TL;DR – Today we chart every location visited during 20 Seasons of Time Team one of the most wonderful shows to ever grace British television.

Article –

Well, today we are continuing our Mapping British TV week with Time Team (after looking at Grand Designs earlier). Time Team is one of those rare shows that was at its heart is an educational show, but it also was one of the most entertaining things on TV in its time. That is such a difficult balance to get right and like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego this is one of the other rare shows that actually managed to pull that off.

For those who don’t know about Time Team, it is a show about exploring the history of the British Isles (and some other places). The show would arrive at a site where people have some questions about a hill, or lump of stone, or an odd blip on a map, and from here they have just three days to excavate as much of the site as possible. They are looking for important finds like mosaic floors of the Romans, motte-and-bailey castles of the Normans, WW2 fornications, ditches next to roads, and never any Roman temples, okay bar that one time. The team includes host Tony Robinson, lead field archaeologist Phil Harding, and experts like Mick Aston, Francis Pryor, Helen Geake, John Gater, Raksha Dave, Stewart Ainsworth, and many more.

The format might be something that goes against most archaeological digs that happen over months and years, but it makes for some great TV. In the end, what the show is mostly doing is engaging in the first prep work on sites for local archaeological groups who could not afford the geophysics themselves. Through this, they have made finds that have reshaped the way that we look at parts of British history.

My love for the show comes from many places. There is the interaction between the hosts and the teams, the allure that at any moment something major could be found that would have Tony Robinson dashing across the site to instigate, Phil’s hat, and also learning about the history of the world. I think thanks to this show I can give you a more in-depth view of the history of Great Britain than I can of my own country, but that may also be an indictment on the history standards in 1990s Australian schools. So without further delving into the past, let’s delve into the past.

Scotland and Northern Ireland Map
Click Here For Full Sized Map

We begin our journey up north in the lands of steep cliffs, Atlantic winds, and ancient Scottish kings. I have to give the team full credit for visiting places that are important to British history but rarely get seen due to their remoteness. We visit Viking ruins in the Orkneys, Dark Ages gravestones in Glasgow, and also monasteries on the hill where St. Patrick is said to be buried. We also learn about how people live and worked in those times, like how to make vellum.        

England and Wales Map
Click Here For Full Sized Map

We then move south to the land of dragons and also England where most of the digs in the show’s history have been found. One interesting thing I found when putting this map together is that throughout its history (and if you include the specials) Time Team visited at least once every county in England. We explored where WW1 machine gunners were taught, an old priory in backyards of Suffolk, a Roman dump in Lincolnshire, and many, many, more places. They have even gotten the chance to dig in locations that you would never expect them to be able like Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey.   

North America, Europe, and London Inserts Map
Click Here For Full Sized Map

While most of the shows looked at locations in Great Britain, they also went out further afield at times. The explored early settlements in North America, and the slave trade in the Caribbean. They also explored WW2 fornications in Jersey and the WW1 battlefields of the Somme. Finally, I had hoped that I would not need an insert for London, and I almost got away with it until I started to add in the special episodes which visited every famous place in the city.   

Full Map
Click Here For Full Sized Map

Here we go, with everything on the one map. Where you can get to see the full breadth of the show’s reach from The Shetland Islands in the north to the Isles of Scilly off Cornwell in the south. This was a really fun map to put together because it let me revisit a bit of my childhood with one of the few shows that I think every member of my family liked.  

With that our map of Time Team is over. You know while I did enjoy putting this map together, it is a bit sad that a show as important as this kind of just stopped one day. Now more than ever I think shows honestly exploring our past can be powerful, especially when you have the right team behind it. I hope this is not the last time we have seen the team arrive at the site and have only three days to work out what is going on. If you liked this map, you map also like our map of Grand Designs.

Credits – The British Islands Map that we used as a base was created by ‘Visitor from Wikishire’ which is shared with a Creative Commons Licence. As well as this, this map adapts work from ‘Alexrk2’ with their Europe Relief Map, ‘Nilfanion’ with their UK Counties Map, and ‘San Jose’ with their World Map which is also shared with a Creative Commons Licence. All images are based off work created by the team at Time Team.      

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you watched Time Team?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.