A Roman Pagan Temple, The First Franciscan Monastery And More! | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

[Music] nearly 2,000 years ago somewhere around here the population of a Roman city would meet to feast and worship their gods because we think that this was the precinct of a huge pagan temple a hundred yards away in a thousand years later five monks sent over from Italy set up the first franciscan monastery in Britain it was on this small marshy island close to the shrine of thomas a becket in the cathedral over there and up here we hope to find part of the medieval construction industry that supported the huge growth in the building of religious houses as this historic city became a world-famous centre for pilgrimage and worship over the next three days we're here in Canterbury to uncover those pagan and Christian sanctuaries and hopefully come face to face with the pilgrims who established them [Music] we've come on our own pilgrimage to a settlement that grew from a tribal stronghold in the Iron Age into a major Roman city then by the Middle Ages Canterbury had become the most important English destination for pilgrims for 800 years professor what exactly was a pilgrim a sort of religious tourist I think would be the best way to describe somebody went to the shrines with the Saints with keps probably as a vow or you know to get a cure or something like that and how long would they have been on the road oh they could have been on the road years but you know three months six months or whatever that doesn't have Christians churches chapels maybe even dead pilgrims should be brilliant and you're gonna be digging up Romans fill I'm really looking forward to it so you should be because assisting you this weekend we've got the wonderful Lisa turbo why are you doing Taunton well it's a actually a dream job for me so I'm very glad to be asked I've always admired you on it well here the men from pagan home do and John we've got geophysics surveying sorted out and we've got Sandi Toksvig sandy darling this year you are being banished outside the town where you're gonna excavate a medieval industrial estates good because I've never admired Jim are you staying in a town yeah that's good because there's a hairdressers just up on the right bit of grease and what have you got Billy Fury we've got three days to uncover as much as we can at three separate sites and if that's not enough we're doing it live our first digs a new boy yard just minutes from the Cathedral and within the temple precinct of the Roman city this rectangular courtyard covered three acres and our goal is to find the temple building itself and after their chariot have completed a few circuits of ground radar GF is were feeling very confident we seem to have a solid surface across the whole area and about a meter down well if we're looking for the temple have you got that well what happens when we go deeper below that solid surface something so you'll get things in that area there so I think that's where we should stand you'll drop us down on that second drop our rookie archaeologists can't wait to get started Roman Canterbury had been obscured by centuries of continual redevelopment but German bombing revealed fabulous sites and fines just a few feet below ground Lisa went on a whistle-stop tour beginning with the Roman Baths good day sir now you promise something Roman remains a girl or something very interesting but we're in a bookshop we are my favorite place however look over here Wow now go in please do yes go on this is the calvarium the sweat baths and you can see that this the hot gases are being directed behind you yeah in this direction to another room presumably a tepidarium of lightning who let this one cooler that's right and then there's another room behind us so there's still a lot of these baths surviving we've been to the baths and so now we're off to the theatre in here in here this is the largest building in Roman Britain really yeah it's a monster we're looking at the outside curving war you can see the the curve of masonry as it spins round stood 90 feet high Wow it's a huge structure that would have contained or housed something like 3000 people watching some great event in the stage area or the orchestra so I've been and had a bath I've been to the theatre what now we're gonna see a Roman house now well just an ordinary house but a special house so special we built a museum over it the front door of this great building would have been just here and so these beautiful mosaics punctuated a corridor this wide corridor that gave on to a whole series of rooms behind us so this really reeks of opulence doesn't it this is the home of someone very special within Canterbury one of the ruling elite and this is just one of the things that's going on only eight foot below modern day Canterbury back in blue Boyard we're only three feet below ground you got a minute certainly have that's what I got down here my gravel is that our temple preset is our temple precinct brilliant man I was beginning to really pleased event actually got the precinct that is where the Romans walked that is exactly where the wrong cool not you can see that the gravel is rising up to there and you can follow it all the way around there around that edge and around there so basically where you're