What they found

Buried beneath the silt
Time Team came to Stilton as a result of the wide range of finds made by local potter and keen fieldwalker Richard Landy – and in particular his discovery of an almost complete Roman cheese press. The Peterborough city archaeologist, Ben Robinson, and the local finds liaison officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Philippa Walton, examined the two specific sites from which Richard had recovered most of his finds.

The cheese press and other Roman pottery finds had come mainly from a layer near the foot of a two-metre-deep ditch. It appeared that some structural remains were also visible in the ditch cut where the cheese press was found, and that these were well preserved under about two metres of silt. Richard speculated that the site might be a wharf on an inland waterway, which is now silted up. Aerial photography plots examined by Ben Robinson seemed to bear this out.

There also appeared to be several other sites in the area – leading the archaeologists to speculate that there might be a preserved Roman settlement or industrial centre. It was thought that parts of it could be poking up through the silt on areas of raised ground, but that it had otherwise been covered with silt following the draining of the fens.

Kilns and a hermitage
Time Team put in trenches to investigate both the ditch and its associated Roman layer under the silt and some other targets nearer the modern-day surface. These were identified as a result of fieldwalking, which had turned up large quantities of mainly Roman pottery, and geophysics surveys. The results from the latter were so clear that John Gater confidently declared three target 'spikes' to be the sites of kilns even before any digging had begun.

This was indeed what they turned out to be – although they appeared to have been different kinds of kiln in each case, and had been cut through by later settlement activities. These included a number of burials; postholes from probably Anglo-Saxon structures; and – in the case of the biggest, and best preserved, kiln – an apsidal-shaped structure incorporating part of the original kiln walls. This last discovery, in combination with the burials and other finds, led to speculation that it might have been the site of an early Christian hermitage – which, if true, would be a very significant discovery as virtually all such structures have been lost, often destroyed by the monasteries and churches that were built on such sites.

Unexpected outcomes
Further geophysics surveys revealed various other features in the landscape, including an enclosure that may date from the Neolithic era. Time Team regular Francis Pryor, who has carried out extensive studies of prehistoric remains in this part of the world, is likely to return to the site to investigate it further.

So, what started with an expectation of a relatively straightforward Roman era dig had, by the end of the third day, turned into a complex tale of multi-period occupation spanning up to 5,000 years. The possible Roman wharf had not been definitely identified as such, but the excavations on the site and Stewart Ainsworth's investigation of the landscape as it would have been almost 2,000 years ago suggested that it was a definite possibility. And the tantalising suggestion of the existence of an early Saxon Christian hermitage here produced an unexpected outcome to Time Team's efforts.

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