➤ Time Team's Top 3 ONGOING MYSTERIES

other there's new island off the dramatic coast of Cornwall and to say it's got a romantic history it's an understatement [Music] you can't move the stories of shipwrecks and Pirates and monks and ghosts and treasure maps pilgrims frequently lost their lives in these waters on the trip to a chapel on the island which has now vanished here in lieu we're investigating a story of two chapels in the medieval period they belong to Glastonbury Abbey the important Somerset Monastery famous for cultivating the legends of King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea and according to local Legend it was Joseph of Arimathea who brought Jesus Christ to Lu Island and left him to play in the safety of these beaches while he went off to do business with Cornish tin merchants If people really did believe that Jesus played here when he was a lad that would have got people flocking here wouldn't it oh yeah that would have driven a whole pilgrimage industry of people coming out here to seed you know and the support structure for it it's just that sort of thing that people travel around to to visit so you're really championed the bit now aren't you well of course I am I mean the point is that the Time and Tide are the two things that wait for no man we have got to get off of this island boy early afternoon and we've only got half our diggers because the others are I don't know if you can see just round the Headland there up on that Hillside what are they doing there Mick there's another Chapel over there halfway up the hill now and they're said to be the same size one said to me a copy of the other one but the mainland Chapel has been excavated already well that's right I mean partially dug at least I mean in the 1930s some local Cornish archaeologists went in there they're a slightly eccentric ideas they were desperate that it should be pre-normal and they kind of labeled it Celtic what do we mean by Celtic it's a shorthand term in the west country for something that's after the Romans but before the Normans but of course we don't have Anglo-Saxons in this area so it's it's a short down term for that Dark Age period And there are maps dating back to the 16th century showing a chapel right on top of the hill right that should be our excavated area in between these strings so if you want to start stripping the turf off of that that'll be fine thank you so with time in short supply Phil's confident enough to get going without GFS results and Stewart's nose for Earthworks has sniffed out what he thinks is a knave for the pilgrims and a Chancellor for the altar you see Phil's getting a bit of a wall coming in through there which rather suggests that that's probably the first block of perhaps that adding on to it right what do you think the timeline might be the very early what they call Celtic Chapel would be wood and we just find post songs then what if we're lucky we find post holes and then we get a stone building on top of that which is pretty small and pretty featureless and then somebody comes along and revamps that with some nice architectural Pieces perhaps doorways chance large windows in the 12th century that would be my guess as to what we'd see on the site the structures themselves could be the best clue we have when it comes to dating because chapels don't have the domestic rubbish that we usually rely on to date buildings hey Phil that trench is coming along yeah I mean it looks like we've got the beginnings of a wall Tony I mean we always knew that there were those big Stones just immediately underneath the turf but now we've got it stripped off you can see there's a nice Edge there but we really need to be able to get down to confirm that that is a war we certainly can't date it but we can begin to suggest that it is a chapel Jackie will show me some bone earlier on what you got Jackie the bits that are really of Interest so these pieces here now these are bits of human femur and it's quite a large individual you can see these ridges running down here this is where the big thigh muscles attach and they really are quite rugged so this is quite a large individual with quite chunky thighs so I've got a mystery of a big thighed person or somewhere on this island at some time and he might not be the only burial here because human bones are said to have been revealed as the cliff faces have eroded Glastonbury acquired this land sometime in the 12th century and legal documents suggest there was already a chapel on the island at this time at the chapel on the top of the island it looks like we've found a potential north wall and Ian's put in a new trench looking for the West End on the other side of the water we found steps coming down the hillside into the chapel on the mainland chunky stone walls and a floor surface carved out of the rock face it seems to be deliberately terraced into the hillside at exactly the same height as the island Chapel isn't it weird looking back at our Chapel from this Chapel it is and yet this is strangely familiar I mean when you look at the size of this chapel and you think about the Earthworks over there they are very very similar can you see this what looks like a wall running here there's almost like face Stones coming through well they're actually floating on top of this dirt we need to get to grips with this wall to find out whether there was a knave here before Glastonbury added a chancel and Bridge and Oliver have now found some post holes that might prove Croft Andrews theory that this knave was Celtic it would have been a hell of a job cutting through that rock wouldn't it oh absolutely and I haven't excavated them yet but having stuck my trowel down they're at least the Steep so do we think we've got our earlier Chapel our early Timber Chapel if you're very very lucky on the other