Friars Wash, Hertfordshire
First screened 4 January 2009

What they found

'Like a London bus'
In a decade and a half of programme making, covering more than 150 sites across the length and breadth of Britain, Time Team had never succeeded in locating a Roman temple. For many associated with the programme, the various false leads and unfulfilled lines of enquiry over the years had turned into a running joke, with mention of a possible temple becoming almost akin to talk of the holy grail – the cause of endless, fruitless and quite probably unattainable searches.

It's not surprising, then, that the exploration of a potential temple site in a farmer's field near the tiny Hertfordshire village of Friars Wash (population 113) was met with a degree of scepticism from hardened Time Team hands. And it was a sign of how different the outcome was to prove on this occasion that even the normally unexcitable Time Team Roman expert Guy de la Bédoyère registered an uncharacteristic degree of enthusiasm as the excavation of the site unfolded.

'It's like a London bus,' says Time Team presenter Tony Robinson. 'You wait for years for one to come along, and then you get not one, not two, not even three but four at the same time.'

Four temples
Time Team was drawn to the Friars Wash site by a revealing aerial photograph taken during the hot, dry summer of 1976. Clearly defined cropmarks showed the distinctive outlines of two adjacent square-shaped features, each containing an inner, smaller square. The structures were typical of Romano-British temples, with an inner cella, or sanctuary, surrounded by an outer wall forming an ambulatory, or walkway.

The Team faced some initial problems in tying in the features shown on the aerial photograph to the 'geofizz' survey of the site and the flint walls and surfaces uncovered by the first excavations. Landscape archaeologist Stewart Ainsworth came to the rescue with some pen-and-ruler calculations that corrected an error in Henry Chapman's more sophisticated GPS survey techniques, and from then on the exploration and mapping of the site proceeded apace.

As well as the two adjacent rectangular structures, a further circular structure enclosing a central feature was also identified and excavated. Another rectangular structure was also discovered on the site. All four were confirmed as Roman-British temples as the excavation went ahead.

Evocative finds
The central feature of the circular temple comprised a series of alternating chalk and flint layers that had been tamped down to form the base for a large monument, probably a statue of the temple deity. It was surrounded by what would once have been a massive circular wall. Third-century pottery was found on the floor and a coin on a well-preserved section of tessellated pavement (mosaic floor) within the structure. Other coins and finds across the site showed that it was in use from the first century AD. These included a beautiful enamelled brooch and a hoard of copper coins that would have been deposited as offerings to the gods whose temples stood here, as well as a selection of 'curse tablets' – rolled lead strips inscribed with pleas to the gods to punish those responsible for thefts or other offences against the people who deposited the tablets. One particularly finely preserved coin dated from the reign of Constantine, the emperor who converted both himself and the empire to Christianity. The coin obviously dated from before his conversion as it was stamped with the image of a pagan deity on the opposite side to the emperor's head.

Perhaps the most evocative find, though, was an unusual naturally shaped stone. This resembled a head with two eye sockets and a curved, skull-shaped surface. Could it have been a sacred stone image of the deity for whom the temple was built, which might once have been placed in a niche within the central sanctuary, which was regarded in Roman times as the home of the god himself?

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