Mick 'the Dig' Worthington
'The site had lovely soil and unlike an urban site, with all the services in the way, we could dig pretty much wherever we liked,' says Mick, 'With all our activity we could pin down some more evidence for the monastery and have a better idea of its plan. We could also try to put together the story of its past. We had some outstanding test results from geophysics, who managed to map a very large area. We spent a lot of this dig just trying to locate the archaeology and in the end we discovered some really interesting things.'

Landscape specialist Stewart Ainsworth
'We actually had very few maps to work on at Chicksands – they just didn't exist. The main keys I had for putting together a wider view of what happened there were sketchy bits of evidence. I was trying to identify boundaries and terraces in the landscape by looking at the maps I had, and also by walking the landscape. A lot of monasteries that were shut down by the dissolution became country houses and as a result were often radically changed. However, there are clues in the landscape. Redesigned areas – for example, for use as gardens – often follow the lines of original boundaries or walls. It's a case of working with what you've got, looking at the landscape and joining up the pieces of evidence.'

Geophysics guru Chris Gaffney
'We had a lot of very nice manicured lawns at Chicksands with what appeared to be some good archaeology in the ground. Our main problem was that we went there with a few preconceptions about what we thought we would find. The greater the area we covered, the more we discovered how different the site was. When using resistance techniques we found that we were mapping a lot of moisture in the sandy soil, but the ground radar was great. I had terrific penetration with the equipment, at stages as low as three metres!'