South London
First screened 10 February 2008

South London – Background

In 1940 the threat of a German invasion of Britain was very real. Time Team's location at Shooters Hill, in south London, was a key strong point in what was known as 'Stop Line Central' – one of several defensive anti-tank lines around the capital, designed to fight off a potential German attack. The road through Shooters Hill runs straight from the Kent coast and down into the heart of London. If the defences here had been breached, the Home Guard would have been pushed back to the banks of the Thames, before making a last ditch stand in the streets of Whitehall.

Time Team identified a number of sites in the area to tell the story of what might have happened in 1939-45. But is this archaeology? That's one of the many questions they had to answer over the three days of their investigation. The answer is that with so many of the written records from the second world war destroyed, archaeology perhaps gives us the best chance to understand such surviving remains before they disappear.

Unusually for Time Team, this dig also benefited from the presence of people with direct experience of what happened here. Some of the people who lived and served at the site during the war revisited it along with the archaeologists. And Phil Harding and Matt Williams also got their marching orders on this shoot, to find out what it would have been like to defend London as part of the Home Guard.

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