The day after work started on a new archaeological dig on the Cornhill, contractors have been told to fill it all in and come back in a fortnight!

Work started on Monday on a new trench, but then it was realised that an event booked on the Cornhill on September 3 was so large that it needed the whole space

A council spokesman explained: “We are taking this dig extremely seriously and if we had discovered something of note we could not guarantee to have everything back in place safely for this community event in early September. As a result, we will start the dig after that as there is no impact on the timing of the Cornhill project.”

All the Cornhill businesses and market will be open as normal during the dig. There might be some changes to the layout of the market but all the usual stalls will be trading.

The dig is expected to be completed by the end of September. The Cornhill work will begin in January.