The extraordinary prehistoric complex at Tottiford Reservoir in Devon had been discovered by a member of the public, investigated by the Dartmoor National Park Authority and then reported on in local Devon press. These reports had eventually made it into national newspapers where one report happened to be read one morning by Time Team's Development Producer, responsible for identifying potential Time Team sites. All agreed Tottiford had great potential and the National Park authorities were keen For Time Team to visit. An initial trip to the site was agreed so the production team could discuss archaeological and logistical issues with landowners and local archaeologists. It soon became apparent that Tottiford was going to present a challenge unlike anything Time Team had encountered before.
With each site there are certain requirements a film crew has. We need somewhere to set up an incident room, somewhere to park the cars, set up catering and a location appropriate for a helicopter to land. With the invaluable help of the landowners of the reservoir itself, South West Water, and the landowners of the surrounding area, the National Park Authority, we were able to squeeze into a car park not too far away from the site. Here we set up camp presenting quite a spectacle for dog walkers and locals passing through the area.
Our famous Time Team Land Rovers are ideal vehicles for off road driving and we made good use of them at Tottiford. The single lane narrow roads within the National Park made ferrying staff and equipment from the incident room to the site quite difficult and made life very hard for some of our suppliers attempting to deliver marquees, generators and other essential kit - its difficult to specify a delivery address when there isn't a postcode...
In order to get on to the site itself our site manager, Kerry Ely, had to find a safe path down into the reservoir. After hacking a few old tree stumps out of the way with a pick axe Kerry was able to provide a steep and difficult route in and out. Did I mention that the reservoir had to be drained for us to access it? South West Water has three reservoirs in this area of Devon, supplying the local community with drinking water. These reservoirs are drained one by one in rotation so that each can be inspected for any maintenance needed. The company was kind enough to agree to drain Tottiford reservoir in time for our visit - a process taking a minimum of three months, meaning we needed to plan the date of our dig very carefully and hope that no heavy rain slowed the process down. Luckily everything ran to schedule and we were able to go ahead.
Conducting an archaeological investigation in a muddy reservoir isn't exactly a normal situation for our team. However we had clear questions to answer, targets to investigate and a time limit. After three days wrestling with muddy prehistory and celebrating our 200th dig we had a great episode on film and some answers to fascinating archaeological questions.