hand of course they could be late they could be posted a solution for all we know but we've also got this other new feature that just come up which may support an earlier structure can you see down here because we're Gully and it's been actually cut into the stone it's at a right angle and that could well be a Timber slot for an earlier building and that's in line with those post holes as well isn't it absolutely pilgrims who made it safely to the island Chapel believed that Saint Michael would reward their bravery with time off purgatory and we're just beginning to uncover the Nave where they would have stood Phil I think I might have a piece of in-situ flooring here good Lord yeah and that is exactly the same same short surface that we had on the mainland Chapel yesterday that was was a mortared surface just like this and it's patches directly on the natural bedroom and this wall to a look at this wall here so what what angle are we on there hang on here we go I'll tell exactly what angle we are bang on East West don't get much better than that much better than that this Wall's convincing because chapels generally face the East often orientated to the sunrise of their Saints Day now we can really get our teeth into working out what it might have looked like 1590s all these lovely ships that's amazing because this is is showing the disposition of the English and Spanish fleets at the Armada it's a story map to some extent but you can see along here we've got what's called Saint Michael's Island at that stage but it still shows a chapel it depicts it with a tower but I think you have to take that kind of a pinch of salt we've got the wall now it is bang on East West right now the interesting thing now is what is happening in here because we've got all this these stones are mortared in so this is actually masonry right now what I don't know and I'm trying to resolve is whether or not that wall comes along and turns in other words we're actually in the northeast corner at a chapel yeah or whether it's actually a big sort of swelling to take a buttress or a big column that might support a Chancellor Arch like the big Stones you've got over here in fact exactly yeah and now you see down there might add another wool yeah now I did wonder at one stage whether or not that might be the South Wall of the chapel but now we've actually cleaned it up and looked at it you can actually see that it's on a slightly different alignment in southwest and North East right so I'm rather hopeful if it worked out all right for me we'd have a wall coming here be the northeast corner of the chapel this is the chapel that would be a separate building outside it It Feels Right the island Chapel could be much smaller than the mainland Chapel so the theory that they were mirror images is looking a bit shaky beginning of day three here at Lou in Cornwall we've got a chapel on the island over there we've got another one at the top of the hill and this morning we're going to open these stone-lined burial we found yesterday [Music] one day left and frustratingly the tides won't let us out to the island for a couple of hours yet Jack is already hard at work on the possible grave in the mainland Chapel because whoever lies inside it should be an important figure in our story it's very narrow but I think actually it's it's now it looks narrower because of the pressure of material pushing down on here you can see this Stone here is angled I suspect it was originally further over there but I think we might find that there's something underneath these I'm probably gonna have to take those out where do you think the end might be then Jeffy well you can see how the soil changes completely there so I think it actually could be right over here given its position within the church it could be a storage area for eloquies although it's usually some kind of books or other kind of container in which you would store things like the bones of saints in your church further down the hill raksha has found the missing wall of the Monk's house that we were looking for yesterday and it's a pretty substantial building we've got lovely courseing down this side and we've got another one here you can actually see this line going across here so that's the inside of the building the standing remains show a two-story building Croft Andrew found two small bedrooms for our monks and we found the back wall of a refectory which would have been used by pilgrims waiting to get to the island on feast days when they really did make a day of it well I don't think we've got anything in there this is an extraordinary find relics beneath the altar would have been displayed on feast days drawing pilgrims to this Chapel to make offerings frustratingly the Bones have long since been removed so we can't date it Jackie I've got bone here but in a different part of the chapel Bridge thinks she's found another burial and it's human part of the human foot bone you've got luck to have more down there yeah there is a lot down here you can see it's ranging from here to about here yeah so that looks like it's in situa it's not moved anywhere so where's the grave cut well I think that these two large Stones here which end about here mark one side of it and what I've been thinking of was a wall here is actually marking the foot end of it this gets better and better the small wall was glastonbury's Chancellor and this means that Bridges burial could well be related to an earlier Chapel and now Oliver's convinced he's found it well the evidence we've got these two whacking great post holes in front of us but the killer piece of evidence is the fact that they align really nicely with The Rock Cut feature stretching off into the distance there and the fact that together they're on a different alignment to the walls that we can see only by a couple of