THE city s history could be re-written following the discovery of a Roman amphitheatre.Grant McCabe reports on a find dating back to 300AD which has left experts stunned.
THE city s history could be re-written following the discovery of a Roman amphitheatre.Grant McCabe reports on a find dating back to 300AD which has left experts stunned.
A 150ft-wide Roman amphitheatre is buried under woodland near Peterborough, archaeologists have revealed today.
Experts are already hailing the find as one of the most important ever made.
Only a handful have ever been unearthed across the country, and its discovery could change how historians view Roman Peterborough.
The amphitheatre was found at the Bedford Purlieus site, near Wansford, by archaeologist David Hall during a survey he was carrying out on fields and woodlands throughout the county.
He said: I am very excited by this wonderful find. We are looking at a construction dating back to about 300 AD, which would take us back to the time of the Romans.
From surveying the land, the building is quite clearly of a semi-circular shape, with a diameter of about 50 metres.
Mr Hall, who is now a freelance archaeologist, following several years of working for English Heritage, has more
than 30 years experience working on land throughout the country.
He stumbled across the amphitheatre while using specialist equipment on the land to test its age.
He said: The varying resistance in the soil can then determine the shape and size of what is underneath.
In layman s terms, it is like a radar on a ship finding what is nearby.
Mr Hall believes, from the contours of the land, that the first remains of the amphitheatre, an outside wall, could be found by digging as little as 5ft down.
Today, Roman archaeology expert Hedley Swane, of the Museum of London, claimed the discovery was a find of extreme importance, and would change the interpretation of Roman Peterborough.
Mr Swane said: For an area that had a population of only 2,000 in Roman times, it is remarkable that such an area had an amphitheatre.
You would never expect such a small site to possess such a venue, and I am fascinated at this potential development.
Should this be uncovered, then it will change what experts have previously thought about the area.
Talks are now underway with the Forestry Commission, which owns the land, about the best way to excavate the site.
Only 12 Roman amphitheatres have been found in the UK.