Time Team

6:00pm – Tuesday, June 19 on ABC1

For generations a family of Somerset farmers have been wondering if there was ever actually a castle on top of the hill they call Castle Hill.

Records show there was a Norman castle in the area, but they are not clear about exactly where and there are several likely locations.

The only answer is for Tony and the team to dig – once all the kit has been hauled up the steep slopes.

The geophysics looks exciting, throwing up almost immediately what looks like the outline of a perfect castle keep. But as the three days progress, everything is far from clear.

Finally the pieces of the jigsaw do join up, but only in a very unexpected way. Do the farmers have their castle? Well… while the team give with one hand they take away with the other!

6:00pm – Tuesday, June 12 on ABC1

The Roman legionary fort of Caerleon in South Wales is one of the most famous and best preserved Roman sites in Britain.

It stood on the edge of the Roman Empire, but its huge amphitheatre and immense baths, and the scale of its ruined walls, are all testament to its power and importance.

But just outside the fort, archaeologists have discovered signs of yet another huge structure leading from the fort down to the river. It seems to be a vast courtyard surrounded by stone buildings and with a mysterious square structure standing in the centre.

Joining a large team from Cardiff University, Tony and the team have just three days to help piece together the answer. And when they do, it casts new light on what was once seen as solely a military outpost.

6:00pm – Tuesday, June 5 on ABC1

Eight hundred years ago the people of Kenfig on the south coast of Wales thought they had built the perfect town, nestled round a harbour with easy access to the sea and a sheltered position.

The town appears to have been a thriving commercial success but then it vanished, leaving just a few castle walls to mark its existence.

Extraordinarily, the ruins of the complete town are believed to still lie buried under the immense sand dunes that have covered the whole site since a series of violent storms lashed the coast over 500 years ago.

But even before the storms made life untenable in Kenfig, it seems that the Welsh locals weren’t too keen on its Angle-Norman settlers. There are records of a series of attacks from early in the town’s life.

After getting through 10 metres of sand, Tony Robinson and the team have just three days to work out the size of the lost town and see if there’s any evidence that the Welsh inflicted any damage on the interlopers.

6:00pm – Tuesday, May 29 on ABC1

Property magnate Paul Whight has two very expensive hobbies. He collects and drives classic racing cars, which he keeps in the grounds of his second obsession – his beautiful stately home and garden in Essex.

Paul is very keen to know everything he can about the history of his home, so he’s rashly invited Tony Robinson and Time Team in to do their worst.

The site used to be owned by one of the nation’s foremost families, the De Veres, who were better known as the Earls of Oxford.

In the twelfth century they founded a grand priory somewhere on this site, and centuries later it is thought they also built themselves a fine country house.

What’s more, the most famous and dissolute Earl of Oxford – who some believe wrote some of Shakespeare’s plays – might even be buried here.

The team rip up Paul’s pristine lawns and subject his house to merciless scrutiny, gradually conjuring up the ghosts of the De Vere family.

6:00pm – Tuesday, May 22 on ABC1

Two hundred years ago, Swansea was one of the wealthiest cities in the country, if not the world. The source of those riches was neither the coal nor the steel recently associated with the area, but copper.

The Welsh port city once led the world in copper smelting, but today there’s almost nothing to be seen of this unique heritage. So Tony Robinson and the team investigate one of the very first copper works, White Rock.

Records show that its Great Workhouse housed as many as 20 furnaces, right by the River Tawe, and also that copper production once devastated this landscape, leeching deadly toxins into the ground and sending countless workers to an early grave.

The poisonous fumes blighted the landscape, and the valley was described as akin to Dante’s Inferno, with smoke, noise and pollution. It’s a complete contrast to what can be seen there today.

6:00pm – Tuesday, May 15 on ABC1

Tonight, host Tony Robinson leads the team to the village of Beadnell on a beautiful stretch of the Northumbrian coast, to explore an unusual promontory, from which mysterious fragments of human bone have emerged over recent years.

Legend ties the site to local seventh-century Saint Ebbe, and it’s widely believed that a 13th-century chapel stood here. But could there also be the remains of an earlier structure on the site, perhaps dating to the time of St Ebbe herself? Or are the earthworks on the promontory an indication of Viking or even Iron Age inhabitants.

