Time Team (1994–2014): Season 13, Episode 12 - Alfoldean, West Sussex - full transcript
This is West Sussex.
One of the very first parts
of Britain to be Romanised.
it's amazing how little
some things have changed here
over the past 2,000 years.
There's still the agriculture,
the rolling hills
and, of course, the A29.
Or, as the Romans
would have known it,
Stane Street, the main road
between Chichester and London.
What has disappeared though
is the thriving Roman settlement
which would have once flanked
this road.
Including a mansio.
A Roman hotel used by
the empire's officials
as they travelled the country.
And yet we know almost
nothing about mansios
or how they fitted
into the wider landscape.
This is a rare opportunity to shed
some light on a little-known aspect
of Roman life in Britain.
But we'll have our work cut out.
This whole site
is over half a kilometre long
with 300 years of Roman activity.
And, of course, we've got
just three days to find out.
There's a hell of a lot of
this hypocaust tile round here.
There's a hell of a lot of
this hypocaust tile round here.
It is amazing.
It's diddled with it,
it's everywhere.
As soon as you walk onto this field,
you know there was something big,
important and Roman here.
The ground's littered with box tile,
roof tile, high status pottery
and countless other classic
examples of Roman occupation.
It's no wonder that
over the last century,
this site has been surveyed, field
walked and written about many times.
But it's only been dug once
in the 1920s,
when an amateur archaeologist
called Samuel Winbolt identified it
as the site of a station -
an official complex of buildings
used by the great and the good
as they journeyed up
and down the country.
So what have we got?.
Is it a station?
Is it a mansio? I thought
they were the same thing.
Winbolt christened it a station,
but I think here they mind it
like a police station of Roman
troops or soldiers.
Today, we'd probably say no,
it's more to do with
a mansio, or a hotel.
A cross between a service
station and a medieval coaching inn.
But the whole country's
crossed with Roman roads.
So presumably there were lots
of these hotel things by the side
of them.
Don't we know everything we need to?
I mean, the problem is when
we look at Roman Britain
is that we understand the forts,
we understand tribal towns,
we've done work on Roman villas,
but we know diddly-squat
really about what a mansio is.
This looks like an important site.
It's got double ditches
and a large enclosure,
a massive area of settlement,
but we don't understand anything.
So everything to play for.
Absolutely.
The mansio's the obvious
first target for geophys.
But we've got a small problem.
John's results are awash
with potential targets.
Look at all these responses. The
problem is there's so much going on
we can't actually see the detail of
the buildings that were excavated.
Yeah, here's Winbolt's plan.
This is what he calls his
officers' quarters.
This is what we think is the mansio.
He thinks that's a wall,
that's a tessellated floor, a mosaic.
We've got to find where it is.
We can't rely on the
geophysics to find it.
We can't -
you've admitted that.
The only way to resolve
it is literally to dig it.
So our first trench will
try to relocate this 1920's dig.
We may disagree with Winbolt
about his description of a
mansio as an officers' quarters,
but this classics teacher was a very
good archaeologist for his time.
And locking his results into the
landscape and re-evaluating his work
will give us a great start.
Ah, oh, what's that?
What is it?
We don't know what the quality
of the floor was that Winbolt
said he found.
If it was a nice floor,
or whether it was just
these broken up bits of tile.
But the archaeologists have
also identified a second target.
Winbolt's records describe
the mansio as being surrounded
by massive enclosure ditches
and Neil's keen to investigate
these as soon as possible,
because when it comes to
getting dates for a site,
ditches are an archaeologist's
best friend.
Hey John.
Have you seen this
plan this bloke drew in the '20s?
He's got a huge ditch round here.
You haven't come across anything
like that in your geophys?
Oh, yes, you have!
So look, there's the bank and ditch.
The river at the top behind us.
Why not put another trench in
here across the ditch?
See what dating's coming out of that.
We can tell you exactly
where to go on that.
So trench two goes
in over the ditches.
OK, Ian. Let's just take it off
nice and easy, mate.
Although why anyone would want to
dig two huge ditches to cut off
a hotel from its surroundings
is a mystery to me.
Back in trench one, Phil thinks
he may have just found the mansio,
or at least one of its wall
foundations cut into the bedrock.
I mean I wonder...
as a first starter for ten,
whether this isn't actually
gonna be the natural bedrock.
In which case, our building,
and we can start to
talk about a building,
cos there's
so much demolition rubble,
it's all tile, bits of tiles
and what have you that's in there.
The other thing I like about it -
that edge, look at it.
It's exactly at 90 degrees
to the Roman road.
I like the look of that.
But it's a bit early to
break out the champagne.
We may have our first
piece of mansio,
but we don't know what piece it is,
or how it might help John decipher
his abundant geophys results.
To be honest,
we don't even know which part
of Winbolt's excavation this is.
Only time and a lot more digging
will tell how this small wall line
fits into the bigger picture
of Roman Alfoldean,
a settlement that stretched
along both sides of Stane Street.
A lot of what we know on this
site comes from this rather
serious-looking archaeological tome
which was originally written
by someone who was once
the young archaeologist of the year.
Time goes by so fast,
doesn't it, Mike?
I've changed a bit in
those times, yes.
You've dug in so many different
places, but your heart's still here.
It is. I used to cycle 40 kilometres
to come here when I was a schoolboy,
so it does hold
something for me.
What was it that attracted
you about this place?
I think it was just that
there was so much evidence.
You could look in the fields
and you'd see artefacts visible,
and also this roadside ditch.
and also this roadside ditch.
What's so significant
about the ditch?
Well, the ditch was important
because within it you could see
pits and ditches of
the Roman period suggesting
that Roman settlement to the
south of the river continued
for about 600 metres,
which is more than
was previously thought.
This site belongs to you more
anybody else in the world.
We've only got three days,
but what would you like to
take away with you?
I'd like to take away a
plan showing the settlement to
the south of the enclosure.
A plan of that showing the
property plots would be fantastic.
Mike entered his study of Alfoldean
into the competition the same year
as an entry from another
young archaeologist,
a 13-year-old hopeful
called Miles Russell.
Mike won, while Miles
didn't even make the shortlist.
But we haven't got
the verge on this side at all.
Thankfully, time is a great healer.
I mean, field walking evidence,
there are pottery concentrations
in that field, but they do seem
to increase going further south.
in that field, but they do seem
to increase going further south.
Going up slope?
Going up slope, yeah, yeah.
And that will mean more geophys.
A lot more geophys.
Ah, now we're talking.
Is this the natural here?
That's it.
So that's the outside...
That's it.
So that's the outside...
Yeah.
..of the site,
so we now know where we are.
Yeah!
Over in trench two,
Raksha and Matt have located
the mansio's enclosure ditches.
Or, at least, one of the ditches.
Well, to be more precise,
they found one side of one ditch.
Why have you extended this?
Because we
couldn't find an edge.
You see, we thought the edge of the
ditch was gonna be about here, Tony.
Let's have a look
over here, so this is...
See how soft that is.
That's really soft, isn't it?.
Yeah,
I'm trowelling into it, no problem.
So this is fill,
we're on top of a ditch here.
We couldn't find the edge of the
ditch where we thought it should be.
We couldn't find the edge of the
ditch where we thought it should be.
It's that.
Absolutely. Yeah.
This is the actual
natural undisturbed bedrock.
And so now we can work our
way back the trench that way.
The problem is, the geophys
results suggest that
each ditch is at least
four metres wide and possibly
up to four metres deep.
We'll be lucky to get to the bottom
of them by the end of day three.
The size of these ditches,
and the half kilometre of settlement
geophys are now investigating,
shows Alfoldean was a major focus
of Roman activity in West Sussex.
And to find out
what was so appealing
about this little
part of southern England,
Helen has volunteered for her
first Time Team chopper ride.
Oh!
Look at that!
It's really like magic, isn't it?
It's amazing!
Look at Stane Street, it's
so long and so straight, isn't it?
It's a classic example of Roman
military engineering, isn't it?
Yeah.
Crashing its way straight across
the countryside.
It's absolutely perfect.
So why do you think our
site is where it is?
Well, I think it is all about
location because you've got
the really strong,
straight Stane Street,
crossing with the River Arun,
so you've got this point
in the landscape where you've got
two major routes cross and where
you get that,
then that's a prime location
to establish a settlement.
So it's all about control?
I think it is. As you can see,
you're the centre of this
huge landscape which is full
of natural resources.
You've got woodland, you've got clay
to make tiles, pottery and bricks.
About two miles from here you've
got a local source of iron ore.
You've got everything you need
to sustain an industrial economy.
Back on the ground,
we're finally re-discovering
Winbolt's 1920's
excavation in trench one.
You've got pink plaster
on top of tiles,
on top of...
green clay.
What that would mean then,
is that this is actually the base
of one of these concrete floors,
opus signinum with the pink
plaster, the pink and the red brick.
Ooh!
Now look at that, Neil.
Now that is superb painted
wall plaster, ain't it?
Isn't that a gorgeous piece?
Got the light blue and the brush
marks in that dark blue stripe.
Is a room with a wall painted
like this,
the sort of room
you'd expect in a mansio?
Yeah, I mean, you're gonna expect
high quality accommodation
in some parts of these,
because you've got
important people coming,
it's not just your average B&B, so we
can expect some pretty lavish rooms.
This plaster gives an idea
of just how posh parts
of this hotel might be.
But, then again,
if you're on government business,
you expect the best.
What are they for? Are they
just places for officials
to stay the night?
