Stories from the streets
Britain’s Most Historic Towns March Channel 4
Explore Britain’s towns and cities, and you see places shaped by the builders of previous ages. But look at these settlements another way and, if you use your imagination, you can transport yourself back to previous points in history, using what you see as a way to better understand the past.
This is precisely what Prof Alice Roberts does in a new series that explores key periods in British history. Each episode focuses on a single town, and the traces from specific eras that can be found there.
“It’s about uncovering hidden history and finding physical traces of the past right in the middle of our modern towns and cities – sometimes where you least expect it,” Roberts tells Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine.
The series begins in Chester, founded as a Roman fortress. The city, says Roberts, almost played a key role “in a plan to extend the boundaries of the Roman Empire”, but she’s reluctant to reveal too many details in case she gives away spoilers. Other shows follow a similar pattern, as Roberts, for example, explores the Viking era in York and looks back at life in Tudor England in Norwich.
A recurring theme is the idea of charting the towns during times of dramatic change. “We see each town starting off as something quite unrecognisable and then blossoming into something much more familiar,” says Roberts. In the case of Cheltenham, for example, we see its growth as a spa town in a Regency age when enemas were all the rage.
As well as the contributions of local experts, expect the use of cutting-edge CGI techniques to bring long-lost monuments back to life, and aerial archaeologist Ben Robinson scrutinising the settlements from the sky. Each episode concludes with a digital reconstruction of the entire town as it would once have looked.
And a favourite moment from filming? “‘Hunting’ deer at dawn in the New Forest, in the footsteps of William I, for the programme on Norman Winchester,” says Roberts. “It’s easy to feel yourself transported back a thousand years in that woodland!” Jonathan Wright