ARCHAEOLOGISTS and volunteers are set to dig in Ledbury gardens in the search for clues regarding the town’s medieval history.

Local volunteers with the Victoria County History project have been busy measuring street frontages this summer in a bid to discover more about the Ledbury’s development in the Middle Ages.

The idea is that more recent buildings were probably built on a earlier medieval foundations.

The results will be published in a book on Ledbury’s earliest history, as part of the England’s Past for Everyone initiative.

But now harder evidence of the past is to be sought with digs in private gardens on The Southend, The Homend and the High Street.

The excavations will take place in August and September, under the guidance of Chris Atkinson, community archaeologist with Herefordshire Archaeology.

Dr Sylvia Pinches, project leader said: “He is making the arrangements with Dr Janet Cooper, who runs our volunteer groups in Ledbury.

“Herefordshire Archaeology has agreed to provide funding for a series of test pits to be dug.”

She added: “A number of people, including our own volunteers, have offered their own gardens a sites.

“We hope that the results, along with the pit measurements, will add detail to the generally accepted theory of Ledbury’s medieval development.”

England’s Past for Everyone has already published one small book on the town’s history, called Ledbury’s Street Names (Logaston Press).

Other titles in the pipeline will include Ledbury, a Herefordshire Market Town and, of course, Medieval Ledbury.