It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast

where we are talking about a town that is fondly known as Britain's oldest town, Britain's

first town. And this is culture. Now culture has an extraordinary ancient history. We've

got archaeology from the Bronze Age. We've got remains from the Iron Age, especially

the late Iron Age. You have the ditches, the earthworks, what remains of what were once

monumental, dike systems. You have the remains of Budaq's destruction of this town in

60 AD. And to talk through Colchester's ancient history, I was delighted to head up to that

town a few weeks back and to interview Frank Hargrave. Frank is the head manager. He is

the head honcho at the Colchester Annippswich Museum. He knows a lot about the archaeology,

especially the ancient archaeology discovered in that part of the island. And he is also an

expert in particular on late Iron Age, ritual and religion. So that further ado, here's Frank

to talk all about Britain's first town. Frank, it's wonderful to have you on the podcast.

Wonderful for me, thank you. I mean, it's lovely to be here and actually talking to you in

person after such a long, long period of Zoom interviews. And we are talking about this

incredible topic, ancient co-chester. And Frank, can we say that this is the oldest town in

Britain? Yes, absolutely. Of course we can. People tend to focus a little bit too much, I think,

on a reference that was made by Pliny the Elder in around about AD 77, I think. And that

refers to Cameladunum, to Roman Colchester, as a town. And that's the first reference to a town

or so we thought. But interesting, the same reference also puts it in context of he's actually

referring to Anglesys, talking about Anglesys and he's putting Colchester in context so people

know where Anglesys is. And that tells us something else, of course, that tells us that people know

where Colchester is in the first place. So that's interesting, it shows us, you know, potentially

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