An initial visit was made on 2 December 1999 by Colchester Archaeological Trust in response to a report via the museum that digging was taking place in the Ypres Road area, to the south of Ypres Road and on land used as a training ground during World War I. The Ministry of Defence was engaged in clearing a very large open area of buried ordnance, including live ammunition. The work had already been in progress for several weeks and the schedule appeared to be open-ended, lasting perhaps for a further month or two if necessary to make the area safe. Clearance involved a team of people with ferrous metal detectors scanning roped lanes, followed by a JCB digging for the source of any signal. They were averaging about 35 holes a day and had collected at least three large skips full of scrap iron (mainly barbed wire, spikes, nails, buckets) to date. The JCB cuts were any size from small scoops in the topsoil to holes up to 5 metres in depth. <1>