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Waterloo Uncovered at Chalke Valley History Festival

This year, Waterloo Uncovered and a team volunteers from UCL will, once again be at Chalke Valley History Festival. This year, we’re doing something slightly different, we’re looking at the Women of Waterloo. Find out more about the project below. We will have an array of finds on display from our last four years of […]
Battle of the Buttons

Battle of the Buttons

In the latest in our series of short films, Professor Tony Pollard gives us a run down of last summer's ...

Dig Diary Day 1: Waterloo Uncovered Rides Again

Battlefield Beginnings On Sunday 7th of July, the Waterloo Uncovered team gathered at the main museum on the Waterloo battlefield, Memorial 1815, to officially kick off the fifth season of the project. As always, an international team of veterans, serving military personnel, archaeologists and students from a variety of backgrounds have joined us in Belgium. […]

Dig Diary Day 2: Musket Balls at Mont-Saint-Jean

Evidence of Evacuation? In our freshly dug trenches along the east edge of the Mont-Saint-Jean orchard, an exciting discovery is in progress. The farm of Mont-Saint-Jean, which served as a field hospital during the fighting, is widely considered to have been several hundred yards behind the front lines of fighting, safely out of harms way. […]

Dig Diary Day 3: Of Reading, Remembering and Ridges

Reading to Remember 2019 When Private John Peter Leonhard first laid eyes on Hougoumont farm, he recounted the utter hopelessness the sight instilled in him; “The doors were open, one could see the freshly broken loopholes in the wall. Ha, I thought to myself, here you’ll settle in but leave nevermore. Good night world.” Private John […]

Dig Diary Day 4: Behind the Scenes

As the first fantastic week of Waterloo Uncovered 2019 nears its end, we’re taking you behind the scenes of the dig and shining a light on two often overlooked parts of the team: the specialists who help us discover our finds, and the photographers who record them. Meet the Metal Detectorists The Waterloo Uncovered team […]

Dig Diary Day 5: Bringing History to Life

Redcoats Return As the first week of Waterloo Uncovered 2019 draws to a close, the sites of Hougoumont and Mont-Saint-Jean have once more been been overrun by British redcoats. Today’s visitors are members of the Coldstream Guards 1815 group, a military and living history society dedicated to the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards. The Coldstream […]

Waterloo Weekend Diary: Weapons, Women and Wet Weather

#WaterlooWeekend Open Day The working week may be over, but a group of veterans, archaeologists and students donned their hi-vis jackets regardless yesterday morning. Their destination was Hougoumont farm, and not even a brief spell of torrential rain could stop them! On Saturday we held our annual #WaterlooWeekend open day event, where we opened up the gates […]

Dig Diary Day 6: Mass Musket Balls and Scots Guard Buttons

It’s the first day of our second week here at Waterloo Uncovered! After a weekend of recovering from their exhausting hard week last week, the team are back and ready to do it all over again. Waterloo Uncovered: Live! You might have seen Waterloo Uncovered live this morning on BBC Breakfast, where Professor Tony Pollard […]

Dig Diary Day 7: Military Medicine and Well Diving

Military Medicine at Mont-Saint-Jean This morning, retired consultant,  curator of the Royal College of Surgeons and curator of the Military Surgical Museum at Ferme de Mont-Saint-Jean Dr Mick Crumplin kindly gave our veterans, archaeologists and students a tour of the Ferme de Mont-Saint-Jean museum, which houses his personal collection of medical artefacts relating to the […]

Dig Diary Day 8: Poignant Proof of the Human Cost of Battle

A Possible Amputation Pit? In the orchard of Mont-Saint-Jean, Waterloo Uncovered’s metal detectorists picked up a signal that indicated the presence of a large metal object, which was promptly excavated by a team of archaeologists, students and veterans. Although it is too degraded to identify at this time, it may be the remains of an […]

Dig Diary Day 9: Bombs and Buttons

An Explosive Discovery In a field in the vicinity of Mont-Saint-Jean farm, an earth-shaking find was discovered yesterday afternoon. Serving Coldstream Guardsman Oliver Horncastle, whom you may remember as the lucky man who discovered both the first find of the 2019 season and a Coldstream Guards button at Hougoumont, picked up a large signal while […]

Dig Diary Day 10: 2019 Recap

A Cornucopia of Cornfield Finds Where have we been? A large cornfield near Mont-Saint-Jean farm. What did we find?  A large amount of musket balls, a 6-inch unexploded howitzer shell and coins and buttons likely dropped by soldiers on the reverse slope of the battlefield. We were lucky enough to visit Waterloo when the crops in the nearby cornfield […]

Winter Dig Diary

This Winter, we've been busy! Catch up with all the Waterloo Uncovered news today.

Change at Waterloo

Article by Tim Tonkin and Alex Cauvi, from The Doctor, February 2020.

Spring Dig Diary

WU's Spring Update - find out about what we've been up to in 2020... from being published to winning awards, it's all go!