The Time Team return to television screens this year for their 17th season of digging with the first episode.

In the first episode of the new series Tony Robinson, Professor Mick Aston and the team investigate one of Britain’s greatest historic landmarks - Westminster Abbey. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of Parliament Square, the archaeologists have three days to pin down the location of a lost sacristy, a stronghold which was built by Henry III almost 800 years ago and is said to have housed the biggest collection of treasure this side of the Alps.

Under the watchful eye of the Abbey’s clergy and numerous tourists, the diggers’ attempts to find this important building are continually thwarted by the driving London rain and centuries of later building work. And by the time the dig reaches the 18th century, surprisingly, the remains of a whole row of houses and workshops built right up against the abbey are uncovered. The team eventually pick through the later buildings to discover their medieval target only to find it wasn’t what everyone expected. Over three days the team redraw the plan of the magnificent building constructed by Henry III and find tantalising evidence of an even earlier religious settlement - a pair of beautifully preserved thousand year old burials just a metre below the Abbey verge.