Corinne Mills, Jon Adkin and I were at the Essex History Fair in July 2006 where we joined Caroline McDonald, the Essex Finds Liaison Officer, who had been asked by Robert Rose of Braintree Museum to host a display for the day.

Our main objective for the day was to show and allow visitors to the fair, to touch and handle items that they would normally only see in books or behind glass cabinets in museums.

The items that Corinne and myself took along were from the Kelvedon area and Jon took items along from the Castle and Sible Hedingham area. Both areas coming under the Braintree Museum's catchment area.

Once we were set up and ready to go, our next port of call was to pop upstairs in the museum for a quick preview of the display of items found by member's of the public.

Back down and outside to the tables for Jon, Corinne and Caroline. What happened to me? Well I was sent to the pits or rather pit. The pit was set up to attract the interest of the young visitors and give them the chance to mix archaeology and metal detecting to search for historical finds. Buried were some badges and coins, but when the youngsters located a metallic signal and dug down they were most likely to locate pieces of real Roman pottery shards just as you might on a real archaeological survey/dig.

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We all had a great time and enjoyed ourselves. Spending all day in the pits I can say that the children had a great time finding the badges and shiny new coins. I had to convince a few of them that that the detector did not find the Roman pottery, but in the end why spoil their fun!

Mini dig set up for the youngsters. Here is the first big kid! couldn't wait to have a go.