We had this thing in Roman
Britain called a cursus publicus,
which is really administrators
journeying along these major routes
administering taxation,
local economy, the justice,
or whatever it happens to be.
They may stay for one night
or for a few days.
And then move on and they're
staged along the main routes
and along Stane Street,
we have Hardham to the south,
and Alfoldean here and these may
be two of those staging posts
along the route between
Chichester and London.
So is that why ours is defended,
because it would have been
full of unpopular tax collectors
who the natives didn't like?
It may well,
but you gotta bear in
mind that this area,
Sussex, Surrey and the South-East
is one of the first bits
of Britain to be Romanised.
So it's not a case of angry
natives in and around the area
of Alfoldean waiting to attack.
But we're looking
at it from a wrong angle
because rather than defended forts,
these are points where
resources are being protected.
If you've got one or two
members of the military here,
they've got a nice
defined area within which
taxes, within which foodstuffs,
perhaps new recruits are contained
on their way towards London.
Well, whatever it was,
the Romans certainly went to
a lot of effort to protect it.
About 11 o'clock this
morning, Neil decided to put
a little discrete trench in
here to see if he could find
the ditch
which would have once
gone round the mansio.
But he couldn't see it,
so he extended the trench,
then he extended it again.
Then you extended it again
and again.
Was all this work really necessary?
Oh, totally, Tony.
Look, here is the ditch.
Hurray!
Look, it's very soft fill,
very black, full of finds.
Now just behind
Raksha we get a change.
Can you point out
where we see the change in the earth?
This is the lighter colour
and the ditch is cutting into this.
It's going that way.
So one edge of the ditch there.
And another ditch, just there.
Where does that go to?
Well, who knows? I mean perhaps
over about as far as here!
So we're gonna extend
back to here as well?
So we're gonna extend
back to here as well?
We'll see how time
goes, but come this way, TonyI
This is really interesting.
So think one ditch.
Think two ditches.
And then look.
Here we have, look, very different.
Yellowy clay.
This must be the rampart bank
inside the two outer ditches.
So we should now be on the
inside of the enclosure.
If we've got all these ditches
and we can see from this plan
that the ditches were huge,
they went all the way
into this field. This would
have been a massive undertaking.
It's not just one
guy and his wheelbarrow.
It's a really big endeavour
and they must have taken a lot of
effort to enclose that building.
It shows that building is important
and it needed to be defended.
We really have set ourselves
a challenge and a half.
Goodness knows how long it'll
take to get to the bottom of
this ditch trench.
And we haven't even started on
the 600 plus metres of settlement.
Never mind the mansio.
Probably a full Time Team by itself.
Time to sort out our priorities.
Phil, the big news is after 13 years
of Time Team,
you've finally got a new hat.
The other one had
got so rancid, it needed it.
But I decided to celebrate
with some good archaeology
and we've got some
cracking archaeology.
In this trench, we've
got this wonderful floor which,
for the first time,
means we've got intact archaeology.
Do you reckon this looks classy
enough to be the officers' quarters?
It's what Winbolt
called the officers' quarters,
but he's living in a fantasy world.
This is part of the mansio.
This must be part of what
he referred to as the pink corridor,
so we know more or less where we are.
But tomorrow, the challenge is
working out the exact plan of
the mansio,
cos that'll be an achievement.
John, you've been geophysing
over there.
Looking for the settlement
outside and look, we've got it.
You can see these clear
ditches, these very strong pits.
But look at these responses here,
right along the edge of the road.
I'd just love to think that
those might be mausolea.
I agree. I think that is potentially
an extremely exciting feature there,
that circularity.
That could be a hut circle.
That could be a mausoleum.
That could be a big pile of pants.
We don't know until we dig into it,
but it's an
obvious target for tomorrow.
A trench in there will
show us one important thing.
Are these buildings earlier than this
enclosure or are they contemporary?
So we've got a fantastic
site here that's jammed
packed full of goodies.
We've got a possible mausoleum,
we've got a brand new hat.
Do things get better than that?
I don't think so.
Beginning of day two here
in West Sussex and yesterday,
where that digger is over there,
we found what we think is a mansio,
which is a Roman service
station or coaching house.
And at some time or other, it was
cut off from the rest of the site
by some huge ditches over there by
that digger. Why did they do that?
We don't know, but in order to
understand what was going on there,
we needed to understand more about
this area here, and yesterday, Mike,
you said that your ambition
was to see a plan of the whole
of the Roman site.
That's where John's got to so far.
It's showing the enclosures
continuing to the
south of the mansio.
continuing to the
south of the mansio.
So we're about where?
We're about here.
Yesterday evening,
you got very excited
by this little circle thing here.
You said you thought
it might be a mausoleum,
where the
Romans buried their dead.
It's in the right sort of place,
right next to the road
as it goes into the posting stations.
We've got this circular feature
and that's where you'd expect
a monumental burial.
So what do we do with it?.
Well, I've got the super-duper
enlarged version here of your plan.
Gonna stick
a trench across it at a diagonal.
We'll pick up that ditch,
these anomalies in the middle
that indicate burning,
They could be typical of cremations.
Away you go, Ian!
The archaeologists suspect
that this whole site
may once have been a single, big
Roman settlement before the ditches
were dug to cut off the mansio.
But getting that crucial dating
evidence from the ditch trench is
turning into a bit of a nightmare.
We just don't know
if we can afford the manpower
to dig down to the
bottom of these massive defences.
And over at the mansio trench,
we now face a number of challenges.
For example, unpicking the
remains of a 1920's dig
by local archaeologist
Samuel Winbolt.
But perhaps more crucially, working
out what our mansio may look like.
Whenever I've asked any of you three
about mansios, you've always said
it's like a Travelodge or
a hotel, or a service station.
But that doesn't help me
picture what was going on
there in Roman times.
Well, think of a Roman motel.
What are you gonna have?
You want rooms. Victor's
drawn a plan here, a drawing,
based on another mansio that's been
excavated, so imagine you bring
your horse in,
you dismount, get rid of
your horse at the stables,
come in here, change your clothes,
go through to the bath house,
have a wash, come back, have
something to eat, and then
go to sleep.
So this kind of typical
courtyard building is quite usual.
Mark, you know more about
mansios than anybody else I know.
Can you work out what bit of the
mansio we've got in Phil's trench?
It's very difficult to gauge
at this stage.
There are hints
of substantial structures
and I suspect we may be close
to one end of a wing perhaps,
where you've got the bath house.
There's a but here, isn't there?
This is not our building,
this is based on another site. There
isn't a single blueprint to a mansio.
Some can be much bigger,
some can be quite small,
and some don't even have the
courtyard. Some can be like a
corridor.
Unfortunately we can't
say we're digging here,
we've got that wall, and we can
reconstruct the rest of the building.
The problem we have
is that in Phil's trench,
Winbolt has dug very deeply in there.
He's virtually destroyed most of
the archaeology in that trench.
So we're closing down this trench,
and opening one in an area
not investigated by Winbolt.
So actually, the thought is,
have we got a range of rooms
coming round with a courtyard
in the middle?
You see that?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
John believes that with
the eye of faith, he can see
a pretty substantial building,
possibly even with a courtyard.
And within minutes, the archaeology
seems to back up his theory.
Is this the sort of thing you
might have picked up, this brick?
I think there should be
a cut feature through there.
And that's reflected
by this brick and tile is it?
Yeah.
It sounds like we are on
the spot, then.
And things are also looking up
in the understaffed ditch trench.
We haven't got to the bottom of
them and hopefully you'll be able
to help us.
We've now got a virtually
limitless supply of extra diggers
from a local college,
Christ's Hospital.
This also just
happens to be the school
where our 1920's archaeologist,
Samuel Winbolt, taught.
And his legacy looms large here.
A lot of these sixth formers are
actually studying archaeology.
You start from this end.
You see this yellow here,
you don't wanna hit the yellow,
so just keep taking this
back a bit, like that...
Wanna have a go?
So in return for some practical
experience in trench digging,
we're now confident we can get
to the bottom of these ditches
by the end of day three.
Hopefully.
These massive ditches didn't
enclose just the mansio,
but a complex of buildings
that would have served
Roman officials and traders
as they travelled the country.
Horses were the main
form of transport,
so one of the key facilities here
would have been the blacksmiths.
Among his many jobs
would have been the manufacture
of what's believed to be the
pre-cursor of the modern horseshoe -
the hippo sandal.
Although I've seen pictures
of these many times in books,
I've never seen a real one, so I'm
interested in how it's going to look.
I managed to get up to
the British Museum last week
and we managed to get up close
and personal with some,
so I could come
and make some today.
How are you going
to start making them?
I'm gonna take a plate
and forge it down
into this nice triangular shape,
I'll then turn a loop on the front,
and then the wings on the side,
we're gonna have to form those and
then weld them on top and bottom.
And try and come down on top of it
rather than coming back towards it.
This design is based on
various archaeological finds,
but surprisingly, no-one's ever
tried the theory out on a real
live horse.
Get in there, go on,
that's it, that's the one.
So we're using Christ's Hospital's
fully-equipped school forge -
yes, school forge, to test how
practical this hippo sandal is.
Oh, and we will be
using a real live horse.
Back at the trench
in the settlement,
Miles has now found the source
of his geophysical anomaly.
The problem is, it's not quite
as straightforwardly Roman as
we'd hoped for.
Is it a mausoleum?
I don't think so,
but if you bear in mind this
morning I said it could be a
roundhouse or mausoleum,
I veer more towards
the roundhouse interpretation.
Because we've got here this big
area of burning.
