ADVENTUROUS VOLUNTEERS have been helping to rewrite the area’s history by digging up the past at Castleshaw Roman Forts.
The Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts won a £70,100 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund Support to launch their project ‘Redefining Roman Castleshaw: Understanding and sharing our past’.
The money enabled them to hold a 4-week dig throughout July with the public to carry out fresh excavations of the fort, which dates back to Agricola’s conquest around AD79.
Around 25 volunteers were on site each day to uncover and re-examine four trenches dug in 1907-8 and the late 1950s and 1960s as well as explore new areas.
Vicky Nash, senior architect at the University of Salford and project supervisor, revealed: “Everything has not been fully recorded from previous digs so we’ve uncovered some things we expected as well as some things we didn’t.
“We’re finding some differences in what has been written down too so we’re rewriting history in certain parts.”
John Roberts, also from the University of Salford, added: “One bit has proved a great puzzle. We cannot find evidence of the ditches that should be outside the fort.
“Forts were always built to the same design – but not this one. There are possibilities of ways it was done differently but nothing certain.
“It would be fantastic to examine the surrounding areas further at some point in the future to see what we can find.”
Volunteers of all ages got hands on with the project, including pupils from nine schools, Duke of Edinburgh participants and young archaeology clubs.
Children were tasked with uncovering the trench around a farm stead, where they discovered household ceramics, tiles and pottery both Roman and modern.
Other volunteers worked on revealing sections of the ramparts, the Roman road into the fort through the eastern gateway, and the surrounding areas.
For volunteer David Heys, 76, it was a trip down memory lane as he took part in the excavations in the 1960s, uncovering the fort’s west ramparts, barracks and granary.
He explained: “I wanted to get involved with doing it again. We find so many different things and I have been very surprised at how much you have to scrape away to uncover things.”
Paul Renshaw, a Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts committee member, added: “Getting so many people involved has been so positive. The response has been great.”
Finds included Roman and pre-historic ceramics, modern glass, clay pipes, Roman roof tiles, medieval daub, a broach, a melon bead and Samian pottery.
Photographs and scale drawings were made of the excavations before they were filled in and finds will be assessed by experts before being displayed at Saddleworth Museum.
The site was one of the first in the country to be afforded special protection in 1935 and is one of only around 180 known Roman auxiliary forts and just over 80 fortlets surviving across the country.
For more information visit: www.castleshawarchaeology.co.uk or contact Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts chairman Colin Berry: 01457 871510 or chairman@castleshawarchaeology.co.uk
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