With help from Hallaton Field Walking Group and Leicestershire County Council archaeologists, Time Team spent three days this week investigating a site near Church Langton and Stonton Wyville.

It is believed to be an early Anglo Saxon village or town dating to the period after the Romans left Britain – around 450 to 650AD, or the ‘dark ages’ where there are no written records and few surviving archaeological remains.

When Time Team – presented by Tony Robinson of Blackadder fame – heard a county council field walk survey indicated high volumes of Anglo Saxon pottery in the area they were desperate to excavate.

Field walk group member Carol Kirby, who lives in Hallaton, said: “It’s very exciting to have been involved in this.

“It’s very easy to spot Roman remains for instance, but Anglo Saxon is much harder for all sorts of reasons.

The pottery is plain and difficult to identify – you need to know what you are looking for.

“While this site is not unique, they are very few and far between.

“Who knows what will turn up? Nothing like this has ever been excavated in Leicestershire.”

During the dig the group unearthed dozens of pieces of pottery, several iron utility ‘tang’ knives and evidence of two settlements, including one known as a grub hut which would have had a sunken bottom and no chimney.

Incredibly, they even found evidence of Iron Age occupation, suggesting this was an important site thousands of years before the Romans.

Programme researcher Jon Willars said this is the first time the team have excavated what could be a full Anglo Saxon settlement and added: “We have got some wonderful Anglo Saxon archaeology here, but as ever the picture is a lot more complex than originally anticipated. We have got a lot of happy archaeologists wandering around here.”

He said the Romans were farming the unwieldy soils of the valleys to feed a market economy, but this site adds weight to evidence that Anglo Saxons – or native Brits influenced by their German cousins – returned to the subsistence farming techniques of the Iron Age.

He said the Anglo Saxon placenames and ancient parish boundaries, coupled with the spread of pottery, indicate this could be an important settlement which should be studied further.

The Channel 4 programme will be aired on a Sunday tea time this coming winter.