actually squat is about aback far above the temple precincts music to my ear the uppermost layer here yeah bit that's just that much beneath your feet is full we hope of architectural fragments from the temple because we're so close to the temple I'm sure it's near it makes sense well they quarried the theater they might have done the same to the temple they knocked it down certainly and they pull down all the porticoes and they destroyed all the small shrines that were in this enclosure and all the resultant rubble was laid down as this late courtyard surface and what we've got so far from various earlier excavations is this layer of of architectural fragments so bits of the sooner we can clear off that little bit so 1/8 your feet we know what it's so inert we should go so what's the significance of the precinct in relation to the temple the temple is important architecture and we might find a cult statue in that but the real point is if you think of a Christian Church which is what we're all familiar with all the ritual activity goes on inside a church well the Roman pagan temple precinct is completely different most of the ritual activity goes on outside in the precinct area so if you have all these people milling around here in the precinct that's where we might find dedications evidence of dedications we might find altars we might find traces of sacrifice that will tell us all about the pagan cult and its operation phil was finding large holes dug into the surface of the temple precinct going right down beneath the Roman levels and they're very smelly because you've got to remember that people have been living in Canterbury well obviously before the Romans but they've certainly been living on the street frontage there and what they've been doing is it dumping over their waste in their back gardens and so we're all wash with pits yes and what we've got to do is dig these things out get the fines date them in sequence and actually it will tell us so much about what the people are doing a mixture of fines is already coming out we've got a tribal coin look at that coin of kin oberlin I&H coin especially for Kent Roman pottery but not ordinary Roman pottery this is some of the latest Roman pottery you get in Roman Britain grog tempered ware from the surface the latest surface of the Roman courtyard well would that have held something like that yeah it's it's a nice little bowl that you've had your porridge in [Music] so much materials coming out of the cesspit fills over the moon the fact that there's nothing Roman doesn't seem to bother him at all Phil hello Mick I am sinner since yesterday I need an update we prepare for a bit of a whiff though Oh blimey yeah I mean we got leather we got textile here beautiful little piece of ribbon we got a boot in there we got so many fruit stones we got bottles we've got even got human hair what sort of data we're talking we're talking 18th century it's an enormous cesspit yeah yeah now you see why school says what are the periods if you got men well this is the important bit the actual gravel surface that is the temple precinct and you see above it you see without that brown sample yeah boob is in the intersection that is the dark earth that is above the major temple syrup surface we get that in all the Roman towns don't we that's it it seems to me that they bought I love debris and soil into lots of Baker Gardens really forensic archaeologist Margaret Cox has recovered the human hair from Blueboy yard get some of the dirt out of it just amazing isn't it but it's in such good condition after all these years it's incredible I expected it to be very brittle yeah it's coming up really well listen it's a little bit more to come off the longer the hairs under the ground the redder it becomes as the pigments are broken down by the soil the further down they get the earlier the fines but still nothing Roman the dustbins of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Canterbury tell it all these people were living off the fat of the land goose goose loads of mutton not only were they they were drinking off the fat of the land as well common staple and if they overdid it they were down to the Apothecary for a little bit of a remedy for that or maybe that they just had a quart smoke and forgot about it fantastic but they had wealth my god bear dwell look they had family heirlooms going back from the 16th century yeah beautiful tin glazed pots right up to the more modern stuff eighteen hundred scream wares so they were really wealthy people and if they had a really good live stove [Music] although the cesspits are just beginning to tantalize us with a few Roman fragments of marble lime stone and tile there's real doubt about where the temple really is this is the base of a huge medieval pot just a rock and bit of rock and roll I think we've got it Stewart's been poring over the maps Roman Canterbury was developed over the earlier Iron Age stronghold and he's discovered that during their occupation the Roman Street plan has changed and the most exciting thing about this is this white line why is that excited to do it it's exciting to me because this white line represents a little lane just next to Blueboy yard called horks Lane and I think that's part of this pattern of Roman roads in effect through the town and it defines the