Day two on site started well. The weather was fine and we worked hard to remove a thick silty clay deposit from the northern part of the trench. This layer isn’t very old – it has post-medieval pottery in it and it’s very close to the surface.

The digging team worked really hard. There was lots of mattocking shoveling and quite a bit of troweling. Antonia, James I, Dan, Anetta, Charlie and Chris dug and dug and dug helped by Andy and James G. Ski, our volunteer detectorist (operating under permission from Historic England), added to the excitement. He found nine Roman coins to add to our growing collection of pottery and animal bones. If we’re in the right place this is all material missed by Hayward in the earlier excavations.

Under the thick layer we were digging off today is a great spread of rubble. Our next task is to record this rubble layer, then lift it to reveal what is below. Andy reckons it’ll be 30cm thick. If we’re in the right place there should be a bath and fish mosaic below. Time will tell….