The only way to find out is by putting spades into the earth, but, before long, the team is stumbling onto confusing signs of Second World War defences. And then, shockingly, they find skeleton bones in the trenches. It’s a sobering discovery, and one that raises more questions than it answers.

6:00pm – Tuesday, May 8 on ABC1

From delving into early Christian history at the heart of Westminster Abbey to unearthing an entire Roman town in Wiltshire, the team’s unrelenting pursuit of all things archaeological takes them the length and breadth of the UK in the most exciting series, Time Team.

Tonight, Tony and the team visit Newmarket, the birthplace of horseracing, in search of the earliest archaeological traces of the sport of kings. They dig in the heart of the historic town, in search of the remains of King Charles II’s racing stables – arguably the world’s first stables dedicated to racing.

It’s the last chance to work here, as construction is about to begin on a multi-million-pound National Horseracing Museum.

From the start of the dig, the challenge for the team is to find evidence that will enable them to distinguish a racing stable from an ‘ordinary’ royal stable block. The pressure’s on for team leader Jackie McKinley to deliver the key small find or insight. With a thick layer of concrete lying over the site, it’s not an easy task.

6:00pm – Tuesday, April 17 on ABC1

From delving into early Christian history at the heart of Westminster Abbey to unearthing an entire Roman town in Wiltshire, the team’s unrelenting pursuit of all things archaeological takes them the length and breadth of the UK in the most exciting series, Time Team.

In this episode, host Tony Robinson and the team visit a tiny windswept island off the coast of Wales. The only way to get to it is by rigging a 500-metre zip wire way above the wave-lashed rocks.

Incredibly, it seems that Gateholm Island in Pembrokeshire was once inhabited, but whether by Romans, Vikings, Celts or druids nobody knows.

A handful of mysterious objects were found on the island years ago, including a rare Roman stone phallus and a beautiful bronze stag suggesting that it may have been some sort of religious centre. Of course, the Team have to dig for answers, but the weather’s throwing everything it has at them. To make their task that bit tougher, they discover they also need to dig at a second site a quarter of a mile away.

6:00pm – Tuesday, April 24 on ABC1

There’s a problem in the chocolate-box village of Bitterley in Shropshire.

The village’s school and cottages cluster prettily around the green. But the village church and the manor house lie more than half a mile away, on the other side of a lumpy, bumpy, empty field.

The villagers, led by energetic community archaeology group leader June Buckard, have been exploring the field and believe that their village used to be much bigger, with the field full of houses and streets. They have called in Tony Robinson and the Team to see if they’re right.

But they’re not expecting the professionals to do all the work. Half the village turn out, ready to dig test pits in their gardens and in any spare piece of land they can get on to. Trenches appear almost hourly in gardens, from the smallest cottage to the grand manor house lawns.

And it takes every hour of the three days for the villagers to get their answer. But judging by how much they seemed to enjoy it, they’re probably still out there digging anyway!

6:00pm – Monday, July 25 on ABC1

Fast tracked from the UK, this week the very latest series of Time Team continues with five more fascinating episodes.

On Monday the Team face one of their strangest challenges ever: digging through a church graveyard in search of what could be one of the largest Roman structures ever built in Britain.

On Tuesday the Team descend on the historic Llancaiach manor house to investigate an archaeologist’s dream. An ancient moat has been discovered in the next field and no one knows what it once protected.

Dense and tranquil woodland in the County Durham countryside seems an unlikely venue for Wednesday night’s Time Team investigation into the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution. But 200 years ago Derwentcote was at the heart of an iron and steel-producing complex that fuelled the spread of empire.

On Thursday Tony Robinson takes his merry band of archaeologists to Leicestershire to investigate life and death in Anglo Saxon Britain. The Team are intrigued by metal detecting finds and pottery scattered across the fields, which suggest they’re on the site of a high-status Anglo Saxon burial ground.

The first stone henge to be discovered in Britain for a century would be cause enough for major celebration. But on Friday’s program there’s double bubbles as Tony Robinson and his hardy team of archaeologists celebrate their 200th dig.