You can see all these stones with
charcoal and baked clay around it,
and that seems to be at the centre of
John's geophysical circularity,
so I'd tend to think of it more
of being a roundhouse with a
central hearth.
That's Iron Age. That's
before the Romans even get here.
Yes, but the population
aren't gonna suddenly become Romans
and start building square
rectangular buildings. Roundhouses,
Iron Age structures will
continue for some time.
So you're telling me that
you found a bunch of burnt stones.
Yes, but it's a very
interesting bunch of burnt stones.
While Miles ponders the future of
his trench, we've now analysed
the finds from Phil's first
trench over the mansio
and we think we now know
what was going on there.
We've got structural components.
These are pieces of box flue tile
that certainly indicate
a heated room.
But I think we can also from
that say that there is certainly
at least one bath.
Because we've got the
pieces here of opus signinum.
Because we've got the
pieces here of opus signinum.
That's kind of
concrete floor stuff...
Waterproof stuff and it's often
found lying in plunge baths.
Waterproof stuff and it's often
found lying in plunge baths.
And is this one decorated?
No, it's actually limescale.
Actually from the bath water.
So they should have cleaned
their bath more often.
It may be one rather
poorly maintained plunge pool,
but it places
the mansio's bath house here,
to the north-west of the complex.
Phil! Is this trench
easier to understand than
what was going on there?
Oh, this is an absolute dream.
And thanks to Phil's new trench,
John's theory that this is
a pretty sizeable mansio,
possibly with three ranges,
is now looking very promising.
In here we think we're
probably into a courtyard,
so this whole area is the
actual courtyard of the site.
And then this looks it's
probably gonna be a wall line
somewhere through here.
And then you pass through here into
a corridor which you can see.
Looks like we've got tessera on it,
so that it may
have had a mosaic floor.
Then you go through from the
corridor into a series of rooms,
and we've got a wall line here.
You can see that quite clearly.
And you can see the return of it
going across there.
But as you go through the room,
you find that here in fact,
we've got another wall line,
coming through there,
so it actually gives us one, two,
three sides of the wall and here,
we've actually got the fourth side.
What's great is in the last trench
we saw the depths of archaeology,
now we see the plan.
We can understand the plan.
Plenty more work
this afternoon, then.
You bet.
Or not.
Just as we prepare for a
manic afternoon of trenching,
the heavens open and the
clear wall lines of the mansio
and the obvious circularity
of the circular feature
disappear under a sea of muddy clay.
Phil, we've dug in much
worse weather than this,
and even when everyone's packed
up, we've had to prize you
out of the trench.
So, how come you've stopped?
It's the geology.
What do you mean?
This ground here has just
got so much clay in it
that as soon as it starts
to rain, it puddles up.
There's no way it's
gonna drain away.
The archaeology that comes first
and if we start to work this site,
we'll destroy the archaeology.
So what do we do?
We simply have to wait, and it's
not just a matter of wait until
the rain stops. We gotta wait until
the water in the site drains away.
So we're now all
playing a waiting game.
Well, almost all of us.
Because when the going gets tough,
the tough get geophysing.
That's a strangely beautiful
object, isn't it - can I have a look?
Feel free - it's a bit heavy.
Gosh, it is heavy.
Thankfully our archaeological
experiment hasn't been affected
by the downpour. And we can finally
see if our alleged Roman horseshoe
is up to the job.
We could be the first people for
some centuries to be looking at
a horse's hoof in a hippo sandal.
Yeah, I think we probably are, but
just trying to decide that whether
this is the right way
to tie it on or not.
Well.
Well.
He thinks it's strange, doesn't he?
And I'm not sure whether
you'd wanna work a horse
for any long distance with these on.
You wouldn't be able
to pull a load with that on a wagon.
I think that'll do there,
John, I think that's enough.
Turning is gonna be difficult
with those spikes at the front.
He's gonna try and stab himself
with those on a regular basis.
I wouldn't want to
ask him to trot with them on.
If they're not for heavy loads
or long distances on metal roads,
what are they for?
The only other thing
I can think of is that
they would have been used for a
veterinary purpose if they've
damaged the bottom of the foot,
to hold a bran poultice
to draw out infections.
That would have been ideal for
holding something like that in.
Well, it might not have
been the result we expected,
but it does show that sometimes it
pays to put theory into practice.
Back on site, we've hatched a plan
to buy us a few extra hours digging
on this rain-sodden site.
We're gonna cover Phil's
trench with this tent.
And use a digger to expose clean,
dry archaeology in Miles' trench.
Unfortunately,
the conditions in the ditch trench
make it too dangerous to dig.
So at most, we've only one more
day to get to the bottom of it.
But although we still don't
have a date for these defences,
Stewart thinks he now knows
why they were constructed.
This is about control.
If you want to go up and down this
road, you have to go in one gate,
out the other gate, and over
a bridge. It's about Roman
imperial taxation.
It's a way of easily generating
revenue to support the army.
I'm just quoting from some original
sources here where regulations
for taxes per capita, for each
slave, one dinarius and a half
for a horse mare,
jackass mule, donkey, ox,
half a dinarius, and so on.
If it moved, they taxed it.
I mean, you've got to think of
why would they want to do that here?
One thing we've discovered
is that there's lots of iron
in this area, and iron in the Roman
period is a controlled substance,
it's controlled by the military,
so it doesn't fall into
hostile hands.
And therefore, once
it's controlled by the military,
then you get the military stamp,
which is the building of ramparts and
ditches and that sort of thing.
And in effect,
those defensive earthworks
are like a big bonded warehouse,
if you can put it like that.
Did you say you were Young
Archaeologist of the Year, 1981?
1981.
It's almost the end of day two.
While we've managed to get
some work done in a couple of
the trenches,
to be honest, the rain
has completely scuppered our plans.
Brigit, what have you
done with the circularity?
Seems to have disappeared
altogether.
When the machine has cleaned
that, we'll be able to see
the features clearly,
but now we've got rain again...
water starts pooling,
and it is phasing it out again,
and you can see these guys working
in it.
We've got to get them out.
Yeah, it's churning everything up,
I think we ought to call it a day.
But it's not good
completely doom and gloom.
Geophys have gallantly continued to
survey this large, waterlogged site
and John thinks a clear picture
of Alfoldean's development
is beginning to emerge.
But it's getting late.
So time to swap the
cold, wet misery of the site...
..for the cold wet comfort
of a pint.
It was a frustrating afternoon.
Oh, very frustrating.
This morning was going so well, and
I thought, we can now see the walls,
it can match into John's geophysics,
we are actually getting a plan of
the mansio,
we got the site on the run.
But we've been held up for sure.
How was it for you, John?
How was it for you, John?
Well, we've had a fantastic day!
Chlo and Fee have done wonders.
They've surveyed about three
hectares today
and we've
go the settlement we wanted.
We've extended the survey some 300,
400 metres beyond the main complex
and there's a whole series of
ditches and these large pits,
and then track ways coming round.
It looks a bit irregular though,
I think it's probably Iron Age
rather than actually Roman.
You know, it's then developed.
What it looks to me, is we got a
native, indigenous village
and look what happens -
Roman government puts a road
through the middle of it,
and later says,
"What a great spot for a hotel."
And even later says,
"Let's put a bank
"and ditch round the outside."
But that's a theory. How do
we ascertain whether or not
this settlement is
earlier than the mansio?
Well, you know what I'm gonna say...
What d'you think, John?
If we take one of these strong
anomalies that I think's a pit,
and then we'll
hopefully get some dating evidence.
Yeah, and we can compare pottery from
that with material from the ditch,
from the bank and from the mansio.
It's a picture of how this
site developed over time.
Are we gonna be able to
get inside the mansio?
For sure. By tomorrow night,
we'll know what a Roman bedroom
in a hotel looks like.
A Roman hotel bedroom by tomorrow.
Unless it continues raining,
then we'll have to
spend the whole day here.
then we'll have to
spend the whole day here.
If there's a good
archaeological reason!
Beginning of day three here in
West Sussex on the A29,
what the Roman's used to call
Stane Street.
And yesterday, we thought we'd found
the Roman mansio or roadhouse.
And then at lunchtime,
the skies opened
and the archaeology was washed out.
Well, as you can see it's
another day, the rain's stopped
but the mud's still here.
So the question is,
can we still dig?
And the answer is a resounding yes.
The first target is the new
trench pinpointed by John.
This is a good 400 metres from the
mansio and if we can get
good dating evidence from this part
of the settlement,
it should help us with the overall
story of the site.
Is that a coin?
Is that a coin?
< That's a coin, yeah.
We can tell from the size alone,
it's gonna be
first or second century.
You haven't even got
it out of the bag, yet!
You haven't even got
it out of the bag, yet!
Come on, ye of little faith. >
Let's have a look. Oh...
< Almost nothing...
< Almost nothing...
Actually, you can actually
see there's a head.
It's quite prominent in relief.
It's quite prominent in relief.
Yeah, it's quite bumpy.
And I would put money on that
being either Vespasian
or his son Titus, between 70, 80AD.
Not a word out of you.
I'll believe you.
I'll believe you.
Thank you.
The coin's date of around 70AD,
suggests this part of the settlement
was here around the time
Stane Street was built.
Geophys have played
a bit of a blinder
on a difficult and soaked site.
As well as revealing the plan of the
settlement, their results
inside the enclosure are combining
with the archaeology to uncover
a rather impressive building.
Phil, your tent's kept you pretty
dry, but how's it going in there?
I'm going down into foundations,
but look at the depths of it.
Surely a foundation that deep...
