Digging for Britain Episode Rating Graph
Aug 2010 - present

Aug 2010 - present
7.0

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Browse episode ratings trends for Digging for Britain. Simply click on the interactive rating graph to explore the best and worst of Digging for Britain's 59 episodes.

S13 Ep3
8.9
21st Jan 2026
Rare Anglo-Saxon swords, a mysterious and macabre Roman bone box and a cross-continental investigation into Admiral Nelson’s favourite ship.

S12 Ep2
8.8
8th Jan 2025
A quarryman makes the discovery of a set of very large footprints, and a chance find reveals a spectacular Roman villa with mosaics and a sauna

S12 Ep3
8.8
9th Jan 2025
Exploring Britain’s islands: a 5,000-year-old Neolithic tomb, an international effort to save a WWI warship, and a Neanderthal hunting ground off Jersey’s coast.

S13 Ep5
8.5
4th Feb 2026
Featuring a vast first-century Roman compound, the warhorses that changed the course of history, a medieval murder mystery, the thriving farmstead belonging to Isaac Newton's mother, thousands of animal bones from a Roman farm, and a 300-million-year-old forest that built the modern world.

S12 Ep6
8.5
16th Jan 2025
Extraordinary digs from the south - a Romani encampment in the New Forest, a convict’s burial ground, discovery of a civil war mansion and London’s best-preserved Roman cemetery.

S1 Ep3
8.5
2nd Sep 2010
The Anglo-Saxons - they divided our land and heralded the arrival of the Dark Ages. But were they really just barbarians? Dr Alice Roberts continues her journey through a year of archaeology, visiting the key sites that are throwing light on this most mysterious of periods. She visits the royal seat of power at Bamburgh, Northumbria and sees how the skeletons tell tales of violent death, but also of tenderness.

S8 Ep4
8.4
11th Dec 2019
The team are on an archaeological hunt of our more recent past as they follow the search for artefacts from World War II.

S2 Ep4
8.4
30th Sep 2011
Dr Alice Roberts goes in search of our elusive Stone Age ancestors.

S13 Ep4
8.4
28th Jan 2026
The lost estate of Harold Godwinson, last Anglo-Saxon king of England, a completely intact 4,000-year-old cremation vessel and an unprecedented Roman whetstone factory.

S8 Ep2
8.4
27th Nov 2019
More than is expected is found in the remains of a house thought to be the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey. Plus the graveyard of a Victorian workhouse sheds new light on the Great Famine of 1845.

S4 Ep3
8.4
24th Mar 2016
Professor Alice Roberts explores the year's most exciting archaeological finds in the north of Britain. A team discovers clues to Scotland's first kingdoms, metal detectorists unearth a hoard of Viking treasure, and a new housing development reveals a graveyard of Iron Age warriors.

S13 Ep2
8.3
14th Jan 2026
Featuring two incredibly rare finds from an Iron Age hoard, a look inside the UK’s largest and most complex dig in a generation, an Iron Age site perched on the very edge of the White Cliffs of Dover, and the earliest example of an artist’s signature from Roman Britain.

S7 Ep1
8.3
28th Nov 2018
Professor Alice Roberts celebrates the biggest and best archaeological discoveries of 2018 from the north of the UK. Each digging team has been filming its own excavations, giving us an unprecedented view of each excavation as it happens. Alice begins the programme with a prehistoric Pompeii at the Black Loch of Myrton. Uncovering incredibly preserved 2500-year-old houses, archaeologists are stepping back in time and glimpsing what life was really like in an Iron Age village. We follow archaeologists uncovering a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Lincolnshire full of spectacular and unusual grave goods. We go on the hunt for a lost Second World War reconnaissance Spitfire in Norway and piece together the story of its brave pilot. Deep in the vaults at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, we explore one of its greatest treasures, the Westness Brooch. We also head to the island of Rousay in Orkney, where archaeologists rescue a Neolithic tomb before it gets washed away and discover an incredible trace of our ancestors on a rare Pictish stone. In Salford, a major regeneration project is unearthing the largest jail in Georgian England and its radical approach to crime and punishment. Roving archaeologist, Raksha Dave gets privileged access behind the scenes in the conservation labs at Vindolanda Roman fort and discovers what really happens when the digging stops.

