Stuart Wilson speaks about finding 'The Lost City of Trellech'

Transcript

00:00I found this site some years ago when I was first invited up to the field

00:03across the road to investigate a possible house in the field and so we investigated that and

00:09discovered over a couple of years that there actually was a house there and then based on

00:14landscape archaeology we predicted that this field would be part of the main high street.

00:19By chance it happened to come up for auction and I bought it. The most interesting find for myself

00:24was a medieval flowerpot. It wasn't particularly interesting in terms of oh it's a flowerpot

00:30and what's very common nowadays but pottery flowerpots in medieval times are exceptionally rare

00:36and actually this is the only known medieval flowerpot in the whole of Wales. I do regret

00:41now knowing a lot more that sometimes we could have recorded some of the finds better. I'll describe

00:46something I'm really passionate about, not overly so, I'm not crazy enough to dig here in the wintertime.

00:52So first of all do your research. Obviously you want to buy a plot of land which you've got a good

00:57chance of finding something in and then what you have then take your time. Decide where you've got

01:03to put the small heap. That's really important because the last thing you want to do is put your

01:08small heap over somewhere then you want to dig later. So don't put it too close. Then over time

01:15just work up and and get more expertise in as you can get along but it's a big undertaking so

01:22yeah just take it carefully bit by bit. The biggest thing I've learned about myself when doing the

01:27project is that I'm lazy. I much prefer to do archaeology when other people do the hard work.

01:35They do the digging and I watch them dig. That's what I've learned.