degrees but I think it's significant if Oliver's right it means a wooden Chapel was here before the Glastonbury monks arrived and the exciting news is that if Bridges burial is related to it a bone sample could actually date it it's all getting pretty exciting over there apparently so we're going to leave a skeleton crew on the Headland which is fairly appropriate I suppose and the rest of us are going over to see what's happening [Music] after we left it seems our archaeological Hermits made the most of their Island Experience the big news is the mats found a burial carved into the Bedrock Ian thinks he's finally found the West Wall of the chapel and traces cleaned up the possible standing Stone so ah you've got a grave cut haven't you this is it here look you can see it cuts into the Shale going all the way along there is a wider head end coming back down here do my eyes deceive me or is that a very big bone that is a very big shin bone there's this foot there unfortunately no knee bone and no sign of a thigh yet do you think it might belong to the same person we found on the first day well in a way I hope not because that would mean the Barrel's been really Disturbed Disturbed or not if he's buried inside the building he could be a significant figure in the Chapel's history that's a really curious looking wall you've got there it's quite a complicated story because here you've got this plaster here and you can see the line of the wall continuing through here so I think that this stone is actually added on which employs to me that this is not just one Chapel that was built and then that was it periodically it was refurbished it was strengthened it was modified it's a very very long story and part of that story the addition of the chancel is exactly the same as we found on the mainland but this isn't the only similarity it looks like Matt's burial is in the same position as the reliqui in front of the altar if only our big boned man could tell us when he was buried because we're running out of time to work out just how long this story is but with a few hours left we're putting another trench in because Stewart spotted a ditch running all around the top of the hill which might give us an idea of how long a chapel has stood here we're only just below the surface and already we've got some fines it's certainly medieval at the latest and probably earlier it is handmade just do a throw a spanner in the works that may influence my decision this could actually be a Romano British shirt then looks like we're heading further back into the time of the Cornish Saints because the latest theory is that our burial and reliqui are from an even earlier Chapel than the one Oliver found which Glastonbury probably revamped by adding a chancel and if so pilgrims could have been coming to pay their respects to relics in this box long before glastonbury's time foreign has turned into a hive of activity it's trying to lift the possible standing Stone without much success it's all going on in the oval enclosure where we've been pulling out a coin every eight minutes so far there are six Jonathan that means one more coin and you've got another horde to your name you've got one beautiful coin here that you can clearly see the figurine of the Goddess on the back back on The Lawns the huge Stone doesn't want to stand up so Kerry is now burrowing under it it's smooth underneath so see I don't think there's anything under there I think we can go for the standing Stone exciting as this is It's Undateable these are medieval shirts of Pop one's actually got a little spot of glazing so that helps me a little bit I think these are mid to late 13th century so how does that fit into the uh the history of the island and this Chapel Nicholas well the late 13th century is when Glastonbury is giving up this site and bringing the monks back but it's possible that this is one of the last monks or priors of the place and if it's not that it's the Lord or Lady of the manner it's clearly a very important grave it's being excavated out of the rockets at a pole position in the church and Matt burial isn't alone just as we're packing up outside the West End of the chapel Ian's found what looks like a kissed burial but you're gonna be staying here anyway aren't you so will you let us know at some time what it was cheers Matt we've got to go like now okay let's go even as we're loading onto the boat another kissed burial emerges from under the South Wall excuse me please you're welcome it's beginning to look like this enclosure could have been a burial ground for thousands of years maybe even into pre-history over the last few days we've discovered that the story of our two chapels began long before glastonbury's monks arrived when Lou Island could well have been one of the earliest outposts of Christianity and a chapel on the top would have been a Beacon of Hope for Traders from the Mediterranean Crossing formidable Seas sometime later another Chapel was built on the mainland at the same height looking to the island with our reliqui box at the altar for pilgrims to visit and eventually in the 12th century glastonbury's monks rebuilt both the Chapels as a sort of some Michael theme park over the last three days we've just scratched the surface of this magical Island which has been a very special place going way back long before Christianity time team is a hundred percent independent and funded by our incredible fans joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models master classes and more please join us on this exciting Journey we need more support to make more episodes Burford in Oxfordshire is one of the finest medieval towns in England almost every house here is picture postcard perfect and the granddaddy of them all is this The Priory this sprawling Mansion is being restored with great care