north edge of the temple precinct complex which is not where it was thought to be right with our society is in the top corner of that area now isn't it which is presumably means we're not really the center of activities I think to be near the center the whole thing needs to come further south so at least Stuart believes we're close to an important building and the finds support that it's all roofer tile and floor tile there's masses of it it just shows that when they filled up the pit they were in the vicinity of a very very large Roman building and there's more because not only do we get the toil in the pit we also got enormous lump Achutha chief up to us to fight it's a lightweight Roman building material usually used in the vaults of large Roman buildings bits of blonde a limestone it's very flash and may have come from one of these a Corinthian capital fantastic stuff so where is this temple we know the theatre stood here and we think the precinct was here so the temple might have stood in line with the theater here so somewhere a Roman temple still lies waiting to be found in part two we begin a three-day search for Canterbury's medieval tile industry the second site in our three-day live dig is to the north of Canterbury on Tyler Hill this was a huge medieval industrial side making roof and floor tiles which came to light again after German bombs fell resistance tests show huge anomaly on the hillside could this be a tile kiln or just another bomb watching her back in the open field is Sandi Toksvig now this may look like a fabulous place for a picnic but it wouldn't be cuz normally there's Bulls here not today there's lots of men with pickaxes and that's because we had the most fabulous geophysics results we had this great big blob and where there's a blob it's a very good idea to touch to start a trench there we started early this morning but I have to say things that did not go all that smoothly looking at the geophysics everyone felt that the archeology must be just below the surface so we started digging by hand it was too tough for even the hardest hackers of the turf after some frantic telephone calls in a couple of hours we secured the dingiest digger you could lay your hands on oops the field turned out to be baked London clay nothing special there as we were looking for a clay tile factory then a big digger arrived after a couple of scoops everything was resolved [Music] you can't get away from broken roof tiles the good news is burnt material is coming up in the rubble every talented meet but it looks very much Tim Peake like you found what we were looking for you can get really excited see this dark edge here yeah and that red stripe that's actually the edge of the kiln for the inside the kilns there this is a wall coming around right across it we're standing outside at the bottom was a kiln we're sort up the back of the kiln right okay so you've had the yes so this is the back of the kill come round here and there's the other wall going off down there and it seems to kind of curve in does that mean it's one of those bottle shaped that's what it seems to be looking like so you'd have to fire down that in the half down that and it would basically wind would blow the smoke and the heat up through the kiln this way and a part of flue this ends on a hill it's for the drum its period drafting yeah so you can feel the draft coming up there I can't you how deep down you're gonna go as you're writing this wall the geophysics seems to point to about a meter so on this end I think this will be a meter meter 20 blushing from their early success in finding a roof tile kiln they're now talking of digging for either the tireless workshops or the waste pits all in three days what would your preference be well there's another element which is the dating we need to do two things we need to recover what the kiln is actually making the secondly we need to get the arc in magnetic dating secure to work out what date is kiln actually is it sounds to me like you want to find the wasted I think that we've so rarely heard these kilns come to light we can't really see that up with future generations until we fully understand what's there Nick I'm not that worried at this time you know halfway through day one I'm not worried about the time I think we've got a lot of time I think we can do it in the 13th century Tyler Hill flourished with the boom in constructing churches religious houses and other secular buildings in Canterbury at the height of its prosperity many kilns would have been working on this wooded hillside standing a metre above ground and producing thousands of roof tiles floor tiles and pots every year whole families would have operated the kilns digging the clay and gathering wood for the fires to try and understand the medieval process we're going to build our own kill and we'll try to recreate some of the decorated floor tile patterns that originated from Tyler Hill still found in Canterbury Cathedral today that's the best way of seeing what these tiles look like because the lid glaze has worn off and we can see the designs of it clearly there's a dragon here for example Porte castle the fleur-de-lis just over here I can see it's beautiful now we're in the corona Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral what is the significance of it