ARCHAEOLOGIST Mike Emery says TV's Time Team may have missed out on a significant find by just a few inches.

Presenter Tony Robinson and his resident experts were in Chester recently to film the search for the 'lost' Abbey of Poulton on a site south of the city on the Duke of Westminster's estate.

Investigations focused on the precise location of the Cistercian Abbey, founded in 1153, and a linked chapel. But it was the chapel site which has led to the most interesting finds - after Time Team had gone home.

Field director Mike Emery said: 'We rang them on Saturday because we found extra stuff in the chapel area where they were digging as well and they missed out on something, but their loss is our gain, I guess.

'If they had carried on digging a little bit deeper in the chapel area they would probably have found something just as important.

'There are more prehistoric remains under the chapel and we know the chapel was built on top of a prehistoric monument.' Mr Emery said the probe also led to the conclusion that the chapel was earlier than previously thought and was Anglo-Saxon, predating the Norman conquest.

'It was built 150 years before the abbey was founded. Parts of it were built before the monks arrived,' he explained.

Time Team failed to locate the 'lost' abbey but the excavations may give clues as to where it could lie. Mr Emery said further re-search was on-going and there was an opportunity to return to the site in future.

'What they have found was certainly part of the monastic buildings but it's not the abbey. It's the estate. It was their farm estate, so they are half right and half wrong.'

Presenter Tony Robinson was joined by his resident experts Phil Harding, Mick Aston and Chester's own Stewart Ainsworth. nThe Time Team episode is expected to be broadcast next February on Channel 4.