because underneath it is thought to lie a medieval hospital but that might just be the start of it the owners called in our very own Mick Aston who started across something rather surprising in the garden so the fact that we're here is all down to you yeah I'm afraid it is actually I I was asked to come here and look at this building and then wandered off and looked at the grounds around it thought it was really interesting and we ought to come back and do more work I bet you're great to employ you are look at this fantastic place and you're poking around the back yeah well listen there's a medieval Hospital on the side but up on the hill at the back we found 10th Century Pottery so that's Anglo-Saxons yeah when you say you found it where was it it was it was in the vegetable patch on the top of the hill but it's earlier than the date of the town of Burford when that's found in the 12th century so there's something here that much earlier and finding that was sufficiently exciting for you to come to us and say I really want to dig it so medieval hospital or Anglo-Saxon settlement it looks like Mick's got us looking for both in this massive Garden that's over a thousand years of History to sort out at least our search for the hospital should be fairly straightforward fingers crossed John's radar has picked up part of it under the front lawn [Music] it means we can put in our first trench straight away our second target is the vegetable garden and it's going to be a lot harder this is where Mick found his mysterious Anglo-Saxon pottery and he wants us to scour it for more it's not exactly small so we've called in some extra help welcome back to Burford in Oxfordshire where we're trying to uncover the secrets of Burford Priory the biggest house in town down here we think we may have the first glimmerings of a medieval Hospital why are we so sure that there are likely to be medieval remains here well the archeology doesn't just stop at the front door excuse the mess this is the incident room by the way but look at these arches now even I can tell that these are medieval but what puzzles me is that it all seems far too Grand to be a Priory Antonia you know more about this place than anyone else you actually wrote the book on Burford is this really a Priory no it's a private house and it has been for the best part of 500 years so why is it called a Priory because it stands on the site of a medieval hospital but one's a Priory and the other's a hospital there seems to be some confusion over the name towards the lake 15th 16th century when even the records refer to The Priory or the prior of Burford what's our earliest reference to the hospital right the earliest reference is this close roll of 1226 in which the king grants to the hospital of Saint John in Burford ten cartloads of wood from The Forest of Witchwood but in addition to the medieval stuff which we're pretty sure is here Mick's been getting very excited about the idea of anglo-saxon fines is it likely that we'll find anything Anglo-Saxon oh I hope so the place named Burford is Saxon in origin and it relates to the Ford leading to or by the Burr and what's a bird a bird is a fortified enclosure which would either have been used in times of stress where people could use as a refuge or it might have been inhabited okay so the names of good Anglo-Saxon clue but that's all we've got so far but fingers crossed so apart from the odd leftover Arch the big house Bears almost no resemblance to the 13th century hospital as lovely as it is this building dates from the 1580s our best chance of finding the hospital lies under the front lawn and out back we're also going to see if we've got some kind of anglo-saxon settlement the question is which one will we find First Phil thinks he's made a good start he's found Stone but he's being given a run for his money because in the vegetable garden our Junior archaeologists are coming up trumps that day's about the time of William the Conqueror so that's really really really really old so that's great I mean that's fantastic I mean you've been doing this for about 10 minutes have you something like that so that's both digs off to a good start but the sheer size of The Priory Garden is a challenge in itself it's one of the biggest we've ever dug on time team [Music] rows of topiary Victorian flower beds even a 17th century Chapel and that's the problem it's so big we could find anything here we've got half a dozen trenches open in the vegetable garden alone and we're getting a lot more Pottery most of it late Saxon early Norman oh marvelous look at this the tent there's a clear cutoff date around 1100. but we still don't know where the Potter is coming from so we've got to keep digging yeah over on the front lawn Phil's row of stones has turned into the corner of a large wall which lines up perfectly with the geoffers could this be our medieval Hospital well some 13th century hospitals could be very big but most had two main buildings a long infirmary hall for the sick and a chapel either on the end or on the side so which one does Phil have you can't tell whether you're outside or inside there can you oh surely I must be inside I mean that's got to be an outside wall or at least Park but now it's a wall and then turning round and going around there I'm sure that must be outside and I'm on the inside and just to prove Phil doesn't make this stuff up look at this lovely floor tile it must mean we're inside a building this is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a very Posh 13th 14th century building it isn't it like a chapel yes yes so this could be one of our Hospital buildings the chapel and the second the hall might be closer than we think you better have a good reason for dragging me up here and I have I have because you can see the whole town from here look it's