OXFORD Archaeology’s work at Oxford University’s Magdalen College has uncovered an intriguing tale of fashion and academia as part of building a new library.

More than 3,500 wig curlers were found in the High Street college’s quad, which senior projects manager Ben Ford researched back to a barber, John Broughton, who leased a tenement at the site.

Staff discovered a small, stone-walled basement with the curlers, a cut-throat razor, a deer-horn handled knife and wine bottles from the common room with a 1769 date stamp.

Remarkably, some of the curlers were imprinted with news or book print that was wrapped around them before being put in the oven with a wig to expand in the heat.

Though wigs were going out of fashion towards the end of the century, former college president Dr Martin Routh was a known aficionado, he said.

Mr Foster said: “You have a snapshot in time. This is a rare find. You can make the links because records survive.”