M6 Toll Road

Wessex Archaeology completed a series of fieldwalking surveys and excavations in advance of the building of Britain's first toll motorway: the M6 Toll around Birmingham.

For further information about the M6 Toll, visit the CAMBBA website at http://www.m6toll.co.uk/

The discoveries

Sites and finds spanning 10,000 years, from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution have been found.

Forty separate sites have been examined and finds range from flint tools of Stone Age hunter-gatherers; to prehistoric farms, a Roman cemetery, and a medieval fish farm. Where the new road crosses monuments of the Industrial Revolution such as canals, those monuments have also been recorded carefully.

The discoveries along the route are amongst the most exciting and important ever made in the West Midlands. Some of the sites are the first of their kind to be discovered in the region.

A new way of working

A joint venture between two of Britain's leading archaeological organisations, Wessex Archaeology and Oxford Archaeology was formed especially for the project.

This is one of the first times that archaeologists have joined forces in this way and it made sure that the archaeological works could be finished before road building started.

Engineers were surprised to find Phil Harding, one of the stars of the TV programme 'Time Team', running an excavation at Wishaw until Phil explained that the actually works for Wessex Archaeology.

The publication

A hardback monograph was published about this project in 2008. To find out more about this publication or purchase a copy follow this link.