cool looking across there look there's uh Hospital The Priory site look from here you can really clearly see how there's quite a substantial hill behind it can't you yeah where the trees are at the back is where the Saxon Pottery is coming from but then in front of us you've got all this medieval New Town laid out uh you know you come over the the forward Over the River Wind Rush down there and then you've got the Main Street up the middle and you've got all these carefully laid out properties running back from that when would the new town have been built well this one's about 1100 which is quite early because there are literally hundreds of them founded in the 1100s and 1200s everybody's at it because you can make money out of building a new town what's actually happening is that's the earlier settlement it's probably one of a number of The Villages down this Valley and then the town is built and people move from there into the town that would make sense with what we what we see so we're beginning to see the big picture it looks like the creation of the new town killed off our Saxon Village it's now mid-afternoon phase uncovered most of her Saxon house and she's also narrowing down its date well it's Cotswolds again but it's really crude so cult swells that's the Anglo-Saxon stuff yeah yeah but I mean it's really unusually thick and heavy um we get stuff like this in the Midlands that's middle Saxon but not in this fabric I've never seen anything quite like this before from this part of the world and I've seen an awful lot apart even this part of the world well that's good we've got food that would be 650 to 850. I mean that's perfect because that actually that dates then our beam slot so we've got a middle Saxon building so this is from the beam slots yeah oh that's interesting because I mean if you look at Middlesex and buildings in places like East Anglia the the really quite vague structures what you basically get is a couple of very faint shallow beam slots where there's been wooden beams set in the ground and then upright Timbers jointed into them and then the whole superstructure built around that and all they basically leave is two very faint sort of gullies which is just coffee shops you've got yeah so it looks like our timeline is really clear our site starts off as a mid to late Saxon settlement which disappears when the town's built in 1107 and is followed by the early Norman Hospital and then a trench which so far we've overlooked suddenly pushes our story even earlier time team is 100 independent and funded by our incredible fans want us to make more episodes joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models master classes and more and you get to have your say in the process as we develop new sites welcome to the Castle's a massive Stone enclosure the size of a football pitch and for one song Time team there's plenty of archeology on the surface so what's the big mystery with 5 000 tons of stone right in front of us this should be easy well in fact for hundreds of years this science baffled everyone who's seen it it's been called everything from an Iron Age Homestead to a Roman prison to a Dark Age stronghold so what was it really when was it built and who was the King of the castles we've only got three days is that enough time to find out the remains of the castles lie near hamsterly 20 miles Southwest of Durham in the Weir Valley sitting on the side of a hill in a sheep farm the site's a huge dry Stone enclosure measuring approximately 70 by 90 meters now overgrown with trees its crumbling walls still form a Monumental structure but even so no one knows what it is or when it was built so the team stormed the castles with our environmental archaeologist Emma beginning to call the enclosure ditch it is the best place to find organic remains which might give us crucial dating evidence while Emma gets her first taste of the site Stewart's scouring the perimeter of the enclosure to see how the stones stack up in the landscape [Music] and Henry and Phil begin to survey the wall to find a location for a trench because if we dig down to the foundations and uncover the ground it was built on we might reveal some fines to give us a date just wait we're also putting in another trench across the north wall hoping to learn more about its construction and locate the early ground surface and dateable artifacts by digging on this side we've got less Stone to shift since the walls least built up here [Music] so John's hooked up with Frank the farmer to tap into his local knowledge and see if he can narrow down a Target but there's evidence of Ridge and Furrow plowing from the past in here well I would say the Ridge and feral would be done in the 1800s they've left this area in the middle I would say the reason they have left it was because they've obviously hit an obstruction in Hodgkin's report he claimed that the dump stones in the central area here when they cleared it because it was so wet but if you're clearing land you wouldn't put your Stones right in the middle you'd go to the sun you'll go to the periphery especially when you've got all this area to to dump your stones on so this could be a good Target for us to look at in the first instance I would say it definitely does need looking at yes foreign [Music] the interior to find evidence of internal structures since working out of date one thing but understanding its function is even more of a challenge in the entrance we're trying to discover if there's a second guard chamber but since the castles is basically a massive dry stone wall it's hard to tell Fallen rubble from standing remains if you've had any any kind of bonding material at all well sometimes with these dry stone structures they used to put clay bonding almost like a putty in between stones but it washes out with the rain