The WORST episodes of Digging for Britain
Every episode of Digging for Britain ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Digging for Britain!
A small island with a big history. Professor Alice Roberts reveals the fascinating world hidden beneath our feet, showcasing the latest finds of dedicated archaeologists.
#1 - The Romans
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 8/19/2010
Dr Alice Roberts follows an entire year of British archaeology, joining up the results of digs and investigations the length of the country. The results are astonishing - and sometimes disturbing. Roman finds include the mystery of 97 babies murdered by the Thames, a fabulous Roman coin hoard found in Somerset and a man buried on a layer of dead animals.
#2 - Headless Romans and Anglo Saxon Gold
Season 10 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/15/2023
A gatehouse riddled with Civil War bullets, a unique Iron Age shield made from bark and Roman burials with pots where the heads should be.
#3 - West
Season 7 - Episode 2 - Aired 12/5/2018
Professor Alice Robert explores this year’s most exciting archaeological finds from the west of Britain. Every new discovery was filmed by the archaeologists themselves giving us an unprecedented view of each excavation as it happens. In this episode, we join a team as they undertake the largest maritime investigation since the Mary Rose and reveal the extraordinary story of HMS Invincible. At Silchester, archaeologists investigate a Bathhouse that reveals how the Romans stamped their mark on Britain. A buried military camp in Hampshire shows why German soldiers were key to our security in the 18th century and archaeologist Raksha Dave goes behind the scenes to tell the tragic tale of individuals from a 19th-century pauper’s graveyard.
#4 - North
Season 6 - Episode 3 - Aired 12/6/2017
Alice discovers the well-preserved writing tablets, swords and domestic items left by Romans at Vindolanda during a time of British rebellion. On the Scottish island of Iona, there are traces of a long-lost monastery and pilgrimage site that was originally built by the legendary saint Columba, and has been compared to Jerusalem. In the east of Scotland, a weapons hoard belonging to a wealthy Bronze Age warrior is unearthed.
#5 - Roman Mosaics and Ancient Weapons
Season 10 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/29/2023
Travelling east, Alice discovers a Roman barn conversion, unearths a Tudor fort and finds intricately carved 10,000-year-old weapons.
#6 - East
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/3/2015
Professor Alice Roberts and archaeologist Matt Williams present 2014's most outstanding archaeology. In the summer, archaeologists have been unearthing our history in hundreds of digs across Britain. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to uncover long lost treasures - retelling our story in a way only archaeology can. With unique access to some of the country's best digs, our teams have been self-shooting their excavations to make sure the audience is there for every moment of discovery. In this episode, we're in the east of Britain, and the archaeologists join us back in the Norwich Castle Museum to look at the new finds and what they mean.
#7 - Episode 4
Season 9 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/11/2022
Unearthing a Jurassic giant, investigating finds from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery and uncovering the hidden heart of Roman Leicester.
#8 - Episode 3
Season 9 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/6/2022
The best archaeology from the north of Britain, including Scotland’s oldest railway, one of the best-preserved Norman castles and an extraordinary find from a Neolithic tomb.
#9 - Episode 1
Season 9 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/4/2022
The astonishing discovery of a mosaic has art historians, archaeologists and Alice very excited as they slowly reveal its full beauty.
#10 - Anglo-Saxon Gold and Rebellious Nuns
Season 11 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/3/2024
In central England, an RAF airbase with a Roman past, a forgotten medieval nunnery, a gold pendant from a 7th-century grave and a pub with a very long history of hospitality.
#11 - Arthur's Stone and a Georgian Mine
Season 10 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/8/2023
In the west of the UK, a spectacular monument older than Stonehenge, a 200-year-old mine trapped in time and a lost medieval friary.
#12 - Ice Age Camp and a Saint with Syphilis
Season 10 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/5/2023
In Scotland and the north of England, Alice investigates an Ice Age camp, the mystery of a medieval skeleton and the earliest evidence of salt making in Britain.
#13 - A Norman Panic Room and a Mesolithic Fish Trap
Season 11 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/4/2024
In the west of Britain, there's a rare medieval cemetery, a disappearing Mesolithic landscape, a mysterious Iron Age burial and the ruins of a Gothic masterpiece.
#14 - Mystery Shipwreck and a Roman Army Camp
Season 10 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/22/2023
Alice Roberts reveals a Dutch ship sunk by the English, a Cornish Roman fort and a 5000-year-old Neolithic monument.
#15 - The Roman Emperor’s Bathhouse
Season 11 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/2/2024
Digs in northern Britain reveal a Roman emperor’s lost bathhouse, the sunken treasures of medieval pilgrims and a formidable fortress perched on top of a Scottish mountain.
