'Digging For Britain' Films in Llantwit Major

The BBC documentary 'Digging for Britain' began filming on Tuesday 11th June in St Illtud's Church, Llantwit Major.

Host of the show, Professor Alice Roberts examined and presented to the camera the ancient stones featured in the church.

Fr Edwin said, "When you come to a church like St Illtud's you become part of the tradition of the place.

We are here as successors of Illtud who established this in the early 500s and we are walking in his footsteps and living in his tradition now.

While there is history here, it is really a story of faith through fifteen centuries.

If the dig and everything going on here leads to finding a few fragments, its fills another piece of our jigsaw and gives us a more complete picture of what's happened here over time.

It would be very exciting to get a glimpse into the lives of people who have gone before us. It also reminds me that we live and we work to the glory of God in the tradition of what has gone on over centuries."

Down the road in the Globe field, Dr Tim Young is leading a group of university students in an archeological dig to look for more remains of the monastery and evidence of life from as early as the ninth century. The programme, due to air in the new year will also follow their progress and finds.

Dr Tim said, "We are making very exciting discoveries that relate to the period between the 6th and 9th centuries, so at the same time period as the stones and going back another couple of hundred years before that.

It really is a wonderful project and you never quite know when you start digging in a place like that whether it's going to be the place which is going to provide you with the sort of information you want.

It has turned out very fortuitous for us but despite lots of planning you never can guarantee the results. So, to have such an extended time period represented is very exciting and providing wonderful training for the students."

There is currently no excavation on a Welsh monastic site of this period, so any results are very significant.

Fr Edwin said, "If we find fragments, it will add to our knowledge but also be a privilege to glimpse what was going on here at whatever time in its history.

They may find lots of things because this place was buzzing.

It was a community of real people and real lives and the whole thing had this thread of faith woven through it.

St Illtud's Monastic College was about an encounter with the God of Love which sent them out into their lives and that is also at the heart of what we do today."