I think you're still in rubble there actually Matt the longer we're here the more of a mystery this place seems to be it's one of candy Durham's least understood sights what are the stories about it in the first century this area was occupied by the tribe of the pagantes and their relations with the Romans were quite turbulent at times and the theory goes that the castle could have been a refuge when they were defeated in a major battle near their main base near Stanwick what else another one is it was a Roman penal colony where slaves work in the neighboring lead mines were kept now both of these suggestions are theoretically possible we're not that far from Stanwick and there are lead deposits in the area but there's no real evidence for either so it's one of those things where people tell a story about a place and after a while everyone just believes it yes it's sort of fiction becoming fact or speculation becoming fact the castles is steeped in Legend but this just increases our challenge to separate the fiction from the facts Stuart this place is called the castles and you've got this massive stone wall here and you've got this big gully here which looks like it ought to be defensive but if you look up there you would imagine if it was a cast that would be nestled right on top of it but it isn't it's almost as though we're in the Lee of the Hill you sum this site up really well because it's not defensive at all is it I mean you could you could stand on that slope then I'm almost Lobby flaming torch straight inside that enclosure absolutely it's not a defensive feature it's chosen for other reasons it's a bit like Iron Age Stone cladding that's the best way to think about it people starting to show off in the landscape demonstrating this is their area we won't properly understand it until we started to look at its location in relation to the stream valleys the hill slopes all around it's called the castles rather than the castle do you think originally it would have been lots of separate structures no I think that's that that's a red hair into some mixtape it's just how Farmers refer to things that they didn't quite understand it looks it looks like a collapsed Castle to them so they call it the castles it's of no significance whatsoever that name in the interior the archaeologists have opened two more trenches on the site of the antiquarian's old excavations Central position is the most likely place for occupation Hodgkin had found Stones here and we want to check out whether they could be evidence of structures as the new trenches get underway our north wall trench has come to its end so I see Naomi's doing the recording here does that mean we've finished with this stream yep we're closing this trench up so what did you decide in the end well actually it's really interesting what we've actually got is them using the natural slope so here what Naomi's sitting on is actually the natural right and it's orange yellowy stuff yeah so is that set back into the mountain yep yeah it is and the 64 000 question any fines from it no you were right none at all yesterday we concentrated all our efforts on the exterior walls so that we could understand when and how they were built on the north wall Fey thinks that she might have located the original ground surface and is still searching for any dateable fines we're also beginning to learn how the site was constructed as Naomi and the team cleared tons of Fallen rubble from the Southern Wall over at the entrance we've moved mountains to expose the Gateway but how does it fit in with the original guard house why did we put this trench in well this is slap bang in the middle of that big geophysical anomaly that John picked up and we we actually positioned the trench so that we thought there was going to be a wall line going slap bang through the middle there I can't see a wall though no it doesn't look like there's anything here what about the trench down there yeah well come down have a look at it well there doesn't seem to be much more in this one oh well you see the idea of putting this one in is is working on the Assumption as Francis said here we are in an Iron Age enclosure where is the most likely place for the building to be now if you look back through there we are slap bang in line with the main entrance and in fact we are a slap bang in the middle of the enclosure which is the most likely place for the Hoist State it's built in now if we assume that that anybody but Mr and Mrs Clean and Toady was living here you'd expect to find some tracers that they lived here but we know there was plowing here couldn't it be plowed out ah this trench is placed on a ridge so the archeology is more likely to be preserved underneath it and the furrows are on either side afternoon of day two and with no internal structures or fines the castles is still frustratingly mysterious so we're throwing every means of Investigation at the site Emma's still pouring and we're opening another trench in the interior but over at the Southern Wall the archaeologists may have made some progress really pleased about this Mick we've actually got the bottom of the wall look at that oh good it's actually sitting on that yellow natural there yeah so has he done an old ground surface down there no it's not that's really interesting because it means that they're going to have to have cut into the slope and created a kind of linear Terrace to build it on and the reason they're about to do that is because we've now been able to measure from face to face which is another good thing 5.1 meters wide crikey so that's a hell of a thing that's interesting because when I was talking to Faye about the the top Rampart that's parallel with this they did the same there oh really so it means they they Terrace that top in they Terrace this one in I know what they