You could be looking at
a two-storey building.
This building is getting
bigger by the minute.
We've now established the mansio had
a bathhouse here, and consisted of
at least three ranges, each of
which could be two storeys high.
We're pretty confident we've
got a long range of buildings
going in this direction, and
out here I step into a courtyard,
but is it an interior courtyard
with other buildings beyond it?
Or is this the whole extent of the
complex? How do we work that out?
Well, let's have a look
at the geophysics.
Here's the range, the room where
Phil's investigating.
Round here looks like more rooms,
and perhaps another range there.
But I'd like to prove it.
This could be something else.
It's very noisy in the geophysics.
It's very noisy in the geophysics.
Yeah.
So maybe a small trench, two by two,
and I would think maybe there, cos
that looks like the clearest area.
Just pick up the wall line
and we've cracked it.
The more we dig,
the clearer this mass
of geophysical information becomes.
Apart, that is, from Miles' trench
and his intriguing circularity.
Over the past three days,
it's been a mausoleum,
a Romano-British roundhouse,
and then he lost it completely.
Miles, is it still here?
Miles, is it still here?
It's come back again.
My circularity has returned.
We've got what looks like
the circular gulley swinging
right the way round the trench.
So I still like the idea of
that being a hearth,
And this being a circular
all around it.
But it's all Roman?
But it's all Roman?
Yeah, it's all Romano-British.
So it looks like Miles'
early suspicions were right.
This is a Romano-British roundhouse
built by the locals, and part of
the original settlement that was
here when the mansio was built.
But this trench refuses
to be straightforward.
There's a complicating factor
in that just outside
that circular feature,
Ian's found a series of other pits.
< What have you got down there, Ian?
I've got a broken, but it appears to
be fairly complete, pot.
Oh, yeah, I can see that, yeah. >
So that's the whole diameter
of it, isn't it, there?
It looks like most of the pot.
I mean, that's the fabric.
You've got that sort of
New Forest indented beaker.
That's useful, isn't it,
because that probably is gonna be >
third century AD, >
so it shows the activity here
outside the enclosure
is contemporary with
what going on inside the enclosure.
It's not earlier, it's contemporary.
We're also at last getting near
to a story for the ditches
that were at some point
dug to separate
and, we presume, protect the mansio
from the rest of the settlement.
Yeah, here it is.
You can see this huge,
thick yellow clay of the rampart.
< Yeah.
< Yeah.
You see this brown stuff here?
< Yeah.
< Yeah.
That's an earlier ground surface,
and the rampart has been slapped
straight on top of it.
And this is the stuff that's
coming from under the rampart.
And this is the stuff that's
coming from under the rampart.
This is the stuff that's
been sealed by the bank. >
It's just what we've been wanting.
This is a classic piece
of archaeological dating.
Because when these ditches were
dug into the clay, the spoil
was used to build a large rampart,
sealing any finds on the
ground surface underneath.
What we've got here
is a shallow platter
and this cordon vessel,
and I think we're looking at
a sort of late first century AD
group of pottery here.
Right, so pretty early, then.
Right, so pretty early, then.
Yeah, yeah.
So we now know the defences
were constructed around 90AD, when
the settlement was already here.
We can also get a date for how
long they lasted, because it appears
once these ditches outlived their
usefulness, they were filled in
with a mixture of earth
and rubbish, which we can date.
A ton of pottery...
A ton of pottery...
Yeah, and it's very
interesting, actually,
cos it's all fairly consistent.
It looks as if it's gonna
fall into the end of the second
century and into the early third.
Not later than
the middle of the third century.
So it's quite a tight
group for dating the thing. >
It looks like these defences
dominated this landscape
for the best part of 150 years.
But the enclosure's only
part of the story.
And geophys have now completed
their exhaustive survey
of Roman Alfoldean,
much to the delight
of one long-time fan of the site,
Mike Luke.
Mike, you've been looking
at this place for 25 years. >
Mike, you've been looking
at this place for 25 years. >
Yes.
What does it feel like to see a
plan of it for the first time?
It's brilliant to see a plan of the
settlement adjacent to the road.
On the far side of the road, we've
got a whole series of large pits,
but we've also extended down below,
towards the river.
The ditches are continuing, the pits
are continuing, track way here.
What's unusual is that the settlement
seems to be bigger than we thought,
continuing down to the river,
and also we don't
know how far it goes to the south.
It's amazing that you can
get all this >
without even digging a single hole.
Geophysics has really come up
trumps, it's fabulous!
We think the story goes like this.
There was a settlement here by the
time the Romans built the defences
around the mansio in about 90AD.
This newly fortified complex
then acted
as a customs point, taxing
travellers along Stane Street
as well as providing secure storage
for iron shipments
from local quarries.
And so Alfoldean
continued to prosper
throughout the second and early
third centuries.
But then,
the whole site ceased activity
and Neil now believes he knows
the reason for Alfoldean's demise.
You know this is about tax
collection, this site?
You know this is about tax
collection, this site?
Yeah.
And about iron.
Well in the middle of the third
century AD, the Weald ceased to be
an important centre of iron
production, and production shifted
to the west of England,
to the Forest of Dean.
So guess what happens. Just as the
iron industry goes down the tubes,
this site falls out of use
and the governmental tax collectors
head off to Gloucestershire.
It would seem the whole of Alfoldean
was reliant on the mansio complex
because when the taxmen left,
so did the rest of the settlement.
But there's a last surprising twist
to this story in Miles' trench,
where Ian's uncovered this
almost intact third-century beaker.
Was this down there with
it, this bit of glass?
Yeah. It was down off the
bottom of the ditch here.
Yeah. It was down off the
bottom of the ditch here.
Cos that's from one of
these big square bottles.
Oh, right. >
Oh, right. >
Probably made in the Rhineland,
round Cologne in the second century.
They're often used as urns
to take cremation burials.
They're often used as urns
to take cremation burials.
Oh, right.
With a complete pot
crushed in on itself,
I wonder if there might
have been a disturbed burial here?
It's possible, isn't it?
It's possible, isn't it?
Yeah.
We now believe
that the Romano-British roundhouse
that once stood here was abandoned
when the mansio's defensive ditches
cut through its plot.
But the leftover land still
had its uses and became
the ideal location
for Roman burials,
being beside a major road and just
outside a fortified Roman complex.
Back inside the enclosure, our final
trench has deciphered another piece
of the complex mansio geophys.
Kerry went for a bit of keyhole
surgery here,
looking for an easy story and looking
for the walls of the mansio.
Have you found it?.
Yeah, we got an easy answer.
That's your natural, all the floor.
And that's your wall.
Have we got a back to the wall?
Yes, you can just see the yellow,
just creeping through
on the other side.
That's great, cos that proves
the width of the courtyard
and proves we've got another range
for our mansio over here.
This fourth range means we
do have a courtyard building.
While Phil's trench
has now revealed a corridor
that surrounded that courtyard.
So it does look as though we've
got the corridors we first thought.
What we didn't know
was that it was gonna turn through
90 degrees and go that way.
So this is the internal
south-east corner of the building.
So this is the internal
south-east corner of the building.
Exactly.
The whole of the south range now,
we can sort of plot from behind us.
Precisely. You're in the corridor,
I'm in the courtyard.
We're now getting an idea of just
how impressive John's results are,
because with the help of
the archaeology,
we can filter out much of the noise
on his original geophys,
to give us this.
The actual floor plan
of the Alfoldean mansio.
An impressive two-storey coaching
inn, complete with its bathhouse.
And at the heart of the complex
were paddocks, stables
and all the other services
a traveller would have expected.
And we're now standing
in one of the bedrooms.
Right, I'm a weary traveller
at the end of the day.
I've pulled up into the mansio.
What do I get for my money?
What do I get for my money?
You're a very important person, Tony.
You would get a room to yourself.
Good size room,
in you come, imagine your bed,
perhaps a brazier if it's cold
in winter, warm your hands, chest.
You could even go out to
have your dinner in the dining room,
have a bath, and maybe a few
alternative attractions,
perhaps a few girls
or something like that.
Fantastic. Did everybody
get a room on their own?
Almost certainly not. It
would've depended on your status.
Some of these rooms you could
easily fit a number of bunk beds in,
so you could be sleeping
with ten goatherds,
or something like that!
No, I'm high status.
Sorry, you'll have
a single goatherdI
But last night you
kipped in your wagon or in a tent,
so to get to civilisation and
have a wash must've been good.
And of course, a decent meal.
So as a reward for our diggers' hard
work, food historian Sally Grainger
and the pupils
from Christ's Hospital,
have prepared a veritable
Roman feast.
And among the delights on offer
are asparagus quiche,
fish balls, and freshly cooked hare.
Strangely, dormice aren't included.
What is this?
< This is hare. You don't like it.
It all depends how long it's been
hanging around, don't it?
Not that long, promise you.
Ooh!
< In a Roman sauce.
Oh, that's gorgeous.
Oh, that's gorgeous.
It is, innit?
That's different, that is diff...
< What's that?
< What's that?
I told you it was disgusting!
This place lasted 150 years.
Imagine how many people must have
walked through the doors
looking for a good night's sleep
and a warm bath and a decent meal.
There'd have been Roman soldiers and
administrators and tax collectors
and British traders, all wandering
through the rooms,
admiring the mosaics,
eating their food off the
fine Samian ware and charging up
their batteries for another day's
journey down Stane Street.
And quite frankly, after three
pretty gruelling days
in some fairly horrendous
weather conditions,
all of us will be only too glad
to get back to the 21st century
version of the mansio,
just as soon as
we've finished our feast.
