Archaeology at Hinton Ampner
Anita Rani visits Hinton Ampner in Winchester, a medieval village and Georgian country estate that is also the site of both Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements and barrows.
From Roman coins to Stone Age axes and prehistoric bones, Britain鈥檚 countryside is full of hidden ancient treasures.
Anita Rani is in Hinton Ampner, a medieval village and country estate near Winchester in the county of Hampshire. It鈥檚 home to Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements and barrows. For millennia, this site has seen people use the land for different purposes, all the way up to the construction of the Georgian manor house here, now managed by the National Trust.
Some of the Hinton Ampner estate land is being turned from grasslands and farmland into biodiverse habitats such as woodlands and wildflower meadows. But, before that happens, the grounds are being meticulously examined for archaeological traces, so no important historical artefacts are lost.
Anita gets her boots on to meet a group of volunteers who are raring to find new signs of what life was like through time at the site. She meets James Brown, regional archaeologist for the National Trust, and Geoff Buss, the lead volunteer for the Hinton Ampner archaeology team. This volunteer army has uncovered evidence of humans living here as far back as 10,000 years ago - through a combination of combing the tilled soil and Lidar surveying. With top tips from the volunteers, will Anita make a find on her first attempt?
Along the way, we open the Countryfile archive and revisit stories of amazing historic finds from across the UK. Like when John Craven revealed a 3,000-year-old treasure trove preserved by wildfire in Cambridgeshire, Margherita Taylor explored the First World War secrets of Sherwood, Charlotte Smith found an amazing discovery at the Roman fort of Vindolanda near Hadrian鈥檚 Wall, and we met a gemmologist and jeweller in Whitby on the hunt for black jet.
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