listeth the whole lives of homeless women this is where the shrine of taller Beckett's head was kept these tiles were laid around to decorate the floor and this floor ray you say wait you aren't going to recreate for us is that right hopefully we're going to create something similar to this this is a higgledy-piggledy pattern what we're good to do is something like this incorporating the tiles which show made in town the hill and if everything goes right that should be ready by Monday but you say if it goes right I mean total competition no well the clay can go wrong the firing can go wrong the weather can go wrong a tall order and des need them so he's washing this pool come on it's a big building so a couple of hours later medieval Jim is showing sandy how to make a Tyler he'll time this is London clay and it comes from Tyler he'll probably dunk practically underneath my feet gonna take this Jim here has pressed it into a form and I'm gonna make my first time using the stamp here line it up and force it is impression that's right that's the terracotta stamp presumed would really terracotta is easy to make but it damages that are easily whereas the wooden tiles have much durability we have thousands made from one stand look I've made a bit of a mess this is not very neat and tidy then to inlay point crudely with the white clay by forcing it into the gaps so this so just pushing you to in I see more bothered about the white clay sticking to the rift I have a card here from Tyler him itself and you can actually see the imprint of where the stamp 20 if Sandy's tiles gonna turn out like this medieval Beauty it's got to be cooked at some horrendously high temperatures once the kilns complete it's time to start stacking the tiles inside looks to me like you've got many more there than you actually need for the floor well they used to have a a forty percent failure rate and so we are expecting that we might have a forty percent thing what sort of things might go wrong well tiles can blow up Oh the glazes could run they could all stick together look quite different to me cuz you've got just plain grey and plain brown basil the nice patterns well we're now glazed them and the the gray and the cream you can see on here is a glaze so when it's been fired the pattern will show through that they should be lovely and brown and shiny and stupid questions where's the fire going the fires going in the front of the kiln down there alright so it comes underneath through the tiles and out of the top no lid on the top of them of the kill no no lid don't they don't they have lids on this we don't know oh right so it's an experiment by the evening spirits are running very high as they're discovering that this kiln was producing decorated floor tiles as well as roof tiles how would you describe what we found so far peaches and cream Pavlo play with style thanks for the football on the roof and so forth but you've got these rather thicker floor tiles in that one see now that is lovely that is a much more substantial item isn't it it's the corner of fleur-de-lis the same type of design dating it's me yes and we have a technique which will give us a date of some ways 25 years it's what our camp magnetic dating and and when are we gonna be doing that first into the kiln to be done that's right and we're gonna do this by Monday be a sample Sunday and hopefully by Monday yeah the baby kilns lit and as we can't possibly have barrel watching her kiln by night all on her own we've all come along to lend a hand among all the bits of broken roof tiled large pieces of pottery are also beginning to appear but this morning the priority is to find the workshops and waste pits so we can understand more about what this kiln was making Tyler didn't have stone buildings they had a femur all very very slender wooden buildings and when the wood decayed wood just filled with few tiles inches thick rectangular buildings which there's a possibility there upslope from the kiln and that's where you always find the building's fault drying the tiles and things you want to load downhill so you can get into the kiln stack them absolutely so you're standing there at the kill then you've got rubbish and you then check it throw it out away off the edge of the keel down slope of the bottom the hills so that makes these more likely to be huge dumps of waste tiles as if Ian hasn't got enough roof tiles already but it would be brilliant if a waster pit like this produce some floor tiles Jim I brought in a fine stray because I wanted to show you something right this is a pot that's come out where they're digging the kiln look at that you can actually see the thumb prints of the person who made this pot now presumably would have just gone round no this has been pulled this way because here it's been dragged there's probably a crease mark just on your on the side there from the finger from this crease with your finger there so you've pulled it towards you and folded it we can actually feel the person who made this part I can live on in this thing it's decoration is it yes and function is really because a pot will to have a slightly rounded bottom so it gives it that bit more stability on that on the table that similar to this one here if you took bank careful now this was found at a previous excavation that's right you