Jonathan Foyle with BBC presenter Julian Richards

But understanding the lives of people long since gone and communicating this to others is a labour of love. Why else would archaeologists put up with living in a muddy hole for a pittance just to find an old pot?

My situation is more comfortable than most since the hole in which I work is Hampton Court Palace, once the home of Henry VIII. Every day I wear several historical hats: I'm part-archaeologist, part-historian and part-architect - none of which are part-time.

History is ours

The endless hours of research behind every discovery that I and others make should be communicated. Simply put, the past is not for privatisation, because it's our common property.

And ultimately, enthusing others can alter their attitudes towards our ancestors - and even the way they view their own modern lives.

Wolsey's palace was far from chaotic

Each year, I lecture widely and give two or three courses to continuing education groups for Cambridge University. Having a group of 30 is usually a good number.

It's always good to present new research, but 2001 was a very good year indeed.

In studying the origins of the Hampton Court, as built for Henry VIII's doomed henchman Cardinal Wolsey, I thought I had found a way of working out which parts of his elusive first palace remained among the 500 years of developments and rebuildings.

Built to order

The clue lay in a geometric scheme to set out all the parts of Wolsey's palace, devised by the designer in the autumn of 1514. All of the remaining walls seemed to conform to the lines of this strict floorplan.

In contrast, grand English houses of this era were normally built in a far less orderly fashion, with rooms and halls added where and when required.

Wolsey's home is lost beneath more recent additions

Wolsey's original palace showed little sign of this chaotic growth. It's layout seemed that of a Renaissance structure, a style not previously thought to have reached England until years after Wolsey's fall from grace.

But when the BBC became enthusiastic about filming this research and our excavations to test the theory and confirm the shape of Wolsey's palace, my own perspective changed.

History to millions

The more than three million TV viewers who tune into BBC Two's Meet the Ancestors would be 100,000 times larger than my usual audience.

This would have been enough in itself, but I couldn't have anticipated the added factor which propelled the project into the extraordinary.

The BBC commissioned for the programme a computer recreation of the original, or "Lost Palace".

Lost for 500 years

This would involve my painstaking reconstructions from archaeological, archival, and pictorial evidence.

The end result is the most astonishing portrait of a Tudor building in its prime. It's the closest thing to experiencing a phenomenon that was lost almost half a millennium past.

It's everything a historian dreams of.

The Lost Palace is broadcast on BBC Two on 13 March 2002 at 2100 GMT.