Archaeologists have been busy excavating sites around the town in recent years and unearthed several fascinating finds which reveal what the local landscape looked like more than 2,000 years ago.

One such site was at Barby Nortoft where a dig was carried out before work on the new DIRFT site, due to start soon, could commence.

It unearthed a number of finds including settlements dating back to the Iron Age period (roughly 300 to 100BC).

Grenville Hatton, a Kilsby-based archaeologist who took part in the dig, said: "The whole site is covered by Iron Age roundhouses circles -about 50 to 60 in total - and these were top-of-the-range houses back then! (See picture for how they would have looked).

"These would have been fairly cosy homes and the dwellers would have enjoyed what they considered a decent standard of living.

"Various small pottery fragments were found, dating from the Stone Age right through to just before the Norman conquest in 1066.

"At north and west of the site, about a score of late Bronze Age (from 2300 - 700BC) cremations were found - all adult burials, containing very small quantities of bone, which suggests that these may have been symbolic or ritual burials."

Other finds included some stone querns (for grinding flour), storage pits (for storing grain) and a small iron anvil together with iron scrap and fuel ash, which suggest that iron-making and iron-working was carried out there.

A large amount of animal and human bones spread across the site also suggest that the area was messy, with lots of litter and waste lying around.

Mr. Hatton added: "As so often with archaeological work, the Barby
Nortoft dig raised more questions than it answered!

"There seems to be evidence for a very large Iron Age site in the area
with a population of about 500 if the other sites we have excavated in the area were combined.

"There are probably further undiscovered Iron Age remains below adjacent fields which do not form part of the DIRFT development and
were not examined.

"It would be wonderful to see further work done on this whole site - I am certain there is much more out there still to be unearthed."