can see the similar high cresting thumbing at the base there doing the same job well is this what we've been looking for that's a floor tile isn't it and it's got slip on it it's no design but that's a waster floor tile where you got it from it's just coming out this gravely layer sits in the waster pit yep in with all the roof tile and all the rubbish so we've got lots of roof tile and some floor tile it looks like I love it there so they must be making floor tile in the kiln how old is this stuff 700 years so we're going to take all this stuff wash all of it bag it and stick in a museum I think if we did we would very popular the basements of all the museums of Britain would be creaking if we did all that have you get some perspective this is from one little hole one layer one little hole this entire field is this deep in tiles we sample the best bits the nice tiles so what does it represent why is there so much waste here on this side it's a massive industry before before this kind of industry started what was it what was tile man where'd you get your tiles from rock it was a totally different organization what you'd have is itinerant tyler's would wander around look at the abbey door and say you know I where's Pryor I do want a new floor feel build a new church and he said well he chose stamps and set up a kill just outside and would do the tile floor and then move on to the next one but this is a different scale this is super nice this is mass production centralized in one place distributed all over East Kent some in West Kent Sussex six some even reach London but the medieval world wasn't peasants living in a field never talking to somebody else but actually was an open place communications were related to be free and easy things actually happened our baby kill has reached over 600 degrees and the patterns are beginning to develop we've started to clear the rubble from the throat of the medieval furnace but the big news is the firing chamber appears to be intact below me there's a series of worried slots running down into the base of the kiln series of archers you're standing on the arches I'm actually standing on that's why I'm not moving this is actually extremely delicate archaeology I'm standing I'm how deep are we look talking about going down I've got a table have been found before has this has this been seen before this amount of superstructure in the cab put quite simply I think we may have found the best preserved medieval floor tile no one has ever found anything as good as this what are we looking at he's looking at two there's a there's a bit of dirt in the bottom there but it feels I'm pretty close to pop that's over two feet deep so that's where the fire would have been and the tiles would have rested on the top for the heat would have come up yeah what would happen the fire would have been down that in come this way through the arches and as the heat comes through the arteries that would then percolate up through the slots the arkeo magnetic datings under way we should be able to tell within a few hours just when this tile kiln was last fired by comparing the magnetic properties of these samples to a historical record of magnetic north but barrels got a problem with the baby kiln it got too hot and many of the tiles have been wasted barrel we are looking for 60% how many you think you have got about 25% at the moment but a good 25 oh yes we'll find out later if they've got enough tiles to make a pavement Jim you're in Porter's head honcho yes look at this clay well you come at the critical moment you've rigged a light down in there that's right see and I hope that we can go down to if I'm looking here so the fire would have been in the very big arch just down here and then the gases would have sprayed out like that nicely nice and evenly and making a lovely decently caught the killer it's the most beautiful piece of engineering there isn't it's fantastic so how and why did they build arches barrels kiln builders showed us right now then boys I've got here a nearly complete tile we've actually found on this site and the the 15th century ones that you're using now they're quite heavy what is the theory behind building the arch can you explain it to me it's to give you strength over opening yeah which of course they couldn't use lentils in the 700 years ago so they had to build an arch an arch obviously the strongest method of supporting so they built a form like this yes are you gonna work hope sir when should I come back so we have really got a huge industrial site here spreading really far across this field dozens and dozens of kilns probably in the end why did it come turn in well in the 15th century there was a burgeoning trade with Low Countries wool and cloth and so forth of the ships came back empty then you did ballast bricks and tiles are the ideal thing so they could get cheap imports they cut out the local lenders so people are thinking I'm Tyler Hill and get those expensive tiles I'll get the cheaper one founders absolutely Chris and John it looks fantastic I still don't quite understand it what is holding the thing up or when you take that wooden piece out hopefully the Keystone in the center you go for it fantastic with the help of a very small camera we've now got pictures of the medieval firing chamber open to the fresh air