Messing about in the river

THEY have been washed away by floods, been so cold they had to be cut out of their wet suits, have searched for weeks with not even a button to show for it, but still almost nothing will keep Rolfe Mitchinson and Bob Middlemass out of the river.

Most weekends see them clambering into their suits, making sure their metal detectors and cameras are securely fastened, and wading into the water. If they can, they go during the week as well. Only the swirling mud of a river in flood will stop them. Then they go for a walk instead.

Rolfe and Bob are river archaeologists. While other divers search the wrecks around the coast, looking for treasure, Rolfe and Bob stick to rivers, the only amateur river archaeologists in the country.

Their biggest success has been a hoard of coins, pottery and other objects at Piercebridge, near Darlington. The 3,000 artefacts make up one of only three finds of its kind in Europe, and has earned the pair their unofficial name, now adopted on their business cards, of the Piercebridge Divers.

But they have also uncovered a Roman road at Middleton One Row, also near Darlington, Roman bridges at Tadcaster near York and Melrose in the Scottish Borders and a Roman quayside at Corbridge in Northumberland. Their latest enterprise is the search for a Roman bridge at Shincliffe, just outside Durham, which would be the earliest known crossing of the river Wear.

It all started more than 20 years ago, when they went to a lecture by archaeologist and author Raymond Selkirk, who was putting forward his theory that, far from solely using their famously straight roads, the Romans were extensive users of the rivers. Rolfe and Bob were both members of a sub-aqua club and, their imaginations fired, when they heard Mr Selkirk wanted two divers to look for evidence to support his theory, they jumped at the chance. They had instant success.

'We went down to Piercebridge, we had all our gear and it was a red hot day, and eventually he said, 'Try in here, I'm sure the Roman bridge will be here'," says Rolfe, from Houghton-le-Spring. "We went in and it was full of bridge work, beams and poles, sticking out of the river bed. Then we started finding some other stuff, and we came out with all sorts: coins, little soldiers, brooches."

This began a love affair with Piercebridge which is still thriving. The pair regularly return to dive in the Tees there, and their finds have both settled the question of the site of the bridge, and also provided evidence that the Roman fort and settlement was occupied for four centuries, far longer than originally thought.

The 3,000 items, which include Anglo-Saxon and medieval artefacts as well as Roman, are being painstakingly catalogued by Philippa Walton, North-East finds liaison officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Among the objects examined so far include a knife handle in the shape of a foot, with a sock clearly visible behind the sandal-straps, and a figurine of a gladiator wearing a G-string and wielding what appears to be a whip.

"Some of the items are really well preserved and it makes quite an important assemblage of Roman materials," says Ms Walton. "When they have all been properly analysed they will be able to tell us a great deal about Roman life."

She says Piercebridge is unusual throughout the former Roman empire for the number of finds, reflecting the co-existence of both a sizeable settlement and a fort. Many of the objects would have been thrown into the river as votive offerings, given to please the gods, making Piercebridge one of only three such sites known in Western Europe.

After their early finds at Piercebridge, Rolfe and Bob tried their luck elsewhere. "We started moving around all these places where we thought Romans had crossed the river," says Rolfe. One destination was Corbridge, where they found a Roman quayside.

"It was right outside the fort and nobody knew it was there," says Rolfe, a retired printer. "We were walking down the river and we saw these massive timbers and stones in the water." After the wharf, they found the remains of a Roman weir on a drift dive, where they let the current carry them along.

"I was drifting along and I hit this big stone, and when I looked around I saw it was about five feet by three feet by 18 inches and it had chisel marks on it," says Bob, from Belmont near Durham. "There were 47 of them going across the river."

As well as the structures, they also discovered coins and other artefacts at Corbridge. While Rolfe uses a metal detector for the smaller objects, Bob, a warehouse foreman during the week, prefers to rely on his eyes.

"You get used to seeing in the water," he says. "The current takes all the muck away, and sometimes they are just lying there or you catch a glint of something bronze or silver."

After that they went to Middleton One Row, on the hunt for a Roman bridge. But here they did not encounter the early success they had at other sites.

"We searched for weeks trying to find something, and then we found a clamp that would hold two stones together," says Rolfe. "That was a breakthrough. We knew it was there somewhere, so we started digging down into the gravel and we uncovered the whole lot."

As well as the abutment, the stone structure supporting one end of the bridge, they found a pier in the middle of the river, but this time there were no artefacts. They then went on to find the remains of bridges near Tadcaster and at Melrose.

"We get as much excitement at finding part of a bridge as we do from a Roman brooch," says Rolfe. "It is finding something people didn't know was there, as well as something nobody has seen for 2,000 years.

"You have to have patience, but it's like fishing. People still enjoy sitting on the river bank fishing even if they don't catch anything. We're doing what we like doing best."

"I once went six weeks in the river without finding a thing," adds Bob. "But you know you are going to have good patches and bad patches. Sometimes you just move six inches to one side and you start finding all sorts."

And finding bridges or brooches isn't just down to luck. The pair spend time looking for suitable sites, trying to put themselves into the minds of the Romans almost 2,000 years ago: where would be the best place to cross a river, where would they have stood to throw offerings in the water?

There have been a few hairy moments. Bob was once washed half a mile down the river at Chollerford in Northumberland when millions of gallons were released from Kielder Reservoir. He also had to be cut out of his boots after diving in an icy river.

They have found a safe with the back taken off, a handgun and the remains of a double barrelled shotgun, and at Winston near Darlington, they saw a motorbike pull up and the rider throw something off the bridge and into the river. Unfortunately, there was too much sediment and they were unable to find it.

They now dive using equipment bought with a £19,000 grant from the Local Heritage Initiative, part of the Countryside Agency, allowing them to replace their wet suits with the warmer and drier dry suits, and buy metal detectors and cameras.

Their latest search is for a Roman bridge over the Wear. They have chosen a likely spot at Shincliffe, near Durham, and have already come across two previously unknown structures, and are waiting for dating specialists to finish analysing their finds.

"No-one's found a Roman bridge over the Wear but we know there is one and it is there to be found," says Rolfe. "That is what keeps us going. If we can find that bridge it would give us more boost than anything."