Professor Tony King gave us a talk about the Romans in Hampshire and followed this up with with a site visit to his excavation of a Roman site. We went to visit trench 13 that they have been digging for the past 3 years. They are only able to dig for a couple of weeks a year and have to backfill the site at the end of the 2 weeks. 

Tony described trench 13 and the contents they had examined. Their assessment so far is the site was for light industrial manufacturing. They are hoping to discover a villa in the area if not on this site but close by. We were shown artefacts excavated from the site, these included a jar manufactured in France, numerous pieces of glass, what is considered to be an anvil many nails, clay tiles, and bricks.

 It was interesting to listen to Tony’s assessment of what the purpose of the site was and provided a good backdrop to the talk he gave earlier in the year.