900 Years of History Unearthed at Canterbury : Cathedral: Diggers discover red streaks showing where the original builders used Roman bricks, perhaps an indication that Christians had a church there during the Roman occupation.

Paul Bennett and his team dug two feet below the floor of Canterbury Cathedral and nine centuries into the past.

“It gives me a tingle to be doing this,” Bennett said, standing in a shallow trench in the nave, near the steps leading up to the choir.

He and his crew dug through the foundations of two Norman cathedrals, the first built by Archbishop Lanfranc in 1070 and its successor in the next century. The Norman work completed in the 11th Century still showed the trowel marks of its masons.

“When Lanfranc began building this cathedral in 1070, he started it on top of what was left of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral that had burned down three years earlier,” Bennett said. “It was always assumed the Anglo-Saxon floor was underneath, but now we are seeing the conclusive proof.”

The Anglo-Saxon building was destroyed by fire Dec. 6, 1067, one year after the Norman invasion. Much of what is known of the building comes from the writings of Eadmer, a monk who saw the fire.

“While misfortunes fell thick upon all parts of England, it happened that the city of Canterbury was set on fire by the carelessness of some individuals, and that the rising flames caught the mother church thereof,” Eadmer wrote. “How can I tell it? The whole was consumed.”

Bennett’s 20-member team found grave sites, but the remains of Canterbury’s luminaries, such as the early archbishops Dunstan and Anselm, had been removed centuries ago for reburial elsewhere.

They uncovered flintstone foundations, brushing away the yellowish earth around them. Red streaks at the trench sides showed where the original builders used Roman red bricks, perhaps an indication that Christians had a church there during the Roman occupation.

“Whatever was useful and to hand, they used it,” Bennett said.

He and the others found what appeared to be the site of a transept and the foundations of the south wall, a southwest tower and other walls and buildings.

The vast nave, 170 feet long, seemed strangely empty without guides or visitors. But they were allowed to enter the cathedral and watch the work from a glassed-in bridge above the steps to the choir-screen, directly below the roof of Bell Harry Tower.

Memorials on the walls to soldiers and sailors, and to those deemed great and good, were draped with plastic sheeting to keep off dust. As the archeologists dug, scraped and brushed, workmen moved about with wheelbarrows among piles of paving slabs and tools.

They were preparing to lay a new floor of Portland stone slabs like the old one, to be completed this summer. Bennett and his team were given the opportunity to dig, study and record what was underneath before the new one covered everything up again.

“First and foremost, we are recording what we find, as these deposits are likely to be destroyed when the new floor is laid and a new heating system installed,” Bennett said.

“We are understanding for the first time far more about the history of one of Europe’s greatest buildings, which already had a remarkably documented history. A wealth of new and accurate information will come from what we are doing, such as differences in the mortar used at different times, differences in building materials and where they came from.”

He said details were emerging of how the cathedral used to look.

The pulpit was moved three times in the last century and left its imprint on the floor each time, Bennett said. Oil and gas lamps left traces, as did long-vanished shrines and chantries where priests sang Masses for the souls of those who left money to pay for them.

“All these scars will be tied together with the architecture to tell us how elaborate it must once have been,” said Bennett, director of the Canterbury Archeological Trust. “The chance won’t come again for another two to three centuries.”

Canterbury Cathedral, completed in 1503, is the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion, whose 70 million members include 2.5 million U.S. Episcopalians.

The floor being replaced, laid in the late 18th Century, had been worn down and cracked by more than 2 million visitors a year.