A community archaeology project that has helped rewrite the history of an English village is the subject of a new book by a University of Winchester academic.

Dr David Ashby, laboratory manager for the archaeology, anthropology, geography, and forensics departments at the university, has published Standford in the Vale, The Hidden Past Revealed.

For 16 years, Dr Ashby has been running the Standford in the Vale Archaeological Research Project (SVARP), which began when he was overseeing an excavation by the local village Scout group for their heritage badge.

Dr Ashby said: "We dug a few test pits which I thought would throw up nothing but Victorian rubbish, but instead, we found a lot of medieval pottery, a cobbled surface, and the remains of a stone building."

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Dr David Ashby with his new book in the churchyard of St Denys in Standford in the Vale (Image: University of Winchester) On the back of these finds, Dr Ashby formed SVARP, which, with volunteers, has made finds dating back 10,000 years in the Oxfordshire village. 

Community digs have unearthed evidence of a previously unknown Neolithic settlement, Iron Age and Roman fortifications, and a large Saxon settlement.

The site of the village has been continuously inhabited since the Neolithic, 4000 BCE, making it one of the longest continually inhabited communities in the country.

It was a prosperous commercial centre during the medieval period, possibly a town, until the late 14th or early 15th century, when a combination of disease and the 'little ice age' sent Standford's fortunes into decline.

However, the village slowly recovered to become the prosperous community of more than 2,000 inhabitants of today.

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Scenes from community digs held in the village  (Image: University of Winchester)Dr Ashby, who grew up nearby, took up archaeology at a young age, and the Standford project has fed into his undergraduate, master's, and PhD studies – all of which were undertaken at the University of Winchester.

The project has also provided a practical classroom for several generations of Winchester archaeological students who have helped dig test pits in the village and process the finds.

Sixty-three test pits and 19 evaluation trenches, dug in private gardens and fields, have yielded more than 1,000 shards of pottery.

Dr Ashby said: "You dig a test pit in someone’s garden, you get 10,000 years of history in a square metre.

"And every test pit gives us something new."

Dr Ashby’s book was launched at a special event held at Standford in the Vale Village Hall on Sunday, September 8, when he gave a talk about the project.