The Avalon Archaeology site has been created as a labour of love by a team of volunteers working one day a week since 2015, with only a short enforced break due to COVID. It began as a small part of the (Award Winning) Heritage Lottery-funded Avalon Marshes Landscape Partnership Project and was intended to give volunteers practical hands-on experience of traditional building techniques by building archaeological reconstructions. Over 110 volunteers have contributed their time and expertise.

Early projects included recreating prehistoric wooden trackways on nearby Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve and making replicas of Iron Age dug-out canoes.

The three big building projects have been aimed at making a Saxon longhall, the dining room of a Roman villa and an Iron Age roundhouse, the latter still in construction.

A grant from the Leader+ scheme helped us on the way to opening and another grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has allowed us to finally open the site to the public and educational groups.

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