A Heritage Build Weekend to Remember – 10th and 11th October 2026

October is set to be an exciting month for heritage at Stanwick Lakes, and our next Heritage Build Weekend on 10th and 11th October is a particularly special one.

As part of our From Iron to Empire heritage project, we’ll be marking two important milestones: the opening of our new Bronze Age-style jetty and the first firing of our replica Roman pottery kiln.

But there will be plenty more happening across the weekend too, with demonstrations, living history, traditional crafts and hands-on activities bringing different parts of Stanwick’s past to life.

Opening of the Bronze Age Jetty

For the first time, visitors will be able to get behind the scenes and explore the new jetty for themselves, with self-guided access available across both days.

The jetty has been created using Bronze Age-inspired construction techniques, bringing together traditional woodworking skills and experimental archaeology to give us a glimpse into how people may have built and worked around the water thousands of years ago.

Throughout the weekend, you’ll be able to see woodworking and other traditional crafting skills in action, alongside Bronze Age-style bronze casting demonstrations with Dr James Dilley.

James will be demonstrating how bronze casting may have been carried out over 4,000 years ago, giving visitors the chance to see this fascinating process up close.

Firing of our replica Roman Pottery Kiln

Meanwhile, over at our Roman-style replica kiln, our volunteers will be waiting to see the results of months of hard work.

As part of the project, volunteers have been making replica Roman pottery during our hands-on workshops, using traditional techniques to create the pots that will now be fired in the new kiln.

The kiln itself has been built as an exercise in experimental archaeology, based closely on archaeological evidence from Roman pottery kilns found at Stibbington in the Upper Nene Valley. From its updraft design to the construction of the firing chamber, the aim has been to recreate the technology as closely as we can from the archaeological evidence available to us.

Now comes the exciting part: the kiln’s first proper firing.

We’re keeping a little mystery around exactly what will emerge when the kiln is opened, but after months of planning, building and making, we’re quietly confident that our Roman-style kiln is ready to do what it was built for.

The firing will take place over the weekend, with the kiln due to be opened by early afternoon on Sunday, when we’ll get our first look at the finished pots. It will be a chance to see experimental archaeology in action and, quite literally, put our reconstruction to the test.

And there’s plenty more to discover…

The jetty and kiln might be marking the weekend’s big milestones, but there will be plenty more happening across Stanwick Lakes too.

• Meet a Roman! The Longthorpe Legion Roman re-enactment group will be joining us across the weekend, bringing Roman life to the site with their living history displays, clothing and equipment. It’s a chance to meet the people behind the archaeology and find out more about life in Roman Britain.
• The Northants Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers will also be here, demonstrating traditional spinning, weaving and natural dyeing techniques. Come along and see how natural materials can be transformed into colour, and discover some of the skills people have used to create textiles for generations.
• There will also be a chance to say hello to Paula from Hermit’s Rest, a historic bone crafter, who will have her bone-working set-up at the weekend. Come and see her craft in action and find out more about working with bone as a material.
• Fancy having a go yourself? Lisa from Earthly Arts Studio will be running a mosaic drop-in, helping visitors create pieces for a replica Roman mosaic that will eventually become part of our permanent Villa Viewpoint interpretation. It’s an all-ages activity, so you can add your own little piece to something that will become part of Stanwick’s story for years to come.

And for our younger visitors, there will be family-friendly traditional wheat and corn crafts to have a go at too, using natural materials to create your own piece of heritage to take home.

A weekend of experimental archaeology

From Bronze Age woodworking and bronze casting to Roman pottery, natural dyeing, bone carving, mosaics and living history, there will be plenty to discover across the weekend.

And the best part? Much of what you’ll see is experimental archaeology in action. We’re not simply recreating objects from the past, we’re exploring the techniques, materials and skills that people may have used, learning through the process and seeing what we can discover along the way.

So whether you’re fascinated by archaeology, love traditional crafts, want to get hands-on, or simply fancy seeing what we’ve been getting up to behind the scenes, come along and explore.