ARCHAEOLOGISTS are seeking helpers to join in their big dig and unearth secrets from the past at a shrunken medieval village.

The tiny village of Thornton le Street , near Thirsk, was given £98,000 through the Heritage Lottery Fund to carry out a two year dig to unearth the history of the area which is a scheduled monument site. |Over the next two weeks volunteers are being invited to join in the search working alongside professional and amateur archaeologists.

They're throwing open the dig up to June 1, but people will need to register through roadstothepastexcavations2018.eventbrite.co.uk or email organisers at jb@solsticeheritage.co.uk.

They say no experience is necessary as there is expert guidance and interpretation on hand but old clothes and gloves are needed. The dig is being run in partnership by the Thornton Le Street History Group and professional archaeologists Solstice Heritage.

In the first year over 2,500 artefacts were dug up, many going back thousands of years. Over 1,200 items were found in one field alone. Last summer 12 test pits were dug in gardens and on open space around the community to find out more about the shrunken medieval village with a large trench opened in one garden to uncover the remains of road front medieval properties.

Archive research is also being carried out by some volunteers as part of the roads to the past project. It's known that people have lived in the surrounding area since the last Ice Age and one of the major arteries of Roman Yorkshire passed nearby. Work will carry on until the end of the year.