Bridge Farm 2025 

A truly momentous year

It’s been another exciting excavation at the Bridge Farm Roman settlement, with the opening of the new trench (T8) over the eastern entrance in the defensive ditches and the junction of the London and Pevensey roads. As always with a new trench it involved a lot of careful cleaning back before the features started to appear and we were amazed at how well the flint structure of the roads had survived as both were very shallow and must have been affected by ploughing. Once the loose flints were cleared in specific areas the extant structure was revealed including areas of closely packed pebbled metalling along the outer edges where the camber of the surface sloped down. The planning of the road structure revealed to date was a major task but allows us to be more invasive next year when removing the rest of the loose flints and excavating some metre slots through both roads will show the full depth of the extant structure. By the end of the 2025 season the enclosure ditches were beginning to become clear and obvious signs of industrial features were also revealed in the SW corner, offering more excavation in 2026. In the NW a dark anomaly had produced a great many metal finds, including coins from the early 4th century. Other finds included a variety of brooches and other bronze dress accessories adding to the growing picture of the inhabitants of the settlement.

We had a bumper year of volunteers with over 100 joining us during the season, as well as 32 undergrads from Canterbury Christchurch University and the first 4 participants on the new International Field School.

With the exhibition at Worthing Museum, the major article in Current Archaeology and with the project becoming a Registered Charity, 2025 was truly a momentous year. The trench has now been ‘put to bed’ but this year’s initial work bodes well for an even more exciting dig in 2026 starting on the 25th May for six weeks.