Spotlight on Local History with James Balme
It was in the summer of 1998 when I first became interested in the possibility that the Romans had once occupied land close to Rixton and Warburton sometime between the 1st to 4th century AD.
After searching many old maps and place names I decided to seek permission from local farmers to search the fields by simply fieldwalking looking for any clues that may have remained in the plough-soil. For the next eight years I carried on walking the fields and during that time I started to find sherds of Roman pottery and other pieces of evidence that pointed strongly to Roman activity. This allowed me to narrow down the search area over time until I finally pinpointed the exact area of Roman activity and what seemed to have once been a Roman settlement. Now I was starting to regularly unearth Roman metalwork in the form of brooches and coinage including a small hoard of Roman silver Republican coins. These would later be identified as coinage used to pay Roman soldiers. But it was in the year 2000 whilst searching another field close to where the supposed settlement lay that the most important find was to be made.
On a lovely sunny spring day whilst searching the field I noticed something reflecting the sunlight in my direction. I wandered over and couldn’t believe what I was seeing for in front of me laying on the surface of the ploughed soil was a large silver bracelet in the form of a snake. I immediately reported my find to the museum and it was confirmed that it was indeed a Roman snake bracelet. This was a high-status object and along with the Roman brooches and silver coinage it was clear that I had located a previously unknown Roman settlement not shown any maps available at the time.
Following on from my discoveries I went on to make many appearances on local BBC and ITV television stations to talk about my finds. In 2001 BBC1 made a documentary with me about the work as I was doing in the area and the wonderful finds I was unearthing. Following on from this I carried on unearthing more evidence of Roman activity and interest from the archaeological fraternity grew stronger. A year later I worked with the former Manchester University archaeological unit to carry out a two-week excavation at the site where more evidence was found in the form of Roman ditches.
But in 2006 I was to receive a phone call from Channel 4s ‘Time Team’ to ask if they could come and excavate the site and make an episode with me for the 2007 series. I agreed that it would be a great idea. In early September Sir Tony Robinson and the Time Team arrived in the village. We held a pre- excavation meeting at the former Lymm hotel the evening before we started filming. The three day dig was a fantastic experience and a Time Team record was broken for the largest trenches ever dug during a Time Team dig! The episode entitled ‘No stone Unturned’ was first broadcast on Channel 4 in March 2007 and has gone on to be included as one of the all-time classic episodes with over one million views and is still being broadcast to this day on the Time Team youtube channel.
You can view exclusive ‘behind the scenes’ footage of Time Team shot by myself during excavations by simply visiting my history channel youtube.com/@tvpresenter4history and going to the Time Team playlist.
