Looking back, both my earliest adventures and my career highlights, owed a great deal to the Romans.
I grew up in South Wales, in a house on low-lying land in the shadow of Llanwern Steelworks. As kids we used to dare each other to walk, teetering, across a narrow pipe which bridged a foul-smelling drainage ditch running through our estate. I fell in only once and survived! It was some thirty years later - thanks to fascinating research by Stephen Rippon, published by the CBA - that I discovered that our murky ‘ditch of doom’ was actually part of an extensive system of Roman land division and drainage, still surviving largely intact.
in DoE World, October 1973
More obviously Roman were the ruins of the nearby Legionary fortress at Caerleon, including its amphitheatre. These spectacular ruins, particularly when brought vividly to life by Alan Sorrell’s atmospheric reconstruction drawings, first fired my interest in archaeology. Then, at 14 years old, I was allowed by Bill Manning to join Cardiff University’s excavations of another fortress, at Usk. I’ll always be grateful to Bill for kindly giving me this first opportunity. Paid a reduced volunteer allowance, because I was under 16, I also had to buy my own WHS trowel. This accounted for my entire first week’s wages: a salutary introduction to the economics of 1970’s archaeology!
Usk was a superb dig on which to cut one’s teeth. Its extensive open-area excavation techniques allowed me to easily appreciate the layout of the fort’s buildings and defences and to understand how what I was investigating contributed to the bigger picture. Also, the exuberant wastefulness of the XX Legion, when it prepared to quit Usk in 66 AD, meant that finds were ubiquitous and excavated pots were often near-intact. The students from Cardiff were a quixotic and entertaining bunch, which added immensely to my sense of excitement. From then on, I was hooked!
My later trajectory led me to study at the London’s Institute of Archaeology, from where I led the excavation of a fascinating early Roman villa in the Cotswolds. Then on to working for Harvey Sheldon in gritty Southwark, including digging a high-status Roman buildings at Winchester Palace: and a spell at The British Museum, helping Tim Potter write-up his excavations at Roman Braughing.
Subsequently I joined English Heritage for a career that spanned three decades, including as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments. That was a really great job, of which the highlight was leading a complex project to rescue from destruction the unusual and important mosaics at Brading Roman villa, following a disastrous flood.
In retirement I am fortunate to be an advisor to the National Trust and to the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. I also volunteer with the excellent New Forest National Park archaeology team, which has once more given me the opportunity to take part in archaeological excavations, some thirty years after I last put away my trowel. It has reminded me, once again, of the hard work, excitement and immense satisfaction of excavation: and also that I am as much enthused by archaeologists, as I am by archaeology.
Image by New Forest National Park Archaeology Team
Steve Trow retired as Director of Research at Historic England in 2018 and was awarded an OBE for services to heritage in the New Year Honours List 2019.