One of the very first parts
of Britain to be Romanised.
it's amazing how little
some things have changed here
over the past 2,000 years.
There's still the agriculture,
the rolling hills
and, of course, the A29.
Or, as the Romans
would have known it,
Stane Street, the main road
between Chichester and London.
What has disappeared though
is the thriving Roman settlement
which would have once flanked
this road.
Including a mansio.
A Roman hotel used by
the empire's officials
as they travelled the country.
And yet we know almost
nothing about mansios
or how they fitted
into the wider landscape.
This is a rare opportunity to shed
some light on a little-known aspect
of Roman life in Britain.
But we'll have our work cut out.
This whole site
is over half a kilometre long
with 300 years of Roman activity.
And, of course, we've got
just three days to find out.
There's a hell of a lot of
this hypocaust tile round here.
There's a hell of a lot of
this hypocaust tile round here.
It is amazing.
It's diddled with it,
it's everywhere.
As soon as you walk onto this field,
you know there was something big,
important and Roman here.
The ground's littered with box tile,
roof tile, high status pottery
and countless other classic
examples of Roman occupation.
It's no wonder that
over the last century,
this site has been surveyed, field
walked and written about many times.
But it's only been dug once
in the 1920s,
when an amateur archaeologist
called Samuel Winbolt identified it
as the site of a station -
an official complex of buildings
used by the great and the good
as they journeyed up
and down the country.
So what have we got?.
Is it a station?
Is it a mansio? I thought
they were the same thing.
Winbolt christened it a station,
but I think here they mind it
like a police station of Roman
troops or soldiers.
Today, we'd probably say no,
it's more to do with
a mansio, or a hotel.
A cross between a service
station and a medieval coaching inn.
But the whole country's
crossed with Roman roads.
So presumably there were lots
of these hotel things by the side
of them.
Don't we know everything we need to?
I mean, the problem is when
we look at Roman Britain
is that we understand the forts,
we understand tribal towns,
we've done work on Roman villas,
but we know diddly-squat
really about what a mansio is.
This looks like an important site.
It's got double ditches
and a large enclosure,
a massive area of settlement,
but we don't understand anything.
So everything to play for.
Absolutely.
The mansio's the obvious
first target for geophys.
But we've got a small problem.
John's results are awash
with potential targets.
Look at all these responses. The
problem is there's so much going on
we can't actually see the detail of
the buildings that were excavated.
Yeah, here's Winbolt's plan.
This is what he calls his
officers' quarters.
This is what we think is the mansio.
He thinks that's a wall,
that's a tessellated floor, a mosaic.
We've got to find where it is.
We can't rely on the
geophysics to find it.
We can't -
you've admitted that.
The only way to resolve
it is literally to dig it.
So our first trench will
try to relocate this 1920's dig.
We may disagree with Winbolt
about his description of a
mansio as an officers' quarters,
but this classics teacher was a very
good archaeologist for his time.
And locking his results into the
landscape and re-evaluating his work
will give us a great start.
Ah, oh, what's that?
What is it?
We don't know what the quality
of the floor was that Winbolt
said he found.
If it was a nice floor,
or whether it was just
these broken up bits of tile.
But the archaeologists have
also identified a second target.
Winbolt's records describe
the mansio as being surrounded
by massive enclosure ditches
and Neil's keen to investigate
these as soon as possible,
because when it comes to
getting dates for a site,
ditches are an archaeologist's
best friend.
Hey John.
Have you seen this
plan this bloke drew in the '20s?
He's got a huge ditch round here.
You haven't come across anything
like that in your geophys?
Oh, yes, you have!
So look, there's the bank and ditch.
The river at the top behind us.
Why not put another trench in
here across the ditch?
See what dating's coming out of that.
We can tell you exactly
where to go on that.
So trench two goes
in over the ditches.
OK, Ian. Let's just take it off
nice and easy, mate.
Although why anyone would want to
dig two huge ditches to cut off
a hotel from its surroundings
is a mystery to me.
Back in trench one, Phil thinks
he may have just found the mansio,
or at least one of its wall
foundations cut into the bedrock.
I mean I wonder...
as a first starter for ten,
whether this isn't actually
gonna be the natural bedrock.
In which case, our building,
and we can start to
talk about a building,
cos there's
so much demolition rubble,
it's all tile, bits of tiles
and what have you that's in there.
The other thing I like about it -
that edge, look at it.
It's exactly at 90 degrees
to the Roman road.
I like the look of that.
But it's a bit early to
break out the champagne.
We may have our first
piece of mansio,
but we don't know what piece it is,
or how it might help John decipher
his abundant geophys results.
To be honest,
we don't even know which part
of Winbolt's excavation this is.
Only time and a lot more digging
will tell how this small wall line
fits into the bigger picture
of Roman Alfoldean,
a settlement that stretched
along both sides of Stane Street.
A lot of what we know on this
site comes from this rather
serious-looking archaeological tome
which was originally written
by someone who was once
the young archaeologist of the year.
Time goes by so fast,
doesn't it, Mike?
I've changed a bit in
those times, yes.
You've dug in so many different
places, but your heart's still here.
It is. I used to cycle 40 kilometres
to come here when I was a schoolboy,
so it does hold
something for me.
What was it that attracted
you about this place?
I think it was just that
there was so much evidence.
You could look in the fields
and you'd see artefacts visible,
and also this roadside ditch.
and also this roadside ditch.
What's so significant
about the ditch?
Well, the ditch was important
because within it you could see
pits and ditches of
the Roman period suggesting
that Roman settlement to the
south of the river continued
for about 600 metres,
which is more than
was previously thought.
This site belongs to you more
anybody else in the world.
We've only got three days,
but what would you like to
take away with you?
I'd like to take away a
plan showing the settlement to
the south of the enclosure.
A plan of that showing the
property plots would be fantastic.
Mike entered his study of Alfoldean
into the competition the same year
as an entry from another
young archaeologist,
a 13-year-old hopeful
called Miles Russell.
Mike won, while Miles
didn't even make the shortlist.
But we haven't got
the verge on this side at all.
Thankfully, time is a great healer.
I mean, field walking evidence,
there are pottery concentrations
in that field, but they do seem
to increase going further south.
in that field, but they do seem
to increase going further south.
Going up slope?
Going up slope, yeah, yeah.
And that will mean more geophys.
A lot more geophys.
Ah, now we're talking.
Is this the natural here?
That's it.
So that's the outside...
That's it.
So that's the outside...
Yeah.
..of the site,
so we now know where we are.
Yeah!
Over in trench two,
Raksha and Matt have located
the mansio's enclosure ditches.
Or, at least, one of the ditches.
Well, to be more precise,
they found one side of one ditch.
Why have you extended this?
Because we
couldn't find an edge.
You see, we thought the edge of the
ditch was gonna be about here, Tony.
Let's have a look
over here, so this is...
See how soft that is.
That's really soft, isn't it?.
Yeah,
I'm trowelling into it, no problem.
So this is fill,
we're on top of a ditch here.
We couldn't find the edge of the
ditch where we thought it should be.
We couldn't find the edge of the
ditch where we thought it should be.
It's that.
Absolutely. Yeah.
This is the actual
natural undisturbed bedrock.
And so now we can work our
way back the trench that way.
The problem is, the geophys
results suggest that
each ditch is at least
four metres wide and possibly
up to four metres deep.
We'll be lucky to get to the bottom
of them by the end of day three.
The size of these ditches,
and the half kilometre of settlement
geophys are now investigating,
shows Alfoldean was a major focus
of Roman activity in West Sussex.
And to find out
what was so appealing
about this little
part of southern England,
Helen has volunteered for her
first Time Team chopper ride.
Oh!
Look at that!
It's really like magic, isn't it?
It's amazing!
Look at Stane Street, it's
so long and so straight, isn't it?
It's a classic example of Roman
military engineering, isn't it?
Yeah.
Crashing its way straight across
the countryside.
It's absolutely perfect.
So why do you think our
site is where it is?
Well, I think it is all about
location because you've got
the really strong,
straight Stane Street,
crossing with the River Arun,
so you've got this point
in the landscape where you've got
two major routes cross and where
you get that,
then that's a prime location
to establish a settlement.
So it's all about control?
I think it is. As you can see,
you're the centre of this
huge landscape which is full
of natural resources.
You've got woodland, you've got clay
to make tiles, pottery and bricks.
About two miles from here you've
got a local source of iron ore.
You've got everything you need
to sustain an industrial economy.
Back on the ground,
we're finally re-discovering
Winbolt's 1920's
excavation in trench one.
You've got pink plaster
on top of tiles,
on top of...
green clay.
What that would mean then,
is that this is actually the base
of one of these concrete floors,
opus signinum with the pink
plaster, the pink and the red brick.
Ooh!
Now look at that, Neil.
Now that is superb painted
wall plaster, ain't it?
Isn't that a gorgeous piece?
Got the light blue and the brush
marks in that dark blue stripe.
Is a room with a wall painted
like this,
the sort of room
you'd expect in a mansio?
Yeah, I mean, you're gonna expect
high quality accommodation
in some parts of these,
because you've got
important people coming,
it's not just your average B&B, so we
can expect some pretty lavish rooms.
This plaster gives an idea
of just how posh parts
of this hotel might be.
But, then again,
if you're on government business,
you expect the best.
What are they for? Are they
just places for officials
to stay the night?
We had this thing in Roman
Britain called a cursus publicus,
which is really administrators
journeying along these major routes
administering taxation,
local economy, the justice,
or whatever it happens to be.