for the first time in seven hundred years the medieval Tyler's themselves would never have seen this view from the ochio magnetic dating we now know that the last fire in this kiln went out in the middle of the 13th century nearly a hundred years after thomas a becket death she got here is the very last guitar from the very last firing of the kiln it's actually melted into one of the cracks between the arches they take this piece out here which is loose actually seen over 700 years this extraordinary structure has remained intact just under the surface of Tyler Hill waiting for our discovery join us in part three as we look for the very first Franciscan friary in Britain the final part of our three-day pilgrimage brings us to the heart of medieval canterbury we're looking for the very first franciscan friary in britain established in the 13th century on the direct instruction of some francis of assisi our first discovery was some film of a local archaeologist Louise Millard who unearthed the Lost stones of Greyfriars in 1972 while searching for iron Asian roman remains her excavations revealed huge sections of cloister but is not clear from her records how these relate to the friary itself our own quest begins in this small public park by the River Stour so look that's the resistance plot you can ignore these these are just a modern part paths and but we've got some really nice wall anomalies particularly at the far end of the site there this is looking very good at this end I think it's the last stage of Menards excavations that are the most difficult to tie in and it's the most complex bit on on the GF is so that's where we start I think that makes a lot of sense yeah our target for the three days is to find as many of the 13th century Priory buildings as we can and to come up with enough information to make an accurate virtual reconstruction of Greyfriars by lunchtime things are looking clearer I think I know where we are like Canterbury My yes but seriously yeah here's our trench lied about yeah you see those blue lines yeah well I reckon we've got that little blue corner there of Millard's excavations ah right I think what we've got is the cloister yeah now what that means is that we might be able to explore what kind of a cloister is that go to this friary yeah see because I would expect I mean that's if we've got the chance or which is the pit with the altar in which surprised you is yeah the nave where the the sort of locals came in for preaching could be preached to and so on would be something like that yeah I would expect the cloister either to be banging up against that so a square attached to church or one of these where there's a gap a lane like that that's like detached socialite you detach from it and and so the relationship of that wall that you've got to the church seems to be absolutely critical yeah so in trench one we've found Millard's excavations under protective plastic and further down we've also got the tiled floor of the 13th century cloister what you've actually got here very clearly now is a long passage this is typical of that sort of period and I think to run straight up and to a door into the nave of the church now do we want to put the trench in the other side we need the wall to make sure that the line goes through we need the tile floor to prove that it's a cloister and then we want to find about what that anomaly was to see if it is the south wall of the church or the back of the poster when we first found this floor we thought it was just a red tile phlox didn't seem to be anything on it but now we've cleaned them up we can see it's actually a black and white checkerboard cap that one's got black glaze on it that's white there that one's black that's why that's black that one's white completely transforms your image of what supposed to look like trench two was opened earlier this morning in the grounds of a medieval hospital next door we want to find the North chancel wall of the friary Church but by evening no rooms been seen journey your new finds we've had loads and loads of finds I think this is one of the best though it's a bone knife handle how it's beautiful isn't it listen period it's towards the end of the friary I said one of the last friars who lived here might have used that each friar would have had his own personal knife for cutting up his bread and his cheese and so on we know that having structure to keep them pleased or then you contaminate anybody else's food so every one every one of them would have had a knife like that there's a book clasp about the same date as that things are coming up they really are and I think most excitingly we've got our first bit of 13th century pot so that takes us right back to the start of the friary [Music] over the river is Benny with Island and we believe it's here that the first friars settled probably in simple wooden buildings Mick's got the geophysics results it doesn't look particularly archaeological to me well it's a bit confused but I think there's some good wall foundations possibly in there so what would you suggest that we do well I think a trench across that sort of area so high and low resistance I mean it's just possible there garden paths yeah and so on but we need to investigate that Tim I've been looking into the archival evidence for this as the site of