Ampthill Castle

This dig is taking place at Ampthill Great Park, Ampthill, Bedfordshire MK45 2HX

This dig will run for two weeks from Saturday 06 – Thursday 18 June 2026

You can join us to Dig for a Day, Two Days, a Week or even the entire dig.

Choose your date when you make your booking. Exciting!

Our meeting point will be next to the Ampthill Great Park Car Park.

Ampthill Great Park Car Park is the main car park, situated on Woburn Street off the B530.

See the car park on Google maps.

We’ll provide all the archaeological tools and instruction. You just need to bring:

• Sturdy boots
• Comfortable, weather-appropriate outdoor clothing that you don’t mind getting a little dirty
• Packed lunch, snacks, and drinks
• Suncream / sunhat / waterproofs as appropriate

We also recommend:

• Smartphone or camera for taking pictures

BAJR Skills Passport and a notepad/pencil if you’re a student or someone committed to gaining experience you can use on other digs or your future career.

You can expect to gain real archaeological experience and have fun while you’re at it!

Whether you’re a complete beginner or an experienced digger, we’ll make sure you walk away with practical hands-on experience.

It’s important to remember that this is real archaeology and the specifics of what we do change daily, depending on the archaeology that needs to be done at each stage of the dig and the archaeology that emerges.

As a member of our archaeological team, your experience will always be guided by what needs to happen on site, whether that’s searching for new archaeological features, investigating remains, carefully lifting artefacts, or documenting what you find.

Each day starts with an archaeological briefing and ends with a round-up of what we’ve achieved together.

On your first day, you’ll have an in-depth briefing to help you understand the contribution to science and knowledge you’re about to make and to ensure you’ve got the basics under your belt.

As soon as you’ve completed your briefing, you’ll head to the dig site and meet our archaeologists, who will be ready to share their knowledge and guide your search for evidence every step of the way.

We emphasise hands-on learning, encourage questions, and believe great teamwork is fundamental to great archaeology.

The specific skills you gain will depend on how long you’re with us and what’s happening when you join, but will usually include a range of:

• Using different tools to reveal new archaeological layers and features
• Using the principles of stratigraphic excavation to investigate any remains that emerge, such as buildings, pits, post-holes, ditches, or even burials
• Identifying and recovering artefacts and samples
• Recording, photographing, and deciphering what has been found

Each stage of a dig offers something different, with its own highlights and opportunities to develop various skills and techniques. We recommend trying them all if you can!

The first half of the dig tends to emphasise identifying the archaeology, carefully trowelling back higher levels of the stratigraphy to reveal the layout of the site and key archaeological features. It’s a great place to start if you’re new to archaeology, and for people at all levels who want to understand how a dig begins, how archaeologists know where to dig, and how we decide what’s important to dig.

The second half of the dig emphasises investigation, focusing on features to understand how old they are, their relationship to other features, and what evidence they may contain.

It can be great for all levels, especially those who want to broaden their excavation experience.

The very end of the dig tends to emphasise knowledge, understanding each feature in detail, how they all fit together, and documenting our discoveries.

This means you’re more likely to start using more advanced skills, such as taking soil samples, solving any final questions about the site, and documenting the archaeology that we’ve uncovered.

Remember, archaeology isn’t just about digging – it’s also about recording and understanding everything we find and making decisions about what happens next. This vital documentation process is where you’ll really start thinking like a true archaeologist!

In summary…

If you’re brand new to archaeology and eager to learn how to dig, we recommend the beginning or middle of the dig. That way, you can jump into the trenches and master the basics.

If you’ve got some experience or want to progress your skills, we recommend the middle or end of the dig. This is your chance to take your field skills to the next level and learn how to draw, photograph, and carefully record archaeological features as we wrap up the excavation.

No matter what you choose, you’ll have a friendly team of trained archaeologists by your side providing guidance as you go.

You need to be aged 17 or above to join the main Dig Team, but we also run days specifically for families with children!

DigCamp is for ages 6-11

DigClub is for ages 12-16

Check our What’s On page to check for availability.

Each day on site will be a little different, depending on the goals of the day and if the weather cooperates. In most cases, our days will look like:

09:30 Welcome & Orientation
10:00 Digging begins!
11:30 Break
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Digging resumes!
16:00 Tools down and end of day debrief
16:30 End of day

Food, transport, and accommodation is not included.

That means you’re free to make arrangements which suit your own diet, travel plans, and budget. But here’s what we can tell you:

Food: Meals are not included. You’ll need to bring your own packed lunch, snacks, and drinks each day. You’ll be hungry!

Transport: We do not include transport. With people travelling from so many different places, and on such different schedules, it’s not feasible for our team to organise.

• The nearest railway station is Flitwick, which is roughly 2.5 miles from Ampthill Park.
• Buses run from Flitwick to Ampthill. You can see the timetable here.
• You can find more details on getting to Ampthill Park here.

Accommodation: People have different budgets and preferences, so we think it’s better for everyone to book whichever options suit them best.

