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Ad Gefrin means ‘by the hill of goats‘ and comes from the location of the 7th century Anglo-Saxon royal palace at Yeavering four miles away that inspired us from the very beginning.

The first red pigment ever discovered, Ochre was derived from iron rich rocks containing hematite hundreds of thousands of years ago, a highly pigmented mineral that easily stained the skin and could be shaped into sticks, or ground into a fine, powdered pigment.

Slag flecks are small, often dark, bits of by-product from smelting or other metallurgical processes. They are typically made of metal oxides and silicon dioxide, and are used as inclusions in mortar or as an aggregate in construction.

Hammerscale, also written Hammer Scale, is a flaky or spheroidal byproduct of the iron forging process. Hammerscale is almost universally recovered from archaeological excavations in areas where iron ore was refined and forged. Hammerscale’s magnetic character also aids in its recovery and in mapping larger features by means of magnetic susceptibility surveys. Hammerscale can provide …

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In colloquial usage, the term Palimpsest is also used in architecture, archaeology and geomorphology to denote an object made or worked upon for one purpose and later reused for another; for example, a monumental brass the reverse blank side of which has been re-engraved.

Container mound: A mound whose main job is to cover and protect something placed inside it—usually a grave, a hoard of objects or a chamber. For example, a Round Barrow or passage tomb: the earth hides and honours the burial beneath.

A mound built mainly to stand, walk, meet or perform rituals on its summit. Its value lies in the surface it gives you and the dramatic height it adds to the landscape. For example, Silbury Hill (Wiltshire): huge, flat-topped chalk mound; no burial chamber inside, no bones found.

A Hushing scarp is the clean, cliff-like face produced by the controlled flood of Hushing.

Scarp: A mining term which describes the steep-sided, freshly washed face left behind once the torrent has done its job. Below it, there is usually a broad fan of the swept-out spoil.

Hushing: This is a mining method in which workers store water behind a temporary dam high on a slope, then release it in one sudden rush.  The water then acts like a bulldozer: it strips soil and loose rock, revealing the bedrock vein ready for mining.