Friday afternoon and the sun is blazing down on the vacant building plot – until last week a temporary car park – at Blue Boy Yard. Time Team Live guest presenter Liza Tarbuck has just been given her first lesson in the rudiments of archaeology by old hand Phil Harding. 'Oh, a cake slice,' she says, as Phil shows her a trowel. Liza is keen to learn, but wonders about getting dirty. 'A good archaeologist is not necessarily a dirty archaeologist,' Phil tells her with a grin, to the amusement of the members of the public who are already gathering in large numbers in the adjacent street.
						Liza Tarbuck with Paul Bennett, Director of Canterbury Archaeological Trust
				The Blue Boy Yard site is on Stour Street, opposite the Canterbury Heritage Museum, the former Poor Priests' Hospital with its magnificent medieval galleries. A patch of bare concrete today, it was once part of Canterbury's Roman temple precinct. With the site about to be developed for new housing, Time Team Live has a unique opportunity to excavate it and attempt to locate the precinct's main temple or shrine.
		Phil Harding
		Phil Harding is unsure of the chances of success. The precise location of any temple or shrine within the temple complex has never been ascertained. Different attempts at reconstructing the layout of the complex have placed the major temple structures in different positions. And since the Roman complex covered some three acres, while the Blue Boy Yard excavation trench will be no more than about five metres square at most, the quest is not guaranteed to end in success. ^top
		6.25pm As the sun sinks behind the surrounding buildings and the first of the weekend's live broadcasts is coming to an end, a mechanical digger moves into place and breaks the surface of the concrete at Blue Boy Yard. It's the first trench at Time Team Live 2000. The initial trench will be approximately five metres by two metres, with an option to extend it to five metres square. Phil expects to reach the Roman layers about four feet below the current ground level, but there will be a lot of more modern debris and medieval layers to excavate and investigate before the search for the Roman temple can begin in earnest. ^top