Fresh from Greyfriars II and making a point of only undertaking digs with a monarch in the title, Leon Hunt and Mathew Morris found themselves in the playing fields adjacent to the now disused King Edward VII School (where Monty Python’s Graham Chapman went, no less) for a 20 trench evaluation.

A geophysical survey had picked up a number of anomalies, some which looked suspiciously like big drains and some which looked like they could be archaeological. A slight hiccup involving a playing field that was still in use meant some last minute fiddling with trench locations, but we managed to squeeze them all in.

Most of the western side of the site was negative, with trenches revealing land drains, made-up ground and former field boundaries right where we would have expected them to be. Larger anomalies, on the Geophys proved to be larger drains running from the recently constructed sixth form college and astro turf sports ground to the south.

Trenches across the more archaeological anomalies turned out to be several large ditches, mostly containing Romano-British pottery, fuel ash and a reasonable amount of animal bone, including most of the body of a dog.

The pattern emerged of a small group of quite large enclosure ditches, dating from between the 2nd and 4th centuries, with the focus apparently to the south under the sixth form college grounds.