Meet the man who can make the past come alive

One foot in the past: Archaeologist Brian Ayers at St Michael at Plea Church, which was once the site of a pagan burial ground.

DEREK JAMES
30 November 2009

He is the man who can make who can make the stones of a modern city street speak of thousands of years of history - he is Brian Ayes and when he walks through Norwich he sometimes slips back through the centuries and sees the past.

On busy Rose Lane the 20th century television offices dissolve and he is staring at a Viking-style wooden stave church.

At the end of London Street he sees a pagan temple.

Down at Carrow Road the football fades and a reedy island in the middle of the marshy flood-plain comes into focus, where, 12,000 years ago, men with sharpened flints are skinning a just-killed deer.

Brian is an archaeologist and, for him, Norwich teems not just with the visible people, roads and buildings, but with the people, buildings, street-plans, work and worship, dreams and disasters of anyone who has ever left a mark on the city.

Every street corner can be redolent of an ancient meeting place, any boundary a place of burial. Every stone really does have a story to tell, if only you can read its language.

And Brian is fluent in the language of the past - translating from prehistoric flints, through fragments of Roman road and long-forgotten churches to the bricks of Victorian terraced houses and even the tarmac of modern car parks.

He first dug into the past, literally, as a 12-year-old, joining an archaeology group and helping excavate an Iron Age fort and a Roman rubbish ditch. It was the beginning of his life-long fascination with history.

Thirty years ago he arrived in Norwich for a job interview. It was his first visit but he fell in love with the city. “I was gobsmacked,” he said. “I remember my wife saying, 'This is so lovely. I hope you get the job.'” He did, and the rest really is history.”

And despite his 30 years of digging down beneath the city and building up a unique knowledge of its past; despite the sheer number of people who have documented Norwich's history, there is still plenty to learn.

“You can still find things out,” said Brian.

One of his own first Norwich discoveries was a whole church, which turned out to be the oldest of its kind in Europe.

It's the wooden Viking church he sees on Rose Lane. Where most people see the modern Anglia Television building, Brian is looking at a 10th century church.

Actually, all he saw during the 1979 excavation, was a series of holes, or differently coloured soil which had once been holes, but it was enough to identify it as a particular type of Anglo-Scandinavian church.

And it is a ringing endorsement of the power of archaeology. “If it hadn't been for careful archaeological observations we would never have known it was there,” he said.

If Brian continues his walk to the end of London Street, looking at the “forget-me-not church” ahead, the hubbub of the 21st century falls away and he sees a sacred building, standing at the end of a promontory. A stream flows down to the main river in the valley below, a Roman road runs past, and pagan burial urns are interred here.

On Ber Street he strips away the buildings to see a Bronze Age burial mound silhouetted on the skyline.

But despite his love of the past, or maybe because of it, Brian is a big believer in change and progress too.

One of the things he most loves about cities is how they are constantly changing. Sometimes that change means archaeologists get the chance to discover more about the past. In his ideal world, it would mean future plans could be informed by what is uncovered, perhaps by echoing the lines of vanished buildings beneath.

He is particularly big on preserving a feel for the past by keeping to the old street plans. It's not new buildings he objects to, but new buildings set back from their predecessors and neighbours, as in Pottergate.

And flyovers. He hates flyovers. Or, more precisely, Norwich's Magdalen Street flyover which tears through ancient streets. “It's such a tragedy,” he said. “It separates the north and south of the city and I don't think the city can be stitched back together again while it is there. In an ideal world I would remove Anglia Square and put Botolph Street back!

Brian stepped down as Norfolk County Archaeologist last year, to oversee the excavation of one of Europe's most spectacular archaeological sites. Butrint, in Albania.

His book Norwich, Archaeology of a Fine City, has just been updated and republished. It includes material from the most recent digs he oversaw, including the new Cathedral Hostry, on the old Bussey's site in Palace Street, and along Fishergate.

And alongside the big discoveries - the churches and cloisters and big houses lost for centuries, he loves the smaller finds too, the evidence of a 10th century kitchen blaze in Palace Street and a purse of coins lost by a shopper in Fishergate 1,300 years ago.

“Archaeology is a privilege. It's a detective story. It keeps the brain working because you are constantly asking questions about what you see,” said Brian.

Norwich: Archaeology of a Fine City, by Brian Ayers, is published by Amberley, and priced at £16.99.

Did You Know?

On this day in Norfolk of 1614 the city and county was struck by what became known as the St Andrew's Flood, today being the Feast of St Andrew, patron saint of Scotland and also of golfers and fishermen.

It was reported that the sea came 12 miles inland causing widespread damage.

On this day in Norwich of 1857 hundreds of people escaped when a special gallery put up at Orchard Gardens for a horse show collapsed. There were no reports of serious injury.

On this day in 1874 Sir Winston Churchill, a descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough, was born at Blenheim Palace.

On this day in 1914 Charlie Chaplin made his film debut in Mack Sennett's short Making a Living.

On this day in 1936 the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire.

On this day in 1968 the Trades Description Act came into force.