'We were lucky to dig at UK's oldest human site'

A member of the team that started excavations at the Boxgrove archaeology site says he and his friends were "very lucky to be in the right place at the right time".

Tony Tynan was an archaeology student in 1982 when he and others became the first to dig at the site near Chichester in West Sussex.

The "Boxgrove Man" fossils, considered the oldest human fossils found in Britain, were later unearthed at the site in 1993.

Tynan told Secret Sussex that work may not have begun at the site "had we had other preoccupations on a summer's evening".

He was among the University College London students working at a nearby Roman archaeology site in 1982.

"Because we were impoverished students who couldn't go down to the pub every night, we decided to explore the bottom of the quarry," Tynan said.

The group found "60 or 80-odd feet of gravel" had been removed, uncovering a land surface from about 500,000 years ago.

"It's from that that we started to find hand axes, flint tools, subsequently then animal bones," Tynan told the BBC.

"We were lucky being in the right place at the right time and it just flourished from there, from those humble beginnings."

The South Downs nearby would have been "a lot more impressive" during the age of the fossils while the land site would have been a grassy savanna, according to Tynan.

Remains of animals including rhinoceroses and an elephant were later found.

After receiving a grant to do exploratory work, the project "snowballed over the subsequent years".

Tynan said: "The more we dug the more we found really, and the more other specialists got involved."

The early human remains, thought to belong to the species Homo heidelbergensis, consist of a shin bone and two teeth belonging to a separate individual.

Tynan said he and his colleagues had to endure "gruesome winters" with temperatures as low as -12C in the early years of the site, as well as accommodation "full of rats" and no electricity or warm water.

But he told Secret Sussex he had "very happy memories of the times we shared", including "riotous parties" and "general camaraderie" as well as digging.

Follow BBC Sussex on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram and listen to BBC Radio Sussex on Sounds. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.