the first friary and as far as I can see Thomas of Eccleston's Chronicle describes their arrival in great detail in 1224 and how they were put up at the poor priests Hospital behind us but he doesn't seem to give any indication of where that first friary was built that is the great plank in the middle because the poor priests Hospital where the museum is now we know in great detail we excavated the whole of it about 15 20 years ago we know the old stone house the early 13th century hospital so we know precisely where the friars actually came to in 1224 this ground belonged to the poor priests Hospital sake would also be logical to allow them to build their first little Church in this crown but that's really all we can say so if it's going to be sold it's going to be by archeology right as archaeology only exactly right yep it'll be tough finding wooden post holes in this old Marsh they're also puzzled in the cloisters the real worry of course is that we fought in this trench we would have the big wall coming through here at the south side of the nave or a big rubber trench related speed and wall this is very nice I mean there's all sorts of little architectural details that's what that in that way I think we've really got to come this way yeah in order to to see if it's running through here somewhat otherwise we haven't got a name of a church it's criticals Fineman per Church isn't it the end of day two and five trenches are open but Greyfriars is still hiding most of her 13th century clues mix very happy we've had a right day Tyrannosaurus you better rotten day I think I had a rotten day all together earlier this afternoon I was really worried we were going to end any of the walls of this building at all we got a walnut across the back we know that they found on over here which is marked by that yellow line this yellow line yellow here right over this side we just had this later brick wall and they've been struggling all day but luckily now we've got a big meter wide medieval at the bottom that's certainly a wall so that is the north side of the church so I think we're okay with this bit of it right it was a bit of a struggle I'll tell you earlier on we got a little trench going on in the corner where Jenny is human bone from there oh let's have a look at Oh a toe bone so make does that mean burials yeah this would have been the favoured place if you wanted to be buried in amongst the friars church then this where he wanted to be right amongst the choir stalls with the services going on round you only one day left to piece together the friary church and that means finding the name the hunt for where the friars first settled is going on a pace on Binney with Ireland yesterday this was the trench where we had sweet Fanny Adams what are we really exciting now we've got a whole series of surfaces the earliest one is that chalk one and then above it is a cobbled layer and on top of those cobbles there's this fantastic piece of pottery from the 15:30 16th century so we're right at the end of the life of a nice part of the friar they're not yep yep but we don't actually know that is here no but we this is very good evidence we've actually got structural stuff here now so we need to carry on down now the remaining time don't we we just keep our fingers crossed you might get postholes pits that sort of thing all along Mick and Barney have assumed that the nave of the church was wider than the charm sort by the width of an aisle now more tiles have come up in this extension and it means we're still in the cloister so where's the nave we've got five hours or so to go and race and you are panicking about an hour ago you still panicking a little bit yeah what what haven't you got that you need is the junction there between the nave and the cloyce yeah we'll be able to give you that after lunch brilliant but not yet Mick's optimism is based on a sixth trench just the other side of the fence but in line with the chancel wall if he's right it'll prove that the nave and the chancel are most unusually the same width throughout our last day here in Greyfriars we've been watched by one of the modern-day friars who lives in Canterbury the Franciscans came over over here at the direct command a set of set of safe Francis of Assisi he was still alive he was still alive that this was in 1224 and he also it was the year in which they four had the stigmata which of the marks of Christ's wounds on his say France is about logic buddy what was his purpose in bringing him over here his purpose was to spread that spread the good news of the gospel in a Franciscan manner in a Franciscan way with joy with cheerfulness you rarely meet a Franciscan friar that's miserable [Laughter] well they live very frugal lives if they lived above the world poverty poverty chastity and obedience retreat not denote that you know and this was a pretty grim place to start with awful [Laughter] well this is the first one this - the first Franciscan friary and I personally am privileged a bit to be here six trenches a lot of head-scratching and absolutely mounds of fine still being washed and a big puzzle I swear Nick's gone gray or even if I but we think we've sorted it out there though I think we have yeah I think we know where the buildings are I think the best way to explain it to you imagine that you're a