Hidden beneath the trees of Bedford Purlieus Wood are the tantalising remains of a whole complex of Roman buildings. But what are they - a huge villa, a military compound, an industrial centre, or all of the above? Time Team were here to find out.
One of the key tools on this site was Lidar. This cutting edge technology uses laser light fired from an aircraft to build up a picture of the ground hidden underneath the leaves and branches of a forest. The results were stunning- giving us a fantastic map of the earthworks across the entire site.
Surveying in woods is a nightmare for our geophysics team. This site was not only covered in trees but as a National Nature Reserve was also full of protected plant species. Despite this, the initial survey results looked promising and John was confident he'd detected an area of industrial activity. One scrape of the digger bucket later and this potential archaeological hot spot turned out to be a piece of barbed wire back to the geophysics drawing board.
Thankfully we didn't need geophysics to locate the first trench; parts of the Roman walls were still above ground. So Phil opened up an area over the southern end of the main building complex to try and work out what it was used for.
We also knew that the woods around our building complex were full of pits and other features. These had been test pitted in the past and some had produced evidence of metal working - could the whole site be an industrial centre producing iron? Well, John Gater hadn't given up and had been surveying around possible metal working areas resulting in a target for Tracey to investigate.
Back on the main site Matt Williams had opened a new trench across another Roman building and was getting spectacular results. There were some beautiful finds emerging, all much higher class than anything else on site. He had trays of box flu tile and painted wall plaster suggesting that this could have been a bath house.
But Phil's building didn't prove to be anywhere near as high status as Matt's. The Wessex wonder had uncovered a series of rooms which seemed to be for the workers or slaves who operated the industry Tracey was now uncovering.
John's determination to prove geophys could help on such a difficult site had paid off and Tracey's trench was now producing fantastic results. She'd uncovered pieces of roasted ore which would have been part of a roasting hearth a key process from the iron making industry. The furnaces wouldn't have been far away and it confirmed this part of site as a Roman iron smelting area.
The activity in Matt's trench only seemed to get more hectic as the end of Day Three approached. His bath house seemed to sit in isolation, away from the other buildings on site and it was clearly of a much higher quality build. Perhaps it had been designed for the site overseer on his visits to view the iron industry.
After three days of digging amongst the deadly nightshade and the orchids we'd solved the mystery of the Bedford Purlieus Woods. 2000 years ago this would have been a huge industral centre and an important cog in the machinery of the Roman Empire.
