It was only supposed to be a mini-excavation to give children a taste of archaeology - but a dig at Wheatley Park School on Thursday uncovered far more than they had bargained for.

Pupils George Walker, Callum Smith and Michael Bignell admitted they were growing a little bored with the class, having only found rusty nails and broken pottery, when they stumbled across what seems to be part of a medieval pavement dating back to the early 1300s.

The school site in Holton, near Wheatley, is known to be steeped in history, having played a part in the Civil War, but headteacher Kate Curtis said her students had not been expecting to find anything.

Year nine pupil Michael, 14, said: "We were just using spades and digging down when we hit something really hard. We realised there was something big down there so started using the trowel to get closer to it.

"It was then we saw the cobbles in a pattern and knew we'd found something special."

The archaeology exercise was only supposed to be part of an activity day at the school which would see pupils spend an hour or two learning about excavation before moving on to arts and crafts activities, but the find captured the pupils' imagination and led to them spending most of the afternoon at the site.

George, also 14, said: "It was pretty exciting to find. To start with, we thought it might just be a large clump of rock, but we called over our teacher who looked at it, made some checks and said it was part of a medieval road or pathway.

"Up until then, all we'd found was a lot of rubbish and broken bits and pieces. It's great that we actually found something like this."

Callum, 13, added: "We had actually just been joking about what we might find when we made the dis- covery."

Teacher Kevin Heritage is a keen archaeologist and was leading the class. He said: "It's a pretty good site to do archaeology on, but we didn't expect anything like this.

"It's a virtually complete medieval trackway from Holton village up to a moated site at the school. It's very impressive."

Headteacher Ms Curtis said: "It's a very exciting find which they literally stumbled across. We were not expecting the students to find anything, but they have actually uncovered something which we think dates back to the 14th century.

"It certainly looks impressive and we think it is part of a medieval cobbled pavement. We knew our site had a lot of historic interest, but we were not expecting to make a find like this. It's fantastic that our students have unearthed it.

"Given the history of our site, it's quite possible we could find something else."

Mr Heritage said the Oxfordshire Museum and English Heritage would be invited to inspect the find.

This isn't the first archaeological find at Wheatley Park School.

A mosaic tile also thought to date back to medieval times was found a few weeks ago and the park site has a colourful history.

During the Civil War in the 1640s, Oliver Cromwell used the old manor house as his headquarters. His daughter Bridget later married there.

Although the house was later demolished, parts of the original park, such as the moat, remain around the school.