novice and I'm the prior and you're living here right right now we're somewhere in the South cloister here now and this is where the washing place would be where we'd wash our hands and face it's not the lavatory and lamb it's very thank you before when we come into the factory yeah which is really just satin at a meal probably on the South range using the knives that Jenny was finding a little bowls and so on we then go from there we walk up this corridor yep which we got the tiles for down there lock them in here there's a big building on the West range here which may be the Pryor's house it may be where the guests come and so on yeah but it's over on that side and then we come round on the north cloister alley through here yeah with the church above us here assitive Church and we just take a little diversion here Tony through this gate into the school grounds because we think we finally sorted out the wall of the nave here oh great oh brother Barney's got a woman along with him all right shameless hussy what have we got we've got the south wall of the nave yeah definitely and it's right here you can see the cut there's not much left of it it's all being robbed away in 17 century where we going to now is the chancel in where the friars would have had their own services truce between the two bits of the church there is this walkway oh now I know about this this is actually a real medieval yeah and yeah this alley which just looks like everybody's back-alley just respects the old that's right the nave is on the Left where the population coming but a [ __ ] is on the right yeah and we would have gone in probably not through this door but that one there into the chance' which runs out in front of us yeah Jenny's actually in the doorway there you see the bottom of the column look yeah she's down at that sort of level brother Jenny what have you got well we've found the floor level in the chancel so we know where the floor of the church was and then I've gone straight on down through into the medieval foundations and I do you had any fines not really most of it's been robbed out in the post medieval period our last call is to Binney with Island okay what do we have down here well we've gone through all the coupled area yes now if it's a holiday occupation layers yep which have got finally lovely moment 13th 13th century so we're there this is the right sort of date for the beginning of the friary yeah if it's in fact we have no walls related but they're not far away with this sort of no have we done what we set out to do I think we have I mean this was always going to be a long shot finding structures here remember I said right at the beginning we would be very lucky if we found post holes or timber lots or whatever I don't think we actually reckon with the depth of stratification here did we and what this just told certainly the local archaeologist is the hell of a lot of archaeology here in what appears to be just a blank space so they're really pleased at least even though it's a rather grubby looking whole race and now ready to show us his 3d virtual reconstruction superimposed over our live pictures yeah that's the view over the cloister and the Barry right our building on the west hand side with the tiles and probably a pentose or something um what about the the river site where our little chapel is yeah anything we got yeah there's this they are the excavations at the back and let's see what happens if you there's there's the traffic in that that's great so you've really shows you the bulk if we move around that now is that possible oh yes yeah this is the one you were terrified you wouldn't be able to do this understand you're just a magicus I trusted you I knew you'd be able to do that's great isn't it and what about binner with nations with the looking building over the stream and there's archers look now can we see it all together so there's the east end of the church look with the little building over the stream yeah up over the cloisters and then we're looking down over the whole friary complex on its island with the streams around it the whole complex excellent well done all of you Beryl Hines and her team have rescued just about enough tiles to make a small pavement even if it's not a pattern we're going to present this to the headmaster of some Peters school we've had a wonderful three days in Canterbury we found the first Franciscan friary in Britain and uncovered a remarkable tile kiln on Tyler Hill we might even have caught a glimpse of the Roman temple Andrew Andrews the headmaster of the school who looked after us wonderfully thank you Thank You children for the pot washing you've done thank you all the local people and thank you all the diggers especially we'd like to give you this little pavement as a memory of us being here well thank you all very much indeed [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 227,654

Rating: 4.908968 out of 5

Keywords: Team Team, 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, anglo-saxon paganism, Early Medieval England, Anglo-Saxon Migration, Christian Anglo-Saxons, Franciscans, Catholic Church, Saint Francis of Assisi, Agnellus of Pisa, Alexander of Gloucester, Middle Ages, Medieval England

Id: aP0UyzOloPI

Length: 48min 36sec (2916 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020