I hope you’re all keeping well. What a different world we find ourselves in since I wrote last month’s letter! They say that ‘the past is a foreign country’, and it certainly seems bizarre that only a few weeks ago we were compiling our annual ‘Digs Guide’ listings of summer excavations.

But while many outdoor activities are, for now, somewhat curtailed, there are still plenty of opportunities to get your heritage fix without setting foot outside your door. In lieu of our usual museum and listings pages, we have put together a special section with a wealth of ways to explore the past from your home. From podcasts and radio programmes to online lectures and heritage sites that you can visit virtually, I hope you will find plenty to enjoy.

As for this month’s features, we begin with a trip to Iron Age East Yorkshire to encounter the remarkable Arras culture, whose distinctive funerary customs (including elaborate chariot burials) tell a fascinating tale of continental connections.

We next visit Spitalfields Market in East London, a site that in the medieval period hosted a small monastic hospital that flourished into a major institution ministering to the poor and sick. The urban poor also feature in our third feature, which examines Avon Street in Bath. This area was designed to attract wealthy spa-goers, but became a notorious 18th-century red-light district. What can we learn of its inhabitants?

Off the coast of Southend, we dive into the 17th century to explore the wreck of the London, and an ambitious campaign to save its remains.

Our final article takes us to the Roman frontier to pose the question: was Hadrian’s Wall completed within the reign of the emperor whose name it bears?