Interview with Professor Dai Morgan Evans, Planner & Archaeologist

18 January 2011

What's your background in archaeology, and what was your role on the project?
Well, in terms of background, I'm fairly ancient, I'm 66, so I've been around for a while. I became interested in the Romans by being brought up in Chester. I read archaeology, and have worked in the field of archaeology ever since. I retired from my work at the age of 60 so I could get back into more hands-on archaeology. I suppose for this series I was concept designer, if I can put it that way. The producers discussed what they wanted, and I came forward with some proposals based on what we knew of Roman Wroxeter. They put me down as villa designer, overseer - I turned up once a fortnight on average, and was back home and in libraries answering questions on specific things, and suggesting things they should be doing. There was checking and quality controlling, I suppose. We tried to give the builders as free a hand as possible to bring their experience into what they were doing.

Why was it important to only use Roman materials and tools for the build?
It was interesting to explore the clash between the Roman way of doing things and the modern world. And it was interesting to watch the builders learning these things in a Roman, primitive way, without mechanised tools, electricity, cranes, and without all the normal things they would turn to. It was a learning experience for them, and it was also a learning experience for me to learn from them, what's possible, what might work and what won't. It was a sort of experimental archaeology.

Why the decision to site it at Wroxeter?
That's because Channel 4 wanted to hand the building over to the public on completion, rather than just demolish it. That's one of the real long-term benefits of the project, as far as I'm concerned. It's not just about a six-part TV series, you're also going to have a long-term building, open to the public, which they can see and learn about, and school parties can visit it and experience the feeling of a Roman building, which you don't get from knee-high ruins. So we needed a body that had the ability to manage that sort of thing in the long term, and had some available land, and it was English Heritage. That's why we came to Wroxeter. And Shropshire County Council were also very welcoming and accommodating to the idea.

Were you involved in selecting the builders?
No, not at all.  I hadn't met any of them, and I didn't know anything about them, until the first day of the project.

How did you get on with them?
[Laughs] You'll have to ask them that. At its best, it was a great sharing, learning experience.  At its worst, they didn't listen to me, they didn't seem to understand what I was saying, and I got very frustrated.  I got very frustrated that they couldn't let go of their 21st Century preconceptions and ideas and actually go with the flow.  But I'm very grateful to them.  I had a concept, and they created it.

It's a phenomenally hard task for a small group of men to achieve in such a short length of time.  Do you think you pushed them too hard, or expected too much of them?
At the very beginning I was asked by the producers if it could be done in six months, and I told them they were barking to try it.  But all the builders volunteered for it.  I knew it was going to be tough, and extremely tight with time, but they didn't listen to me on that in the slightest.  The way they faffed around in the first three months - if they had got their fingers out and been really moving fast, as they could have done, then we wouldn't have had to be building in October, which the Romans never did, and which you don't do with the materials we were using.  The days are short, stuff doesn't dry etcetera.  So yes, they were pushed hard - but they weren't pushed hard enough.  I have to say, I didn't push them any harder than I pushed myself. 

So you were kept pretty busy?
I was working pretty much full time, beavering away, looking in books, finding sources of information and so on.  It's very important to me that what is there is to the best academic standards.  It'll be controversial in parts, some of the things we've done, but it is not a film set, it is not a Disney, it's a Roman construct that's as close as we can reasonably guess that the Romans would have built.

You were so keen to get that authenticity that you took the builders off to see the Roman ruins at Ephesus.  What was the thinking behind that? 
I have mental concepts of what Rome and Roman buildings were like, the colours, the feel, the scale, the bling, the bravado.  And in this country we don't have that.  We have the old Roman ruins, which are impressive, but they don't really give you an idea of what everything looked like.  So the idea was to take them somewhere where they could get some idea of scale, of proportion, of colour, of Roman grandeur.  It gave them a yardstick by which they could judge things.

They seemed to find it utterly inspiring.  You must have been delighted with their reactions.
I was, yes.  I did get the impression after that that they had a better idea of what I was going for. I particularly liked, within the last three weeks of the build, as the place suddenly came together and the colours started emerging and the patterns started coming through, that they could actually see what they were creating and how it was Roman, and how it was actually echoing bits of Ephesus.  So it worked!

Looking back over the whole thing, what were the high points?
The feast was a bit of a lark, but it's when you see the place with the colours and furniture in - it hasn't got Romans in it yet - that was a great moment.  And the other big high point for me was when the frame was put up.  I actually knew then that we were going to build something.  Up to that stage, because it was moving so slowly, I really didn't think we'd finish.  I thought we'd get walls and a roof, but I was even worrying about that.  But once the frame went up, it just motored from then on.

What were the low points?
I suppose the slowness at the beginning.  They just didn't seem to be engaged with the project.  I worried myself sick that it just wasn't going to happen.  It wouldn't be a Villa Urbana, it would be a botched, abandoned, incomplete project.

It sounds like there were elements of this that took their toll more than you expected.
I think that's fair to say, yes.

Looking back at the experience overall, are you pleased to have done it?
Oh gosh yes.  Terrific.

You said you wanted to learn from the process.  Did you?
Oh yes, yes.  It was an experiment, and a good experiment always asks more questions than it answers, and poses more problems, but it's only by doing it that you can actually learn.  There are all sorts of areas where I've learned.  The use of mud brick has opened up a whole area of building techniques and some very interesting implications.  The problem is, at the moment we haven't got answers to those questions.  But I hope to have the answers soon.  It challenges you to go and look at the archaeological material again. 

Ultimately, what do you think of what's been achieved?  Are you delighted with the final building?
I'm very pleased.  It is one hell of an achievement to do what was done in six months.