Time Team in Greenwich July 1999

Time team came to Greenwich Park to investigate the "Roman Remains " here.

Greenwich Park is an enclosed area that is a hill side running from Black Heath down almost to the south bank of the Thames at old Greenwich town.  It is not a simple hillside, as it flattens off in places and undulates in all directions.  The Old Royal Greenwich Observatory, with it's longitude 00.oo zero meridian line, is built atop one hill crest.  Some 300 yards to the east of observatory is another  little hillock normally surrounded by a waist high metal paling  fence.  Attached to the fence is a sign headed Roman Remains.  Beneath the heading is a paragraph of text that informs the reader that this is the site of Roman Artefacts accidentally uncovered in 1902, but little in the way of further detail.

It was this site that Channel 4's Time Team had come to investigate.  It was the programs usual format, three days to excavate and investigate a Local History Mystery. The usual three stalwarts fronted the production  Professor  Mike Ashton of Bristol University,   Phil Harding (archaeologist)  and  Tony_Robinson   (comedy actor, writer and history buff)

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The weather was largely dry and fine with long light evenings.  As well as the fenced hillock, two other small areas were excavated, these were on the other side of a tarmac path that skirted the "Roman Remains" enclosure.  The two subsidiary digs were fairly  shallow affairs but the original "roman" site was bisected by a slit trench that, by the afternoon of the 3rd day, was about five feet deep at it's deepest point. This deep cut was largely the result of Phil Hardings efforts, who,  unlike the stereo typed feeble self important media celebrity, turned himself into a non stop digging machine for the three days. The photographs above show something of all three sites on the evening of the second day.  these views include the fencing removed to gain access to the original hillock, the activity at all three sites, including the wall uncovered in one and also some of the numerous small bits that had been found.