did with the sides because they run up the slopes so they're either going to have to have got a sort of ramp effect yeah cut in or they're going to have to have done it in a series of steps aren't they so still no date but at least the archeology is consistent both the northern and southern walls were built on Terraces into the natural hill slope it's just so frustrating we've got no idea what the walls were enclosing are you two seriously trying to tell me that that jumble of rubble at the bottom of that trench could actually be the first archeology that we've got inside the structure well I think it could be a Tony um the problem is those stones down there are actually inside Hodgkin's trench so we don't know whether there's something left there by him or whether it's the remains of a collapsed wall or something like that but it's the closest thing we've got I think to archeology in here you wouldn't let Hazard a date no no tomorrow tomorrow we'll know welcome back to this mysterious Stone structure called the castles here in County Durham and after two really frustrating days we're finally managing to sort out the guard house the walls and the interior meanwhile Emma's been eating dirt in a desperate attempt to sort out the environmental archeology I have in Daytona and have you been getting on up till end of day last night not particularly well but yesterday at the very very last moment I've found a piece of preserved wood probably a depth that we actually be quite interested in now just that tiny piece there what is it about this piece of wood then that's so significant that piece of wood lets me now there might be seeds and insects that I can use to sort of establish what was happening when this site was occupied so what are you going to do with this now I'm going to take it to the river and I'm going to process the sample we'll see what we get so beginning of day three and finally we might be able to date the castles while working with 6 000 tons of stone it could be a few grams of organic material which will give us an answer we're also beginning to expose more stonework in the interior to reveal its function so a lot of archaeologists in a relatively small space what's going on this middle area suddenly got more excited and so we've brought a lot of people into help with it what's so exciting um well the main thing is that big spread of blue clay yeah you had what we thought in the middle of the house there um it's turned out to be a tree throw pit that's not very exciting what about the post hole yes it's a feature and it may be a postal this excitement is almost defined by the lack of anything exciting ah but Pony over here is real excitement oh well these Stones there's so many more of them now aren't they well yes Tony but the key thing is the stones over there they're well beddied in and look they form a distinct curve that looks like a semi-circle you've got a curve of stones and that can only mean one thing well a roundhouse a roundhouse what do we need to find in order to prove that it's around we need to find that there's occupation in the middle and that's why we're stripping this area over here what might we find Francis well if this is the center of the roundhouse then you're going to get a half or with any luck you might get the sort of spread of ash from the heart but there'll be something here I mean we're keeping our fingers crossed this is our last chance we've got to go for it it's our last throw of the dice to see if we can actually find this in the middle so it's possible that we've got a round house in the center of the enclosure but how does that fit in with the idea that the site's Iron Age we're also extending the trenches in the middle of the Interior where we're hoping to expose a half or post holes which will confirm whether we've got a roundhouse meanwhile Emma's finally found some organic remains which might provide us with dating evidence will the paving slabs in the entrance be equally rewarding it is so that's quite good isn't it hobbles underneath yeah so that's continuous with this lot of cobbling yeah that puts quite a big camera on the road doesn't us doesn't it yeah we now know that the entrance was built with a finely cobbled surface covered with Paving slabs this is a heck of a long trench what have you done to justify it well we've got both sides of the original wall now from that flat flag to that it's 5.1 meters we've bottomed the wall on each side and demonstrated it sitting on a Terrace it's deliberate artificially cut Terrace overlooking this this slope down if we've got that edge there and that edge there but then on top of that you've got all this Rubble doesn't that imply that originally the wall would have been much taller oh yeah five meters wide wood just screams height to me three meters wouldn't amaze me as an original height and that overlooking that Valley would look incredible from that Far Side that's almost as tall as you what we got on this side well Naomi's just putting in a little extension there what's the extension for Naomi well Tony as you can see we've got these Stones here I know the stones absolutely everywhere but these stones are much flatter they look much more purposeful as opposed to those tumbled angular Stones over there so what are you going to do with them well we want to take this back and just see if we've got something real don't those look rather like the ones that we found up there well that's the whole point really the way they're pitched in the size of the stones even in the material they're set in they're pretty much exactly like the stuff in Phase trench up there so do you think it could be something like the base of a roundhouse well we're hoping so fingers crossed yeah we can only check it out don't we can only hope yes after two and a half days of struggling to find