They may stay for one night
or for a few days.
And then move on and they're
staged along the main routes
and along Stane Street,
we have Hardham to the south,
and Alfoldean here and these may
be two of those staging posts
along the route between
Chichester and London.
So is that why ours is defended,
because it would have been
full of unpopular tax collectors
who the natives didn't like?
It may well,
but you gotta bear in
mind that this area,
Sussex, Surrey and the South-East
is one of the first bits
of Britain to be Romanised.
So it's not a case of angry
natives in and around the area
of Alfoldean waiting to attack.
But we're looking
at it from a wrong angle
because rather than defended forts,
these are points where
resources are being protected.
If you've got one or two
members of the military here,
they've got a nice
defined area within which
taxes, within which foodstuffs,
perhaps new recruits are contained
on their way towards London.
Well, whatever it was,
the Romans certainly went to
a lot of effort to protect it.
About 11 o'clock this
morning, Neil decided to put
a little discrete trench in
here to see if he could find
the ditch
which would have once
gone round the mansio.
But he couldn't see it,
so he extended the trench,
then he extended it again.
Then you extended it again
and again.
Was all this work really necessary?
Oh, totally, Tony.
Look, here is the ditch.
Hurray!
Look, it's very soft fill,
very black, full of finds.
Now just behind
Raksha we get a change.
Can you point out
where we see the change in the earth?
This is the lighter colour
and the ditch is cutting into this.
It's going that way.
So one edge of the ditch there.
And another ditch, just there.
Where does that go to?
Well, who knows? I mean perhaps
over about as far as here!
So we're gonna extend
back to here as well?
So we're gonna extend
back to here as well?
We'll see how time
goes, but come this way, TonyI
This is really interesting.
So think one ditch.
Think two ditches.
And then look.
Here we have, look, very different.
Yellowy clay.
This must be the rampart bank
inside the two outer ditches.
So we should now be on the
inside of the enclosure.
If we've got all these ditches
and we can see from this plan
that the ditches were huge,
they went all the way
into this field. This would
have been a massive undertaking.
It's not just one
guy and his wheelbarrow.
It's a really big endeavour
and they must have taken a lot of
effort to enclose that building.
It shows that building is important
and it needed to be defended.
We really have set ourselves
a challenge and a half.
Goodness knows how long it'll
take to get to the bottom of
this ditch trench.
And we haven't even started on
the 600 plus metres of settlement.
Never mind the mansio.
Probably a full Time Team by itself.
Time to sort out our priorities.
Phil, the big news is after 13 years
of Time Team,
you've finally got a new hat.
The other one had
got so rancid, it needed it.
But I decided to celebrate
with some good archaeology
and we've got some
cracking archaeology.
In this trench, we've
got this wonderful floor which,
for the first time,
means we've got intact archaeology.
Do you reckon this looks classy
enough to be the officers' quarters?
It's what Winbolt
called the officers' quarters,
but he's living in a fantasy world.
This is part of the mansio.
This must be part of what
he referred to as the pink corridor,
so we know more or less where we are.
But tomorrow, the challenge is
working out the exact plan of
the mansio,
cos that'll be an achievement.
John, you've been geophysing
over there.
Looking for the settlement
outside and look, we've got it.
You can see these clear
ditches, these very strong pits.
But look at these responses here,
right along the edge of the road.
I'd just love to think that
those might be mausolea.
I agree. I think that is potentially
an extremely exciting feature there,
that circularity.
That could be a hut circle.
That could be a mausoleum.
That could be a big pile of pants.
We don't know until we dig into it,
but it's an
obvious target for tomorrow.
A trench in there will
show us one important thing.
Are these buildings earlier than this
enclosure or are they contemporary?
So we've got a fantastic
site here that's jammed
packed full of goodies.
We've got a possible mausoleum,
we've got a brand new hat.
Do things get better than that?
I don't think so.
Beginning of day two here
in West Sussex and yesterday,
where that digger is over there,
we found what we think is a mansio,
which is a Roman service
station or coaching house.
And at some time or other, it was
cut off from the rest of the site
by some huge ditches over there by
that digger. Why did they do that?
We don't know, but in order to
understand what was going on there,
we needed to understand more about
this area here, and yesterday, Mike,
you said that your ambition
was to see a plan of the whole
of the Roman site.
That's where John's got to so far.
It's showing the enclosures
continuing to the
south of the mansio.
continuing to the
south of the mansio.
So we're about where?
We're about here.
Yesterday evening,
you got very excited
by this little circle thing here.
You said you thought
it might be a mausoleum,
where the
Romans buried their dead.
It's in the right sort of place,
right next to the road
as it goes into the posting stations.
We've got this circular feature
and that's where you'd expect
a monumental burial.
So what do we do with it?.
Well, I've got the super-duper
enlarged version here of your plan.
Gonna stick
a trench across it at a diagonal.
We'll pick up that ditch,
these anomalies in the middle
that indicate burning,
They could be typical of cremations.
Away you go, Ian!
The archaeologists suspect
that this whole site
may once have been a single, big
Roman settlement before the ditches
were dug to cut off the mansio.
But getting that crucial dating
evidence from the ditch trench is
turning into a bit of a nightmare.
We just don't know
if we can afford the manpower
to dig down to the
bottom of these massive defences.
And over at the mansio trench,
we now face a number of challenges.
For example, unpicking the
remains of a 1920's dig
by local archaeologist
Samuel Winbolt.
But perhaps more crucially, working
out what our mansio may look like.
Whenever I've asked any of you three
about mansios, you've always said
it's like a Travelodge or
a hotel, or a service station.
But that doesn't help me
picture what was going on
there in Roman times.
Well, think of a Roman motel.
What are you gonna have?
You want rooms. Victor's
drawn a plan here, a drawing,
based on another mansio that's been
excavated, so imagine you bring
your horse in,
you dismount, get rid of
your horse at the stables,
come in here, change your clothes,
go through to the bath house,
have a wash, come back, have
something to eat, and then
go to sleep.
So this kind of typical
courtyard building is quite usual.
Mark, you know more about
mansios than anybody else I know.
Can you work out what bit of the
mansio we've got in Phil's trench?
It's very difficult to gauge
at this stage.
There are hints
of substantial structures
and I suspect we may be close
to one end of a wing perhaps,
where you've got the bath house.
There's a but here, isn't there?
This is not our building,
this is based on another site. There
isn't a single blueprint to a mansio.
Some can be much bigger,
some can be quite small,
and some don't even have the
courtyard. Some can be like a
corridor.
Unfortunately we can't
say we're digging here,
we've got that wall, and we can
reconstruct the rest of the building.
The problem we have
is that in Phil's trench,
Winbolt has dug very deeply in there.
He's virtually destroyed most of
the archaeology in that trench.
So we're closing down this trench,
and opening one in an area
not investigated by Winbolt.
So actually, the thought is,
have we got a range of rooms
coming round with a courtyard
in the middle?
You see that?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
John believes that with
the eye of faith, he can see
a pretty substantial building,
possibly even with a courtyard.
And within minutes, the archaeology
seems to back up his theory.
Is this the sort of thing you
might have picked up, this brick?
I think there should be
a cut feature through there.
And that's reflected
by this brick and tile is it?
Yeah.
It sounds like we are on
the spot, then.
And things are also looking up
in the understaffed ditch trench.
We haven't got to the bottom of
them and hopefully you'll be able
to help us.
We've now got a virtually
limitless supply of extra diggers
from a local college,
Christ's Hospital.
This also just
happens to be the school
where our 1920's archaeologist,
Samuel Winbolt, taught.
And his legacy looms large here.
A lot of these sixth formers are
actually studying archaeology.
You start from this end.
You see this yellow here,
you don't wanna hit the yellow,
so just keep taking this
back a bit, like that...
Wanna have a go?
So in return for some practical
experience in trench digging,
we're now confident we can get
to the bottom of these ditches
by the end of day three.
Hopefully.
These massive ditches didn't
enclose just the mansio,
but a complex of buildings
that would have served
Roman officials and traders
as they travelled the country.
Horses were the main
form of transport,
so one of the key facilities here
would have been the blacksmiths.
Among his many jobs
would have been the manufacture
of what's believed to be the
pre-cursor of the modern horseshoe -
the hippo sandal.
Although I've seen pictures
of these many times in books,
I've never seen a real one, so I'm
interested in how it's going to look.
I managed to get up to
the British Museum last week
and we managed to get up close
and personal with some,
so I could come
and make some today.
How are you going
to start making them?
I'm gonna take a plate
and forge it down
into this nice triangular shape,
I'll then turn a loop on the front,
and then the wings on the side,
we're gonna have to form those and
then weld them on top and bottom.
And try and come down on top of it
rather than coming back towards it.
This design is based on
various archaeological finds,
but surprisingly, no-one's ever
tried the theory out on a real
live horse.
Get in there, go on,
that's it, that's the one.
So we're using Christ's Hospital's
fully-equipped school forge -
yes, school forge, to test how
practical this hippo sandal is.
Oh, and we will be
using a real live horse.
Back at the trench
in the settlement,
Miles has now found the source
of his geophysical anomaly.
The problem is, it's not quite
as straightforwardly Roman as
we'd hoped for.
Is it a mausoleum?
I don't think so,
but if you bear in mind this
morning I said it could be a
roundhouse or mausoleum,
I veer more towards
the roundhouse interpretation.
Because we've got here this big
area of burning.
