ARCHAEOLOGISTS are dusting off their trowels and cleaning their brushes in preparation for a new dig at the Groundwell Ridge Roman site.

Experts from English Heritage hope to return to Groundwell Ridge next month to discover more about the site, which is in the middle of a North Swindon housing estate.

Dr Pete Wilson, project manager at English Heritage, said that any dig depended on funding and permission from the local council and government.

But he said he was confident the project would get the go-ahead.

Dr Wilson said: "All the applications such as planning permission, requests to work on scheduled monuments and funding are all in and look promising, but nothing is definite until we have all three.

"We expect this year's dig to be the last on the site, we are excited about returning to Groundwell Ridge and we want to try and complete the story of the site. We hope that further excavations will help us achieve this for the public and the local museum."

Plans would see the archaeologists move onto the site by late June, along with mobile buildings to support the dig.

They would be there for five weeks carrying out a community excavation with the help of local groups.

The 2005 dig would be smaller than 2004's but much more specific, focusing on what experts believe to be a splash pool, once part of a Roman bath on the site.

Last year's trench measured 20 metres by 25 metre but this year's will measured roughly 15m by 11m.

Groundwell Ridge's Roman site once faced development, with proposals for hundreds of new homes.

But when contractors arrived on the site in 1996 they uncovered the buried walls of Roman buildings just inches below the surface.

Since then it has been the subject of a campaign to make sure the site is protected from development.

The first excavation was carried out by Swindon archaeologists Dr Bryn Walters and Bernard Phillips in 1997.

And experts from English Heritage have excavated the site twice, in 2003 and 2004.

Last year's dig, was the most successful yet with the archaeologists uncovering a huge range of items from coins to pottery.

Metal detectors even discovered a small iron deity, originally thought to be that of the Roman god Minerva.

However research later showed that it was in fact a statue of the Egyptian god Isis, which the Romans also observed.

Anthony Osborne