ARCHAEOLOGISTS will be digging up a car park in the hope of discovering how the city has evolved over the past 2,500 years.

The investigation at Copenhagen Street car park in Worcester will be carried out to try and uncover remains from Roman times and even the Iron Age.

The work will be carried out by Wessex Archaeology between October 5 and 8.

James Dinn, archaeological officer at the city council, said: "Finding out about a site like this involves careful, painstaking work and it’s almost impossible to predict in advance what might be found. The team will definitely be searching for remains of the northern defences of Worcester’s Roman settlement – and there’s even the potential to find signs of Iron Age settlement from over 2,000 years ago.”

Worcester’s medieval city wall ran along the riverside boundary of the car park – and investigation in the 1960s found the buried remains of this defensive wall extending to a depth of seven metres.

A densely packed medieval city quarter filled this area, including the documented site of Worcester’s medieval Jewish quarter, before the expulsion of Jews across England in the 13th Century.

Worcester’s Roman origins are now quite well known, but there have been hints of earlier origins.

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from burnt timbers on another part of the historic defences, in Severn Street, showed that they dated from between 750 and 400 BC in the early Iron Age.

More recently, the centre of the site was occupied by the first porcelain factory to be established in the city in 1751.

The car park will remain open during the excavation.