The search to discover the remains of a Roman settlement in Maidstone will be aired on TV tonight.

An episode of The Great British Dig: History in your Back Garden, will screen on More4 and see locals, presenter Hugh Dennis and his team of experts wade through dirt to unearth the past.

The episode revolves around what may lie beneath homes at Florence Road, with residents offering up their own back gardens as digging sites.

A spokesperson for the show said: "Hugh Dennis and a team of archaeologists, historians and experts descend on an unassuming suburban road in Kent where they believe a Roman settlement is hidden beneath the neighbourhood’s back gardens.

"With just one week to discover the history that may lie below the terraced houses of Florence Road, Maidstone, Hugh goes door-to-door to recruit willing locals to let the team dig up their gardens in the search for Roman remains. And he isn’t short of volunteers, with residents of all ages rolling up their sleeves to get to work.

"As the community comes together to help archaeologists Richard Taylor and Chloe Duckworth, the discovery of small fragments of Roman pots build hopes of uncovering something bigger.

"With evidence of an early Roman settlement mounting, the experts bring to life what a Roman complex on the site of Florence Road may have looked like in the second century. But will they discover enough to confirm what really lay beneath this everyday residential street centuries ago?"

This is not the first time Maidstone's Roman links have been explored on TV.

In March 2019, the story of how stone used to build Roman London was pulled out of the ground in and around Maidstone was revealed in a Channel 5 documentary.

Around 36,000 tonnes of Kentish ragstone were quarried, some of it from what is believed to be one of the largest man made holes in Northern Europe, a valley which now stretches from Coxheath to the River Medway near Tovil.

The stone was used to construct the Roman wall still visible in parts of the city, including Tower Hill tube station.

The episode airs on More4 tonight at 9pm.

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