On a windswept stretch of the Suffolk coast, where construction crews are preparing the ground for Britain’s newest nuclear power station, archaeologists have uncovered something the landscape had kept hidden for nearly two thousand years: a Roman-era industrial complex that includes a well-preserved pottery kiln and physical evidence of organized salt production.
The discoveries, made at sites known as Middleton and Goose Hill within the footprint of the planned Sizewell C nuclear plant in East Suffolk, point to a level of coastal economic activity in Roman Britain that had gone entirely unrecognized until excavation began. As of June 2026, roughly 200 archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology East (OAE) are working across about 70 separate dig sites covering some 2 million square metres, according to a Suffolk County Council press release and a BBC Digging for Britain episode that featured the project. Those figures make this one of the largest archaeological operations ever mounted in the country.
A kiln, a saltworks, and a coastline that was busier than anyone thought
The pottery kiln at Middleton is the headline find. Kilns from the Roman period are relatively rare survivals in eastern England; most were dismantled, plowed over, or eroded centuries ago. The Middleton example is well enough preserved to give specialists a direct look at how Roman-era potters organized their craft along this coast, from the structure of the firing chamber to the arrangement of the flue.
“The archaeology we are uncovering at Sizewell is of national importance,” Suffolk County Council stated in its published summary of the project, describing the campaign as one of the most significant programmes of archaeological work currently under way in Britain.
A short distance away at Goose Hill, the same campaign documented evidence of Roman salt production. Coastal salt-making in this period relied on a process archaeologists call briquetage: seawater was boiled in purpose-made clay vessels over low fires until salt crystals formed. The vessels were then broken to extract the salt, which is why the archaeological signature of the industry is typically a scatter of coarse, fire-reddened ceramic fragments rather than intact containers.
Finding a pottery kiln and a saltworks in close proximity raises an obvious question: were the two industries connected? Roman salt containers, often called briquetage troughs, are a recognized artifact class, and local potters could have been supplying the vessels that salt workers needed. No laboratory analysis from the Sizewell excavations has yet confirmed that link, but the proximity of the two sites makes it a strong line of inquiry for the post-excavation phase.
Scale of the dig
The sheer size of the archaeological operation deserves attention in its own right. The Sizewell C construction corridor extends well beyond the reactor platform itself, taking in access roads, laydown areas, and ecological mitigation zones. Every one of those zones required archaeological evaluation before heavy machinery could move in, effectively turning the entire corridor into a continuous transect across a coastal landscape that had never been examined at this intensity.
Suffolk County Council’s published summary confirms the kiln, the saltworks, and a nationally significant Anglo-Saxon burial ground that drew much of the initial public attention when it was announced. But the Roman industrial evidence adds a distinct chapter: where the Anglo-Saxon graves speak to ritual and community identity, the kiln and saltworks speak to organized production and trade.
A recent episode of the BBC series Digging for Britain (Series 13, Episode 2) featured footage of the Sizewell excavations, including the kiln in situ and interviews with field staff, offering visual context that conveys the scale of the work in a way text alone cannot. Note that this episode is hosted on BBC iPlayer and may be unavailable to viewers outside the United Kingdom.
What the evidence does not yet tell us
Important gaps remain. No radiocarbon or thermoluminescence dates for the kiln or the salt-production debris have been published. For now, the Roman attribution rests on typological comparison, meaning specialists have matched the forms and fabrics of recovered objects to known Roman parallels. That method is well established but less precise than absolute dating, and the specific century or centuries of activity at Middleton and Goose Hill have not been publicly narrowed down.
Equally, no excavation director has gone on record with detailed descriptions of production techniques. Questions about firing temperatures, kiln capacity, and the volume of salt Goose Hill could have produced will have to wait for the post-excavation reports, which on projects of this scale can take several years to complete.
Long-term preservation plans for the excavated material are also unresolved. The regulatory framework governing the archaeology is set out in an Overarching Archaeological Written Scheme of Investigation, accessible through East Suffolk Council’s planning portal. But publicly available versions of that document do not specify where finds will be permanently stored, how quickly reports will be published, or whether key artifacts, such as elements of the kiln structure, will eventually go on display in regional museums. Those decisions will shape how far local communities can engage with the discoveries beyond news coverage.
What Roman industry on the Suffolk coast could reshape about eastern Britain’s past
The broader significance of the finds lies in what they reveal about the Roman economy along Britain’s eastern seaboard. A functioning kiln and organized salt production imply not just local demand but some form of distribution, whether along coastal shipping routes or inland via river systems and trackways. As post-excavation work progresses, specialists will be looking for imported goods, coinage, and distinctive pottery fabrics that might tie Middleton and Goose Hill into wider trade networks stretching across Roman Britain and possibly to the continent.
The tension running through the Sizewell C project is one that applies to every large infrastructure scheme built on archaeologically sensitive ground. Excavation ahead of construction is both a rescue operation and a research opportunity. Without the power station, these sites might never have been investigated. But the timetable and budget are driven by engineering, not scholarship, and once construction advances, the buried landscape that produced these finds will be sealed beneath concrete and steel for the foreseeable future.
For now, the most robust conclusion is straightforward: this stretch of the Suffolk coast supported more intensive Roman-period industry than anyone had documented. Whether that activity was a small seasonal operation or part of something larger is a question the post-excavation data will eventually answer. Until then, the kiln at Middleton and the saltworks at Goose Hill stand as a reminder of how much of Britain’s ancient past still lies just below the surface, waiting for the next construction project to bring it into view.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