any evidence of occupation we might have found not one but two round houses within the enclosure potential roundhouses fit in perfectly with our Iron Age model but as digging continues in the interior things are beginning to go pear-shaped that now looks like a bit of a Bend at the end of a straight line of stones doesn't it it's not looking very roundhouse like more like a boat yeah and also we've got more Stones coming behind me yeah um so I think we've got quite a bit more work to do all very well but it's nearing the end of day three and there's still loads of work to do to confirm whether we've got our other roundhouse by the Southern Wall earlier on our environmental archaeologist Emma got really excited about one patch of soggy Earth down there I have absolutely um this is the best water slog deposit we've got from the site it's gonna have the seeds and the beetles in that I need to tell us what was going on in the enclosure how do you know there's seeds and Beetles from a long time ago why couldn't they just have dropped here in the last couple of years well they're sealed by the topsoil and they're at the same sort of level as all the floors across the site would you like to see something yeah yeah there you go and are there any seasoned beetles in here they surely are would you like to see what I found yeah yeah well we got seeds that suggested that there's a lot of activity and disturbance in the enclosure which could be humans or animals but we also got beetles and we've got a specific sort of beetle that's associated with accumulations of like quite nasty sort of waste associated with human habitation and dung and manure so that's what this Earth's made of this is a good chance thank you for sharing it with me so these are the stones Mick that we thought were part of The Roundhouse a lot cleaner Now isn't it well it is it's a lot cleaner but as it's been cleaned up we've seen that these stones are straight and form part of a rectangular building right right so um it's it can't be Iron Age I don't think but at that end it's cut by those furrows so what date are they 1780 was when this land was enclosed so right so a pre-18th century building but but not Roman or medieval presumably no no um I think you're looking at something a little bit earlier than that earlier in the medieval you have that cell thing over there yeah that might be Dark Age so it looks as though any Iron Age roundhouse that might have been here has been plowed away and instead we found a square potentially Dark Age structure which would have been contemporary with the Dark Age guard house at the entrance Tony you've been settling away all day trying to sort out whether this is just a tumble of stones or whether it could be something to do with the Iron Age people we think lived here have you come to any conclusion yet yeah I'm pretty sure it's structural now Tony why'd you say that well the stones are nicely laid they're nicely flat they have exactly the same relationship to the underlying ground surface as does the main enclosure wall they're just covered with this um Hill wash but these Stones here they're not really flat are they no that could be the wall which encloses these these flat flag Stones so what do you think they might be well we've got the geophysics um just in this area we've got we've got a nice Square Edge on each side of it just about under the polythene there a little way that way so it's not a roundhouse it's not a roundhouse it could be something like a Stockyard something like that a sort of rectangular Stockyard under the shelter of the wall it's great that at last we've got some kind of structure inside our enclosure isn't it it's a real relief it's absolutely great isn't it although this roundhouse has also turned out to be square we still believe its Iron Age since it was built at the same time as the enclosure and was probably used as a cattle pen lying in the shelter of the wall so our three-day Siege has brought us closer to untangling The age-old Mystery of the castles the enclosed Farmstead was built in the Iron Age its five meter thick stone walls would have stood three meters high and the Eastern entrance was fronted by two massive Stones flanking an impressive wooden gate there would probably have been a large Stone roundhouse positioned opposite the gate Stone cattle enclosures were built in the shelter of the walls which would have protected the livestock later in the Dark Ages the gate was modified and a substantial guard chamber added the central roundhouse was replaced by a square building this is our best bet for a building but what strikes me is the contrast between the massive presence of this monument in the landscape and the few fragments of evidence we've got for the people who lived here even though I'm standing right by something they built the only things that we've found that have got anything to do with the people are these tiny bits of beetle this Monumental structure has been an enigma for centuries but by pulling together a team of experts from archaeologists to Stone Wall Builders were at last clearly beginning to see its identity even if the identity of the people who actually lived here remains tantalizingly just Out Of Reach hello my name's John Gator time team is fan funded by patreon this vital support helps us to make new episodes joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models and master classes plus lots more

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 259,352

Keywords: Archaeology, History, Education, Educational, British TV, British History, Tony Robinson, Phil Harding, John Gater, Stewart Ainsworth, Mick Aston, archeological dig, Channel 4, Time Team Full Episodes, Full Episode, Time Team

Id: -p4gM3JaEoQ

Length: 48min 37sec (2917 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022