You can see all these stones with
charcoal and baked clay around it,
and that seems to be at the centre of
John's geophysical circularity,
so I'd tend to think of it more
of being a roundhouse with a
central hearth.
That's Iron Age. That's
before the Romans even get here.
Yes, but the population
aren't gonna suddenly become Romans
and start building square
rectangular buildings. Roundhouses,
Iron Age structures will
continue for some time.
So you're telling me that
you found a bunch of burnt stones.
Yes, but it's a very
interesting bunch of burnt stones.
While Miles ponders the future of
his trench, we've now analysed
the finds from Phil's first
trench over the mansio
and we think we now know
what was going on there.
We've got structural components.
These are pieces of box flue tile
that certainly indicate
a heated room.
But I think we can also from
that say that there is certainly
at least one bath.
Because we've got the
pieces here of opus signinum.
Because we've got the
pieces here of opus signinum.
That's kind of
concrete floor stuff...
Waterproof stuff and it's often
found lying in plunge baths.
Waterproof stuff and it's often
found lying in plunge baths.
And is this one decorated?
No, it's actually limescale.
Actually from the bath water.
So they should have cleaned
their bath more often.
It may be one rather
poorly maintained plunge pool,
but it places
the mansio's bath house here,
to the north-west of the complex.
Phil! Is this trench
easier to understand than
what was going on there?
Oh, this is an absolute dream.
And thanks to Phil's new trench,
John's theory that this is
a pretty sizeable mansio,
possibly with three ranges,
is now looking very promising.
In here we think we're
probably into a courtyard,
so this whole area is the
actual courtyard of the site.
And then this looks it's
probably gonna be a wall line
somewhere through here.
And then you pass through here into
a corridor which you can see.
Looks like we've got tessera on it,
so that it may
have had a mosaic floor.
Then you go through from the
corridor into a series of rooms,
and we've got a wall line here.
You can see that quite clearly.
And you can see the return of it
going across there.
But as you go through the room,
you find that here in fact,
we've got another wall line,
coming through there,
so it actually gives us one, two,
three sides of the wall and here,
we've actually got the fourth side.
What's great is in the last trench
we saw the depths of archaeology,
now we see the plan.
We can understand the plan.
Plenty more work
this afternoon, then.
You bet.
Or not.
Just as we prepare for a
manic afternoon of trenching,
the heavens open and the
clear wall lines of the mansio
and the obvious circularity
of the circular feature
disappear under a sea of muddy clay.
Phil, we've dug in much
worse weather than this,
and even when everyone's packed
up, we've had to prize you
out of the trench.
So, how come you've stopped?
It's the geology.
What do you mean?
This ground here has just
got so much clay in it
that as soon as it starts
to rain, it puddles up.
There's no way it's
gonna drain away.
The archaeology that comes first
and if we start to work this site,
we'll destroy the archaeology.
So what do we do?
We simply have to wait, and it's
not just a matter of wait until
the rain stops. We gotta wait until
the water in the site drains away.
So we're now all
playing a waiting game.
Well, almost all of us.
Because when the going gets tough,
the tough get geophysing.
That's a strangely beautiful
object, isn't it - can I have a look?
Feel free - it's a bit heavy.
Gosh, it is heavy.
Thankfully our archaeological
experiment hasn't been affected
by the downpour. And we can finally
see if our alleged Roman horseshoe
is up to the job.
We could be the first people for
some centuries to be looking at
a horse's hoof in a hippo sandal.
Yeah, I think we probably are, but
just trying to decide that whether
this is the right way
to tie it on or not.
Well.
Well.
He thinks it's strange, doesn't he?
And I'm not sure whether
you'd wanna work a horse
for any long distance with these on.
You wouldn't be able
to pull a load with that on a wagon.
I think that'll do there,
John, I think that's enough.
Turning is gonna be difficult
with those spikes at the front.
He's gonna try and stab himself
with those on a regular basis.
I wouldn't want to
ask him to trot with them on.
If they're not for heavy loads
or long distances on metal roads,
what are they for?
The only other thing
I can think of is that
they would have been used for a
veterinary purpose if they've
damaged the bottom of the foot,
to hold a bran poultice
to draw out infections.
That would have been ideal for
holding something like that in.
Well, it might not have
been the result we expected,
but it does show that sometimes it
pays to put theory into practice.
Back on site, we've hatched a plan
to buy us a few extra hours digging
on this rain-sodden site.
We're gonna cover Phil's
trench with this tent.
And use a digger to expose clean,
dry archaeology in Miles' trench.
Unfortunately,
the conditions in the ditch trench
make it too dangerous to dig.
So at most, we've only one more
day to get to the bottom of it.
But although we still don't
have a date for these defences,
Stewart thinks he now knows
why they were constructed.
This is about control.
If you want to go up and down this
road, you have to go in one gate,
out the other gate, and over
a bridge. It's about Roman
imperial taxation.
It's a way of easily generating
revenue to support the army.
I'm just quoting from some original
sources here where regulations
for taxes per capita, for each
slave, one dinarius and a half
for a horse mare,
jackass mule, donkey, ox,
half a dinarius, and so on.
If it moved, they taxed it.
I mean, you've got to think of
why would they want to do that here?
One thing we've discovered
is that there's lots of iron
in this area, and iron in the Roman
period is a controlled substance,
it's controlled by the military,
so it doesn't fall into
hostile hands.
And therefore, once
it's controlled by the military,
then you get the military stamp,
which is the building of ramparts and
ditches and that sort of thing.
And in effect,
those defensive earthworks
are like a big bonded warehouse,
if you can put it like that.
Did you say you were Young
Archaeologist of the Year, 1981?
1981.
It's almost the end of day two.
While we've managed to get
some work done in a couple of
the trenches,
to be honest, the rain
has completely scuppered our plans.
Brigit, what have you
done with the circularity?
Seems to have disappeared
altogether.
When the machine has cleaned
that, we'll be able to see
the features clearly,
but now we've got rain again...
water starts pooling,
and it is phasing it out again,
and you can see these guys working
in it.
We've got to get them out.
Yeah, it's churning everything up,
I think we ought to call it a day.
But it's not good
completely doom and gloom.
Geophys have gallantly continued to
survey this large, waterlogged site
and John thinks a clear picture
of Alfoldean's development
is beginning to emerge.
But it's getting late.
So time to swap the
cold, wet misery of the site...
..for the cold wet comfort
of a pint.
It was a frustrating afternoon.
Oh, very frustrating.
This morning was going so well, and
I thought, we can now see the walls,
it can match into John's geophysics,
we are actually getting a plan of
the mansio,
we got the site on the run.
But we've been held up for sure.
How was it for you, John?
How was it for you, John?
Well, we've had a fantastic day!
Chlo and Fee have done wonders.
They've surveyed about three
hectares today
and we've
go the settlement we wanted.
We've extended the survey some 300,
400 metres beyond the main complex
and there's a whole series of
ditches and these large pits,
and then track ways coming round.
It looks a bit irregular though,
I think it's probably Iron Age
rather than actually Roman.
You know, it's then developed.
What it looks to me, is we got a
native, indigenous village
and look what happens -
Roman government puts a road
through the middle of it,
and later says,
"What a great spot for a hotel."
And even later says,
"Let's put a bank
"and ditch round the outside."
But that's a theory. How do
we ascertain whether or not
this settlement is
earlier than the mansio?
Well, you know what I'm gonna say...
What d'you think, John?
If we take one of these strong
anomalies that I think's a pit,
and then we'll
hopefully get some dating evidence.
Yeah, and we can compare pottery from
that with material from the ditch,
from the bank and from the mansio.
It's a picture of how this
site developed over time.
Are we gonna be able to
get inside the mansio?
For sure. By tomorrow night,
we'll know what a Roman bedroom
in a hotel looks like.
A Roman hotel bedroom by tomorrow.
Unless it continues raining,
then we'll have to
spend the whole day here.
then we'll have to
spend the whole day here.
If there's a good
archaeological reason!
Beginning of day three here in
West Sussex on the A29,
what the Roman's used to call
Stane Street.
And yesterday, we thought we'd found
the Roman mansio or roadhouse.
And then at lunchtime,
the skies opened
and the archaeology was washed out.
Well, as you can see it's
another day, the rain's stopped
but the mud's still here.
So the question is,
can we still dig?
And the answer is a resounding yes.
The first target is the new
trench pinpointed by John.
This is a good 400 metres from the
mansio and if we can get
good dating evidence from this part
of the settlement,
it should help us with the overall
story of the site.
Is that a coin?
Is that a coin?
< That's a coin, yeah.
We can tell from the size alone,
it's gonna be
first or second century.
You haven't even got
it out of the bag, yet!
You haven't even got
it out of the bag, yet!
Come on, ye of little faith. >
Let's have a look. Oh...
< Almost nothing...
< Almost nothing...
Actually, you can actually
see there's a head.
It's quite prominent in relief.
It's quite prominent in relief.
Yeah, it's quite bumpy.
And I would put money on that
being either Vespasian
or his son Titus, between 70, 80AD.
Not a word out of you.
I'll believe you.
I'll believe you.
Thank you.
The coin's date of around 70AD,
suggests this part of the settlement
was here around the time
Stane Street was built.
Geophys have played
a bit of a blinder
on a difficult and soaked site.
As well as revealing the plan of the
settlement, their results
inside the enclosure are combining
with the archaeology to uncover
a rather impressive building.
Phil, your tent's kept you pretty
dry, but how's it going in there?
I'm going down into foundations,
but look at the depths of it.
Surely a foundation that deep...
You could be looking at
a two-storey building.
