Wanted …

Digging for Britain is back, just twenty hours into the New Year, for series 10 (excluding a few specials). Alice Roberts is still the host, with Cat Jarman and Stuart Prior. The first episode included a Roman road in Bishop’s Stortford, an Iron Age matriarchy excavated in Dorset and a Lady of the Mercians (but not Ethelfleda) but was focussed upon the Tower of London and its function as a Mint, where Henry VIII debased the English coinage, a practice maintained until his younger daughter‘s reign. “Silver” coins were up to 70% cuprous and the abrasion caused by use would expose the base metal under the King’s highest feature – hence the sobriquet “Old Coppernose”.

The second episode featured the exploration of a cobalt mine in Alderley Edge (abandoned two centuries ago), the search for a lost priory in Haverfordwest and a Neolithic dwelling near Londonderry. Coleshill Manor in the Midlands, home to a Royalist family during the Civil War, is sought by Wessex Archeology in part three as work continues on HS2, leading to the discovery of a gatehouse with spectacular octagonal towers. The Parliamentary commander, Robert Greville, Lord Brooke and three hundred Scots troops had attacked the main building. An Anglo-Saxon burial, with necklaces, other jewellery and books, were found in separate digs, as were some burials in Oxford and some Iron Age shields. Part four, in the south, covered a Wiltshire chapel probably demolished during an Anarchy siege, evidence of an Anglo-Dutch battle in the Channel, a former ampitheatre and henge on the grounds of Hardy’s home in Dorchester and some traces of Roman presence in Roche, Cornwall, probably dating to Vespasian’s reign. In the midlands, the show returned to the Rutland mosaic, finding a dozen Roman buildings and a some baths as well as a veteran artist who is now recolouring the mosaic, the Iron Age animal bones in Scarborough, the “Tudor” (old Coppernose again, to be precise) South Blockhouse fort in Hull with a staircase and fireplace, demolished by the Victorians, some flint tools found near Harlaxton Hall and some roundhouses burned down three thousand years ago near Peterborough. Finally, the series featured Islay, the most southerly of the Western Isles, where Stone Age nomads kept pigs, and an anchoress (Isabelle German) whose body was found at All Saints, Fishergate, York suffering from syphilis, arthritis and osteoparosis and documents showing that she was left money in 1436, twelve years before her death. Near Loftus, also in Yorkshire, where a Saxon lady was found with some jewellery a few years ago, a new dig at Streethouse has located a neolithic salt works, for preserving meat and cheese. At Liverpool docks, where 40% of global trade once passed, three 1852 piermasters’ houses at Albert Dock damaged by the Blitz have been demolished. There was a dig in the grounds of Auckland Castle, locating a gilded crucifix and a monkey’s collar, testifying to the high life of Prince Bishops such as Anthony Bek, followed by a feature on an extinct volcano that sits under Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, where there may have been an Iron Age hill fort.