What is your biggest find in your lifetime? Charlie and Maisie

Hi Charlie and Maisie! The most important thing I have found was part of a medieval church altar piece, in a pit where it had been smashed up and buried during the English Reformation in the 17th century. This was when Protestant soldiers destroyed many Catholic places of worship. The fragment I found was made of alabaster, a soft white stone easily carved into different shapes. It was face-down when I found it, so it looked like a flat white stone. When I turned it over it had four heads, painted red and black and decorated with gold paint!

If you meant the ‘largest’ thing I ever found then that would be the foundation for a steam-powered engine in a Victorian flour mill. These were made of 2m long slabs of sandstone, surrounded with brick and tied together with steel pins longer than I am tall (about 1.8m … ). The engine that sat on these bases would have had two huge pistons driving a grooved drum with steel ropes that turned the drive shaft for the entire mill, which was a 7-storey building!

The most important things found in the UK during my lifetime are probably the Mary Rose and the Staffordshire hoard, but I’m sure every other archaeologist in the county will disagree with me … we’re good at arguing!