This building is getting
bigger by the minute.
We've now established the mansio had
a bathhouse here, and consisted of
at least three ranges, each of
which could be two storeys high.
We're pretty confident we've
got a long range of buildings
going in this direction, and
out here I step into a courtyard,
but is it an interior courtyard
with other buildings beyond it?
Or is this the whole extent of the
complex? How do we work that out?
Well, let's have a look
at the geophysics.
Here's the range, the room where
Phil's investigating.
Round here looks like more rooms,
and perhaps another range there.
But I'd like to prove it.
This could be something else.
It's very noisy in the geophysics.
It's very noisy in the geophysics.
Yeah.
So maybe a small trench, two by two,
and I would think maybe there, cos
that looks like the clearest area.
Just pick up the wall line
and we've cracked it.
The more we dig,
the clearer this mass
of geophysical information becomes.
Apart, that is, from Miles' trench
and his intriguing circularity.
Over the past three days,
it's been a mausoleum,
a Romano-British roundhouse,
and then he lost it completely.
Miles, is it still here?
Miles, is it still here?
It's come back again.
My circularity has returned.
We've got what looks like
the circular gulley swinging
right the way round the trench.
So I still like the idea of
that being a hearth,
And this being a circular
all around it.
But it's all Roman?
But it's all Roman?
Yeah, it's all Romano-British.
So it looks like Miles'
early suspicions were right.
This is a Romano-British roundhouse
built by the locals, and part of
the original settlement that was
here when the mansio was built.
But this trench refuses
to be straightforward.
There's a complicating factor
in that just outside
that circular feature,
Ian's found a series of other pits.
< What have you got down there, Ian?
I've got a broken, but it appears to
be fairly complete, pot.
Oh, yeah, I can see that, yeah. >
So that's the whole diameter
of it, isn't it, there?
It looks like most of the pot.
I mean, that's the fabric.
You've got that sort of
New Forest indented beaker.
That's useful, isn't it,
because that probably is gonna be >
third century AD, >
so it shows the activity here
outside the enclosure
is contemporary with
what going on inside the enclosure.
It's not earlier, it's contemporary.
We're also at last getting near
to a story for the ditches
that were at some point
dug to separate
and, we presume, protect the mansio
from the rest of the settlement.
Yeah, here it is.
You can see this huge,
thick yellow clay of the rampart.
< Yeah.
< Yeah.
You see this brown stuff here?
< Yeah.
< Yeah.
That's an earlier ground surface,
and the rampart has been slapped
straight on top of it.
And this is the stuff that's
coming from under the rampart.
And this is the stuff that's
coming from under the rampart.
This is the stuff that's
been sealed by the bank. >
It's just what we've been wanting.
This is a classic piece
of archaeological dating.
Because when these ditches were
dug into the clay, the spoil
was used to build a large rampart,
sealing any finds on the
ground surface underneath.
What we've got here
is a shallow platter
and this cordon vessel,
and I think we're looking at
a sort of late first century AD
group of pottery here.
Right, so pretty early, then.
Right, so pretty early, then.
Yeah, yeah.
So we now know the defences
were constructed around 90AD, when
the settlement was already here.
We can also get a date for how
long they lasted, because it appears
once these ditches outlived their
usefulness, they were filled in
with a mixture of earth
and rubbish, which we can date.
A ton of pottery...
A ton of pottery...
Yeah, and it's very
interesting, actually,
cos it's all fairly consistent.
It looks as if it's gonna
fall into the end of the second
century and into the early third.
Not later than
the middle of the third century.
So it's quite a tight
group for dating the thing. >
It looks like these defences
dominated this landscape
for the best part of 150 years.
But the enclosure's only
part of the story.
And geophys have now completed
their exhaustive survey
of Roman Alfoldean,
much to the delight
of one long-time fan of the site,
Mike Luke.
Mike, you've been looking
at this place for 25 years. >
Mike, you've been looking
at this place for 25 years. >
Yes.
What does it feel like to see a
plan of it for the first time?
It's brilliant to see a plan of the
settlement adjacent to the road.
On the far side of the road, we've
got a whole series of large pits,
but we've also extended down below,
towards the river.
The ditches are continuing, the pits
are continuing, track way here.
What's unusual is that the settlement
seems to be bigger than we thought,
continuing down to the river,
and also we don't
know how far it goes to the south.
It's amazing that you can
get all this >
without even digging a single hole.
Geophysics has really come up
trumps, it's fabulous!
We think the story goes like this.
There was a settlement here by the
time the Romans built the defences
around the mansio in about 90AD.
This newly fortified complex
then acted
as a customs point, taxing
travellers along Stane Street
as well as providing secure storage
for iron shipments
from local quarries.
And so Alfoldean
continued to prosper
throughout the second and early
third centuries.
But then,
the whole site ceased activity
and Neil now believes he knows
the reason for Alfoldean's demise.
You know this is about tax
collection, this site?
You know this is about tax
collection, this site?
Yeah.
And about iron.
Well in the middle of the third
century AD, the Weald ceased to be
an important centre of iron
production, and production shifted
to the west of England,
to the Forest of Dean.
So guess what happens. Just as the
iron industry goes down the tubes,
this site falls out of use
and the governmental tax collectors
head off to Gloucestershire.
It would seem the whole of Alfoldean
was reliant on the mansio complex
because when the taxmen left,
so did the rest of the settlement.
But there's a last surprising twist
to this story in Miles' trench,
where Ian's uncovered this
almost intact third-century beaker.
Was this down there with
it, this bit of glass?
Yeah. It was down off the
bottom of the ditch here.
Yeah. It was down off the
bottom of the ditch here.
Cos that's from one of
these big square bottles.
Oh, right. >
Oh, right. >
Probably made in the Rhineland,
round Cologne in the second century.
They're often used as urns
to take cremation burials.
They're often used as urns
to take cremation burials.
Oh, right.
With a complete pot
crushed in on itself,
I wonder if there might
have been a disturbed burial here?
It's possible, isn't it?
It's possible, isn't it?
Yeah.
We now believe
that the Romano-British roundhouse
that once stood here was abandoned
when the mansio's defensive ditches
cut through its plot.
But the leftover land still
had its uses and became
the ideal location
for Roman burials,
being beside a major road and just
outside a fortified Roman complex.
Back inside the enclosure, our final
trench has deciphered another piece
of the complex mansio geophys.
Kerry went for a bit of keyhole
surgery here,
looking for an easy story and looking
for the walls of the mansio.
Have you found it?.
Yeah, we got an easy answer.
That's your natural, all the floor.
And that's your wall.
Have we got a back to the wall?
Yes, you can just see the yellow,
just creeping through
on the other side.
That's great, cos that proves
the width of the courtyard
and proves we've got another range
for our mansio over here.
This fourth range means we
do have a courtyard building.
While Phil's trench
has now revealed a corridor
that surrounded that courtyard.
So it does look as though we've
got the corridors we first thought.
What we didn't know
was that it was gonna turn through
90 degrees and go that way.
So this is the internal
south-east corner of the building.
So this is the internal
south-east corner of the building.
Exactly.
The whole of the south range now,
we can sort of plot from behind us.
Precisely. You're in the corridor,
I'm in the courtyard.
We're now getting an idea of just
how impressive John's results are,
because with the help of
the archaeology,
we can filter out much of the noise
on his original geophys,
to give us this.
The actual floor plan
of the Alfoldean mansio.
An impressive two-storey coaching
inn, complete with its bathhouse.
And at the heart of the complex
were paddocks, stables
and all the other services
a traveller would have expected.
And we're now standing
in one of the bedrooms.
Right, I'm a weary traveller
at the end of the day.
I've pulled up into the mansio.
What do I get for my money?
What do I get for my money?
You're a very important person, Tony.
You would get a room to yourself.
Good size room,
in you come, imagine your bed,
perhaps a brazier if it's cold
in winter, warm your hands, chest.
You could even go out to
have your dinner in the dining room,
have a bath, and maybe a few
alternative attractions,
perhaps a few girls
or something like that.
Fantastic. Did everybody
get a room on their own?
Almost certainly not. It
would've depended on your status.
Some of these rooms you could
easily fit a number of bunk beds in,
so you could be sleeping
with ten goatherds,
or something like that!
No, I'm high status.
Sorry, you'll have
a single goatherdI
But last night you
kipped in your wagon or in a tent,
so to get to civilisation and
have a wash must've been good.
And of course, a decent meal.
So as a reward for our diggers' hard
work, food historian Sally Grainger
and the pupils
from Christ's Hospital,
have prepared a veritable
Roman feast.
And among the delights on offer
are asparagus quiche,
fish balls, and freshly cooked hare.
Strangely, dormice aren't included.
What is this?
< This is hare. You don't like it.
It all depends how long it's been
hanging around, don't it?
Not that long, promise you.
Ooh!
< In a Roman sauce.
Oh, that's gorgeous.
Oh, that's gorgeous.
It is, innit?
That's different, that is diff...
< What's that?
< What's that?
I told you it was disgusting!
This place lasted 150 years.
Imagine how many people must have
walked through the doors
looking for a good night's sleep
and a warm bath and a decent meal.
There'd have been Roman soldiers and
administrators and tax collectors
and British traders, all wandering
through the rooms,
admiring the mosaics,
eating their food off the
fine Samian ware and charging up
their batteries for another day's
journey down Stane Street.
And quite frankly, after three
pretty gruelling days
in some fairly horrendous
weather conditions,
all of us will be only too glad
to get back to the 21st century
version of the mansio,
just as soon as
we've finished our feast.