S5 Ep3
8.3
20th Dec 2016
Finds include the theatre where Shakespeare premiered Romeo and Juliet and Henry V.

S12 Ep5
8.3
15th Jan 2025
In the west of Britain, there's one of the largest Roman buildings ever discovered in Britain, an Iron Age chariot is saved, and evidence is found of the transatlantic slave trade in Devon.

S2 Ep1
8.3
9th Sep 2011
Looks at Roman Britannia, where finds include the thickening mystery of 97 baby skeletons.

S1 Ep4
8.3
10th Sep 2010
Alice Roberts finds out about discoveries that shed new light on the Tudor Age, visiting excavations at Shakespeare's first theatre, in London's Shoreditch, and at his last home in Stratford-upon-Avon, where clues reveal his economical use of money. In Wales, she meets a team of archaeologists learning about the realities of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, while on the banks of the Thames, the history of a forgotten royal palace is uncovered

S4 Ep2
8.3
17th Mar 2016
Professor Alice Roberts explores the year's most exciting archaeological finds in the east of Britain. A team unearths a mass grave, divers search the Thames for clues to a 17th-century tragedy, and a metal detectorist makes the find of a lifetime.

S10 Ep3
7.3
15th Jan 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.

S7 Ep2
7.4
5th Dec 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.

S10 Ep5
7.5
29th Jan 2023
Travelling east, Alice discovers a Roman barn conversion, unearths a Tudor fort and finds intricately carved 10,000-year-old weapons.

S6 Ep3
7.5
6th Dec 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.

S9 Ep3
7.5
6th Jan 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.

S3 Ep1
7.6
3rd Feb 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.

S9 Ep1
7.6
4th Jan 2022
The astonishing discovery of a mosaic has art historians, archaeologists and Alice very excited as they slowly reveal its full beauty.

S11 Ep2
7.6
3rd Jan 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.

S11 Ep1
7.7
2nd Jan 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.

S13 Ep1
7.7
7th Jan 2026
Featuring visceral evidence of a bloody massacre in the Scottish Highlands, one of the largest Roman cemeteries ever found in Britain, Bradford’s first Muslim burial, more finds in Carlisle from a Roman bathhouse, and from the 1970s, Scotland’s first skatepark.

S9 Ep4
7.7
11th Jan 2022
Unearthing a Jurassic giant, investigating finds from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery and uncovering the hidden heart of Roman Leicester.

S10 Ep6
7.7
5th Feb 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.

S11 Ep3
7.7
4th Jan 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.

S5 Ep1
7.7
6th Dec 2016
Finds include training trenches on Salisbury Plain and luxury foreign goods at Tintagel.

S7 Ep3
7.7
12th Dec 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.

S3 Ep2
7.8
10th Feb 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

S9 Ep5
7.8
12th Jan 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.

S10 Ep2
7.8
8th Jan 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.

S1 Ep1
7.9
19th Aug 2010
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.

S1 Ep2
7.8
26th Aug 2010
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.

S1 Ep3
8.5
2nd Sep 2010
The Anglo-Saxons - they divided our land and heralded the arrival of the Dark Ages. But were they really just barbarians? Dr Alice Roberts continues her journey through a year of archaeology, visiting the key sites that are throwing light on this most mysterious of periods. She visits the royal seat of power at Bamburgh, Northumbria and sees how the skeletons tell tales of violent death, but also of tenderness.

S1 Ep4
8.3
10th Sep 2010
Alice Roberts finds out about discoveries that shed new light on the Tudor Age, visiting excavations at Shakespeare's first theatre, in London's Shoreditch, and at his last home in Stratford-upon-Avon, where clues reveal his economical use of money. In Wales, she meets a team of archaeologists learning about the realities of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, while on the banks of the Thames, the history of a forgotten royal palace is uncovered
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The first episode of Digging for Britain aired on August 19, 2010.
The last episode of Digging for Britain aired on February 05, 2026.
There are 59 episodes of Digging for Britain.
There are 13 seasons of Digging for Britain.
Yes.
Digging for Britain is set to return for future episodes.