underground near the skeleton of a horse. Near the same spot a number of iron spurs and a woman's pair of spurs were found, as well as an iron tool used by ancient farriers. In the old ditch Which surrounded the city wall many pieces of leather were discovered in the mud. They are in an excellent state of preservation. One was a seventeenth-century shoe.
Mr. J. A. Daniell, a member of the Ashmolean staff, in an interview, said the wall and ditch were probably built in the thirteenth century, although no date can be fixed definitely. "Up to the middle of the sixteenth century it would appear that the ditch was kept reasonably clean," he said, "but after that it was apparently felt that the ditch could serve no further useful purpose as a means of defence, and it became a general rubbish dump." When the Sheldonian was built about 100 years later, said Mr. Daniell, the ditch was filled in with stone dust and levelled.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.