History Features

The CEC was formed at time when the town was undergoing rapid change. New discoveries were being made every week – or so it seemed – as the foundations were dug for new buildings in the Forum, Dyer Street, the Avenue and the Abbey Grounds.

Alan McWhirr doing a site tour in 1971

If you lived in the town during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, you probably remember the excavation of the abbey, the amphitheatre, the Roman walls, the town gates and cemetery, not to mention the Beeches town houses, where the spectacular hare mosaic, pride of the Corinium Museum and symbol of Roman Cirencester, was found in 1972.

Cirencester was invaded every summer by students from universities all over England, but many local people also got their first taste of archaeology, coming to work on the excavations from surrounding towns and villages as far away as Swindon, Lechlade, Fairford and Cheltenham.

Cirencester was unique in offering this opportunity to get involved in archaeology, and special too in the number of people from the town who have gone on to make careers for themselves at the top of the archaeological tree.

1960s excavations at the site of Cirencester Abbey

David Brown, director of the excavations that uncovered Cirencester’s Norman abbey, now runs the UK’s biggest archaeology publisher and bookshop, Oxbow Books, based in Oxford. Martin Millett, who excavated the hare mosaic as a 16-year-old, is now Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University and excavates sites in Rome.

Steve Roskams went on from Cirencester to excavate sites in Carthage, Tunisia, and to write the book that transformed the way archaeology is practised the world over – he now teaches excavation methods at York University.

David Viner, known to many in Cirencester as the former Corinium Museum Curator, is Chairman of the Cirencester Archaeological and Historical Society, a pioneer of industrial archaeology and author of works on the Thames & Severn canal. Christopher Catling, another local boy bitten by the archaeology bug, went on to carve out a career as a heritage journalist and writer, founding the charity Heritage Link to campaign for the heritage.

Excavation of a Roman mosaic discovered in 1964

And Tim Darvill, originally from Cheltenham, who worked on the St Michael’s Field excavations in the late 1970s, is now making waves as the first archaeologist to be allowed to dig at Stonehenge in forty years: you might have seen him recently on the BBC News and on BBC2s ‘Timewatch’ explaining why and when that most enigmatic of prehistoric monuments was built.

Archaeology has changed much over five decades. Most excavation is now carried out by professional contractors. Cotswold Archaeology, the body that inherited the work of the Cirencester Excavation Committee in 1989, now carries out professional archaeology not only in Cirencester, but on a national scale.

Led by Chief Executive Neil Holbrook (of ‘Time Team’ fame), Cotswold Archaeology has grown from a small organisation based in Cirencester’s former railway station on Tetbury Road to one of the UK’s top five archaeological charities Recent projects include excavation of the massive Broadmead shopping centre in Bristol, which reopened last month as the Cabot Circus shopping centre, and the route of a 100-mile pipeline crossing mid Wales to supply gas to central England.

A more recent dig by Cotswold Archaeology

Looking back in time, Cirencester occupies a key niche in the history of archaeology and looking into the future it continues to be in the forefront of excavation and research.

You can learn more on 15 October 2008 at the Bingham Hall at 7.30pm, when, as part of the Bingham Hall’s Centenary Celebrations, Neil Holbrook, Tim Darvill and Chris Catling will take an entertaining look back over ‘Fifty Years of Cirencester Archaeology’, with special guest Alan McWhirr, Director of Excavations in the town during the 1970s.