Whether you’re a happy camper or prefer a little bit more luxury, you’ll make your own arrangement according to what best suits your needs and budget.

There’s plenty to choose from in the local area from camping, to B&Bs, to hotels.

100% of your crowdfunding contribution goes directly into making the dig happen and disseminating the results.

Archaeology is a scientific process with established methods and standards, and it is important to remember that fieldwork is only the middle of the process.

Before a dig happens, there are months of research, planning, and organisation.

After a dig ends, everything we find needs to be properly recorded, conserved, and analysed by specialists.

We’ll then produce an official report with the combined results of our fieldwork and specialist analysis, which will be made widely available through articles, media, videos, and events.

Your crowdfunding contribution helps us to:

• Plan the dig. There are some complicated logistics involved!
• Run the excavation. We need enough tools, facilities, and archaeologists on site to ensure that the dig can be carried out to the highest professional standards
• Organise our Venturers. We put a lot of careful thought and organisation into making sure that our Venturers have the best possible archaeological experience with us on site (and online)
• Provide top-quality tuition. Our digs are run by experienced, full-time, professional archaeologists who ensure that everyone who joins us on site has plenty of expert support, tuition, and guidance
• Analyse all the finds and samples. We need specialists to analyse and interpret everything we find, including any burials, animal remains, ceramics, metal artefacts and environmental samples
• Carry out additional scientific analysis. In many cases, we also need a laboratory or specialist to do things like radiocarbon dating, isotope analysis, OSL dating, geophysics, and more
• Pay for all the ‘aftercare’. We’ll need specialists to conserve and take care of all the artefacts we find – from human remains to delicate objects made of glass or metal
• Write the official excavation report. We synthesise all the analyses done by specialists and make our evidence and interpretations of the site available in a traditional format
• Ensure all our data, discoveries, and interpretations are freely accessible online. We believe that the results of publicly funded research should be open and easily accessible. We upload all our findings online so others can explore and review them
• Share our progress and discoveries more widely. It doesn’t start and end with excavation. We’ll be publishing videos, livestreams, virtual artefacts, and blogs so that you can follow the whole process from start to finish
• Host special events and experiences. From daily tours to online experiences, our team of archaeologists create fun and exciting ways for people across the country and around the world to engage and learn from the dig, details of which we’ll publish on our Calendar
• Include opportunities for local communities to take part and host free events alongside the dig. Our digs are open to everyone, and we always try to make sure that people who live locally can be involved, whether it’s dig experience days for local teenagers or other events tailored to the specific needs or interests of the local community.
• Share the history you’re helping us uncover with as many people as possible. Ultimately, our goal is to create new knowledge about the past and make ground-breaking discoveries that everyone can be part of, learn from, share, and enjoy. Our team of archaeologists are always pushing the boundaries and looking for new ways that we can do this.

Unfortunately, crowdfunding pledges are non-refundable.

This is because all crowdfunding pledges go directly towards planning, field research, analysis, and reporting, which cannot happen without your contributions.

If you have pledged to join us in the field and can no longer attend, you can:

• Transfer your place to a friend or family member who can attend in your place
• Transfer your place to another dig in the same season (subject to availability)

You can see our full terms and conditions here.

You’ll receive a welcome email with more information about joining the dig – in person and online.

Hooray! You’ve decided to crowdfund the campaign.

You’ll receive an email confirmation as soon as you make your payment and a separate follow-up email with more information about the dig.

Before the dig begins, we’ll send you a reminder email containing further information, including how to watch the dig online and any final details you need to know.

If we don’t reach our goal, we’ll stick to our guns and do the dig anyway – we’ll just scale down the excavation. This archaeology is too important to miss!

We’ve set our crowdfunding goal to match the level of excavation and analysis we think this site deserves. Obviously, the closer we get, the better. The more people who join in, the more we can discover. If we fall short of the target, we’d excavate a smaller area and send fewer artefacts off for scientific analysis – but the dig would still happen, and you’d still be part of our team.

We’re confident we’ll reach our goal because we know there’s incredible archaeology waiting to be found, and people like YOU are willing to help us prove it!

As soon as the dig begins!

You’ll start getting all your updates and online event invites when the dig begins.

Once the dig is over, it takes us about 12-18 months to analyse the finds and write the official report.

We’ll keep you updated with any significant developments from the lab during this time. It will be well worth the wait!

If you’re joining us on site, you’ll receive your t-shirt when you arrive.

If you’re watching from home, we aim to send out any physical goodies, like team t-shirts, either before the dig begins or at the end of the field season.

Archaeology is fun, but it is outdoors fun!

Bad weather is part of the deal – as is good weather.

If the weather is truly terrible, we’ll make the most of any opportunity to work on finds in a sheltered spot, cleaning, examining, and identifying the things we’ve found so far.

However, this won’t always be possible, and sometimes we’ll just have to suspend activity until the weather passes and it’s safe to continue digging.

Crowdfunding isn’t the only way you can help. Even just sharing our campaign on social media could introduce us to someone else who wants to support the dig!