When the Time Team office rings you up with questions about upcoming sites, the queries usually are "Do you know the site? Have you been there?" With Castor, the first question researcher Tom Scott asked me was "Great site - how do you fancy dressing up?" Not being one whose first concern is fashion I needed to know more. This sounded intriguing. I knew of the Roman site at Castor and suddenly had visions of me in a toga or in a Roman bathhouse; not a pretty thought. However, as Tom unfurled the story, I was hooked.
Roman remains had been identified at Castor as early as the mid 18th century and some of these were mapped and excavated over a large area of the village by a local antiquarian, Edmund Artis, probably in the early 1820s, although the exact date is uncertain. The scale of one group of building remains around the church was so large that Artis labelled it on his map as a 'Praetorium', a possible governor's palace, and which would have made it the largest Roman building Time Team had ever excavated. However, Artis's map and some drawings of the excavations remained the only clue where the most of remains were. Was his map reliable? With the limited technology of the day, could he have produced an accurate survey and could we use it to aid the Time Team investigations? I remembered now that these were the questions that Tom had asked me a number of weeks before in casual conversation. It was starting to become clear - Time Team not only wanted me to assess the reliability of Artis's map by making a new map using the equipment and techniques that Artis would have used - but they wanted me to dress as he would have done to provide authenticity. I considered carefully before giving Tom an answer.
I had few reservations in my mind that I could reproduce the map with similar equipment to that which he might have used, such as a plane table and alidade (a drawing table mounted on a wooden tripod and a sighting rule), a brass measuring chain (equivalent of a tape measure) and some sighting poles, although whether I could get all the equipment needed and do it in the time available was another matter. Also, at this stage, thoughts like credibility, looking stupid, I'll never live this down, what would I look like, how would he have dressed etc were all creeping into my thinking. Then I thought - when would I get a chance like this again to put myself in the same position as an early 18th century antiquarian, wearing the same clothes and facing the same challenge? The clincher to saying yes was as a response to Tom's next comment "Oh, and by the way, Matt Williams will be dressing up as your labourer and he will do exactly as you tell him . The thought of Matt carrying all the equipment whilst I directed operations suddenly became very appealing.
With me dressed in my finery - breeches, frock coat, top hat etc and Matt in his rustic knee-breeches and stockings, we made a fine pair during the Castor excavations. Despite suffering much ridicule from the rest of the team, especially Phil Harding (that well-known icon of dress sense) we threw ourselves into the task with gusto and managed to complete the task in the time given to us. When Artis had made his survey he mapped the excavations and structures onto what appeared to be a copy of an estate map which showed a lot of detail including the houses, roads and church within Castor at that time. Using similar equipment, Matt and myself made a survey of where the Time Team excavations and structures that we found were in relation to the buildings, roads and church shown on the modern Ordnance Survey map. Some of the features on Artis's map are still there today and which allowed us to check how the two compared. When we put the two maps together, there was a remarkable degree of agreement. Whilst we could not check some of the structures he mapped in areas we didn't investigate, his map matched ours where we could identify some of the remains he excavated and drew. This gave me confidence that, although his map was simplistic, most of the positions and alignments of buildings on his map could be trusted. However, the thing I learnt most from this exercise was - that the tall top-hat I had on never once fell off whilst working!