#16 - Episode 5
Season 9 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/12/2022
A new Roman town and hundreds of finds are discovered. The Cerne Giant finally gets a date, and a World War II air crash mystery is laid to rest.
#17 - West
Season 8 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/20/2019
Archaeological discoveries with Professor Alice Roberts. In the Cotswolds, a secret location, which appears to be a high-status Anglo Saxon cemetery, gives up a very precious and fragile artefact.
#18 - Prehistory
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 8/26/2010
Dr Alice Roberts continues her journey through this season's most important archaeology, with an amazing array of finds from prehistory. Her journey takes her from Orkney to Devon by land, sea and air. In Norfolk, flint tools unearthed this year push the earliest human occupation back by 200,000 years, to around one million years ago. In Orkney an early farm yields glimpses of our ancestors' earliest religious beliefs and customs - cattle skulls buried within building walls, and tiny household goddesses. In Devon, we find one of the oldest known shipwrecks. And a bronze age burial holds a mystery, and touching evidence of grief echoing down over 2000 years.
#19 - Roman Towns and Tudor Shipwrecks
Season 10 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/1/2023
Digs in southern England reveal a previously unknown Roman town, a Tudor ship buried beneath a quarry and evidence of Henry VIII's financial forgery under the Tower of London.
#20 - Episode 2
Season 9 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/5/2022
The south of England offers rich pickings, including the earliest money made in Britain and a massive haul of Roman treasure that brings to life the fall of the empire in Britain.
#21 - West
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 12/6/2016
This episode looks at the west of Britain, and archaeologists are in the lab to look at the new finds and what they mean. Finds include: the lost WWI training trenches on Salisbury Plain; Britain's first 'double henge' - discovered just down the road from Stonehenge - where the evidence suggests our ancestors feasted and made sacred offerings as part of a visit to the ritualistic Stonehenge landscape; and luxury foreign goods discovered at Tintagel, the legendary childhood home of King Arthur.
#22 - West
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/10/2015
Professor Alice Roberts and archaeologist Matt Williams present 2014's most outstanding archaeology. In the summer, archaeologists have been unearthing our history in hundreds of digs across Britain. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to uncover long lost treasures - retelling our story in a way only archaeology can. With unique access to some of the country's best digs, our teams have been self-shooting their excavations to make sure the audience is there for every moment of discovery. In this episode, we're in the west of Britain, and the archaeologists join us back in the Dorset Country Museum to look at the new finds and what they mean
#23 - East
Season 7 - Episode 3 - Aired 12/12/2018
Professor Alice Roberts explores this year’s most exciting archaeological finds from the East of Britain. Every new discovery was filmed by the archaeologists themselves giving us an unprecedented view of each excavation as it happens. In this episode, we join a team in Suffolk as they uncover an ancient lost monument as old as Stonehenge. We travel a little further East than usual to a WWI battlefield in France to explore one of Britain’s earliest and most disastrous tank battles, and then return to Suffolk as archaeologists try to make sense of some disturbing Roman burial practices. Also, one lucky metal detectorist chances upon a coin hoard that gives us insight into the effect the English civil war had on the lives of ordinary people. Our roving archaeologist, Raksha Dave goes behind the scenes at an archaeological lab in Brighton and follows an investigation into a lost medieval village.
#24 - North
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/17/2015
Professor Alice Roberts and archaeologist Matt Williams present 2014's most outstanding archaeology from the north of Britain. Sitting in the heart of the Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, the Ness of Brodgar houses a 5,000-year-old temple at the heart of a sacred landscape, built out of stone over hundreds of years. We catch the unearthing of a Roman altar dedicated to Jupiter that was originally carved in the 2nd century, when Maryport was part of the coastal defences linked to Hadrian's Wall. 11,000 years ago Flixton in Yorkshire was an island used by our very earliest ancestors, and it has preserved vital clues about their world and the wild horses they hunted and ate. In Ardnamurchan, a 5,000-year-old cemetery - housing burials from the Bronze and Iron Ages... and an intact Viking boat burial. A Tudor-era aristocrat's feasting hall is revealed... and how one night the revelry came to a very abrupt end. One of the richest hoards of Pictish treasure ever found reveals the metalworking secrets of the mysterious tribes who ruled Dark Ages Scotland.
#25 - West
Season 6 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/22/2017
We discover the camp from which Vikings invaded Britain, and find groundbreaking new evidence that the world-famous Avebury stone circle isn't just a sacred site but a place where our ancestors lived and worked - a discovery that's also changing our understanding of neighbouring Stonehenge. In Staffordshire, the oldest Iron Age gold in Britain is unearthed - a set of beautiful gold torcs, mysteriously abandoned 2,500 years ago.