Alan Wilmshurst Personal Profile

My fIrst taste of archaeology was when I was about 4 years old in Liverpool, helping my Dad dig the garden. I would get really excited when we would find small sherds of Victorian china and bits of rusty metal. Happy days!

Most of my life has been tied up with running a DIY shop with my Dad. There was never enough time to pursue my interest in history and archaeology. Sadly my Dad passed away in 1995 and my world changed dramatically. Suddenly I found there was no pleasure or purpose in working in a retail shop, without my partner and best friend. I kept the business going until 2002 when I decided to sell up.

Now I had more time to do the things I always wanted to do, so I went to college and did various archaeology courses. One of those courses was at Chester College and it involved working on the site at Poulton. It was great being able to work on a 'real' site. Now I was hooked and I spent many months working with the site director Mike Emery. He taught me everything about archaeology and I was very fortunate to receive his expert tuition.

My role now is Site Supervisor at Poulton and I love the challenge and the responsibility of it all. Every day is unique and it is such an amazing site with so many different periods being represented, Prehistoric, Roman and Medieval.

The archaeology courses we run here during the summer are excellent and I would recommend them to anyone interested in archaeology. We teach all the techniques including excavating, context recording, photography, surveying, planning and geophysics. The course is really good value too.

Maybe I will see you on site soon.

Alan Wilmshurst.