The best-laid plans

Anyone who has ever spent even a limited amount of time associated with Time Team quickly learns that the best-laid plans of archaeologists and television can easily go amiss.

It had been anticipated that for this programme a significant part of the excavations would involve digging a well located close to the Roman gatehouse excavated by the Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society. Site supervisor Kerry Ely, responsible for organising the dig and overseeing health and safety on site, had spent a lot of time planning and preparing how it would be done. And the archaeologists were hoping for a rich haul of finds to help them in their investigations.

As Brigid Gallagher told Tony in a piece-to-camera on the first day: 'This is quite a significant [well] because it's meant to be dated to the very early Roman period, about the 1st century AD, and it's significantly over the top of a late Iron-Age ditch. Of course, at the bottom of a well you get lots of finds and we want to see what those finds are and get some more dating evidence back.'

Alas, once the diggers had removed the backfill from the previous excavation, they only had to go a few inches deeper before they reached the bottom of what turned out to be a very shallow well. Kerry Ely, who had prepared for a major excavation of a 20-30 feet deep well was left instead with something that he and Tony agreed was 'pathetic'.

'I had been planning it for weeks and I had scaffolding, generators, acro props, everything in for this,' said Kerry. To cap it all, at the same time that the well was revealing that it had no secrets to reveal, the stormy weather that beset the site over the first couple of days of the dig also blew away Kerry's tent.

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