In search of the nuns' cloister
What's a medieval monastery doing in the middle of a military base? The answer is that after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, Chicksands became a country house, with various additions and remodelling carried out over time. It remained in private hands until the 20th century, when it was bought by the military. The house and its lands then became a huge base and what was left of the monastery remained in the middle of it all.

So what was the full extent of the monastic settlement and what was life like for those who lived here? The Team knows that it is dealing with a Gilbertine monastery, and that this type of monastic order would have featured different buildings to house the men and women separately. This provides an idea of the different components that would have made up the site and plans for the dig are structured accordingly. One of the main objectives, for example, is to locate the nuns' cloister, no remains of which can now be found above ground.

The first job is to survey the area using (geophysics). By mid morning of Day One the geophysics crew have completed their initial surveys and Trench One is de-turfed and opened on an area of immaculate lawn. The subsoil is a digger's delight: quite fine and sandy, ideal for digging and great for towelling.

After a short while, though, digging comes to a halt. 'Trench One was quite shallow and early on we had already hit the bedrock,' says series producer Tim Taylor. 'We had a couple of pieces of late pottery out of it, and that was our lot.' This is to set a trend for the excavation as trenches are opened – and soon afterwards closed – all over the site in an attempt to discover the location of the nuns' quarters.

Another area is also included in the excavation plan in the hope that it might provide an insight into life here in the past. Some time ago, when a water pipeline was being installed across the base, a collection of burials was discovered indicating the site of a cemetery. Time Team digger Barney Sloane opens Trench Four in the late afternoon to try to locate the site of these burials.

Conference call
Day Two begins with a conference: with a number of trenches now open there is a lot of excavation to be coordinated. It had been established that a small cloister could still be identified in the existing standing building (now the officers' mess). Its small size leads the Team to believe that it may have been for the canons – or monks – that lived on the site, as there were fewer canons than nuns. It is hoped that some of the geophysics anomalies that the Team is investigating will help to identify the other components of the site; there should be another separate house for the nuns and a church somewhere. Mick Aston heads the conference, held around a map of the site, with the other specialists. It's decided to open two more trenches for starters.

Barney Sloane and his crew of diggers discover some large deposits of roof tile in the area that is thought to contain the burials. This offers some interesting possibilities. Was there a building in the middle of the graveyard? Barney picks up the story: 'We should be finding some bodies in this area, but we've got lots of tile. If we find some bodies as well it will be really exciting.'

By midday things are starting to get complicated as so much excavation is under way. As Tim Taylor described it later: 'We were on this huge site and it looked like we were starting to get evidence for quite a few structures. Up to the early afternoon we were looking all over the place for the nuns' house. We had one of the best experts in the country there in Roberta Gilchrist (medieval and gender archaeologist). She rolled up her sleeves, grabbed a couple of Time Team diggers, and put some trenches in to see what she could find. That was great.'

By the end of Day Two the site has certainly turned a corner. The finds are coming in thick and fast from the trenches for the washers. A regular convoy of army wives and children are filtering through the incident room collecting fresh water to keep the finds-processing team supplied. And structures are starting to appear in some of the trenches. The Team knows that the story is coming together.

Digging double speed
Day Three starts with digging at double speed. This is followed closely by Time Team's field recorder, Kate Edwards, performing her rapid accurate recording. Some outstanding carved stone is starting to come out of the trenches and Mick Aston is getting excited. It looks like a refectory building has been found helping the team to build a picture of the monastery layout, and Barney Sloane has started to find human remains.

'We didn't find what we expected to find,' says Mick Aston, 'We put so many trenches in that it was almost a process of elimination. Even if a trench holds nothing in it, it's still useful to know that we've eliminated an area from the equation. We had some nice archaeology coming out and a group of us were putting together our theories. One of the things we had to keep thinking about was not to assume too much about what we should be finding. It's very easy to go to a place like that with preconceived ideas, but we had to look at the evidence we found and be as realistic as possible in our interpretations.'