For three days in April the town of Burford was taken over by Time Team. We were filming on the High Street, up the church tower, flying a helicopter over the town and visiting the pubs. People often don't realise just how big the Team is but once you include film crews, production staff, archaeologists, catering and historians you can have over 50 people descending on a town, field or small back garden
On some sites we're almost certain we're going to find something. Fantastic aerial photos, previous excavations, earthworks there's often clear evidence that there is archaeology below the surface. At Burford all we had was a small set of geophysics results and a handful of pottery so there was a chance we wouldn't find very much the hospital could be completely under the existing house and there could be no Anglo Saxons in the veg patch. Luckily for us the site came up trumps and contained almost 2000 years worth of finds.
We really wanted to involve the local primary school children in this dig. They not only helped us dig, they also produced most of the models for our plan of Burford through the years. To get inspiration for their model houses the class went on a tour of the town and spent Day Two building and painting the dwellings of Burford. They did a fantastic job; in fact their models may have been even better than those made by our graphics team!
