THE DIG THAT CHANGED (URBAN) HISTORY

Sixty years ago, one of Britain's most important archaeology projects was launched in Hampshire. Michael Wood reviews the groundbreaking discoveries of the dig at Winchester, once the showpiece of Alfred the Great's royal dynasty

- Michael Wood

On 27 February 1962, hundreds ofpeople crammed into Winchester Guildhall for a public meeting. It was, in many ways, not such an 0 unusual event: the foundation of a local committee, in this case the Winchester Excavations Committee. The meeting was, though, to have profound impacts, because it signalled, as The Times later said, the start of "one of the most important excavations worldwide of the 20th century" - nothing less than the beginnings of urban archaeology in Britain, and the recovery of a key to the pre-Conquest English past.

It had all begun - as some of the best archaeological stories do - with a rescue dig under a car park. At the turn of the 1960s, Trust Houses had announced plans to build a new hotel in the middle of Winchester, between High Street and the cathedral. Documentary evidence, brought together by the late Roger Quirk, indicated that this site was close to the location of the famous seventh-century Old Minster, and also of the New Minster founded by Edward the Elder to be a burial place for his father, Alfred the Great, and his dynasty. So the new development threatened the historic core of Winchester (Felix Urbs Wintonia: "the Fortunate City of Winchester"), England's first "capital" and the principal seat of the Anglo-Saxon kings of Wessex.

A test dig in 1961 revealed 3 metres of undisturbed strata of material going back to the Roman era, spanning the entire Old English period - and there were signs of major buildings.