A Saintly Site | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

the island of Mull lies just off the western coast of Scotland so we've had to travel - self-propelled wheelbarrow to visit a remote promontory at ballast gate a few miles from the main town of tobermory and all this effort is because of these earthworks located by two amateur volunteers they met on mal having moved from England with their families and joined a local archaeology project where they probably stumbled across something really special look at this from the the Glasgow Herald meet the amateur sleuths who stumbled upon one of Scotland's earliest communities and there's Hilda and Bev and some obscure lump and here's Hilda and professor Mick Aston so you know what it goes on to say can we expect Bevan Hill this Chapel to feature on time team in the future it really does say that but the answer is realistically it's probably not going to be excavated it's wrong the papers wrong how did you find a place we volunteered to Scotland's rule or past which is what they're recording relics ruins that haven't actually got recording at the moment we got provided with some aerial photography for by themselves for this area and we were looking for shadows on the air photography and just wandering around so we could match up and we're starting to get very excited about the lumps and bumps over here when did you decide it was a chapel it was after the surveyors done this map it looked like chapels they'd have proof of in the past where they found relics they found crosses and they could say yes these are chapel sites it fits the bill shape and size wise if they're right and it genuinely is a previously undiscovered chapel how significance that I think that would be really significant because there are a lot of these sites in the Western Isles but to find a new one that hasn't been noticed before and to be able to actually look at it do some exploration on it that's fantastic what would you like us to find I want you to find the floor which is a very strange request but I've been sort of digging around what I believe the door jamb and I can't actually get to the bottom of that stone and hopefully there might be something on that floor how about you have you got any special requests I'd like you to excavate this area in case there are graves gone [Music] at first glance this earthwork survey does seem to show a raised platform with a small east-west building and evidence of some sort of exterior altar or shrine for me this is a classic layout for a sixths or 7th century chapel but then again it could just be a small stone built Shepherd's heart or bar oh man you've got will ok what we're going to do with all this shimasu unfortunately G Affairs won't be able to help us define this piece of archaeology as it's a massive stony rubble covering stone walls which in turn sits on top of a rocky outcrop or a whole lot of messy noise as it's known in the geophys world see there's method in this madness there's absolute method in this madness we're just gonna have to unpick it all by hand we were just run it over the bank and then come up to the edge of the church chapel or whatever it is but John and his team should be able to survey the rest of this plateau including this mysterious square enclosure that Mick suspects may be a later cemetery in the meantime we're concentrating on the east end of the possible Chapel but there could be an altar and even evidence of ritual devotion they could get any feelings at all I think we ought to be wary of what they are because that will tell us what this thing is and I think probably in particular quartz oi pebbles if it's right this building could date as early as the 6th or 7th century look - almost as battered as mine but not quite as disgusting and that's an incredibly important date it's when the nearby island of Iona and its famous monastery Anderson Columba was beginning to spread Christianity throughout northern Britain so this early Christian world that centred on my owner Myles quite a central place very much so yes if you think of Iona as being the center of a spider's web and the tentacles of this way extend right through Scotland the extending to Linda's farm in northeast England they extend into southwest France and into the Mediterranean because the monastery is a major consumer of trade goods I mean looking at us in front us here we have the sound of mul which was one of the mean trading routes during that period so our Chapel if it is a chapel could that have been founded in the 6th century as well certainly could have been yes the problem is that we don't have any historical evidence relating to it so it's only the archaeology that will tell us exactly how old it is and excavation is what we're good at especially if the archaeology behaves itself as you can see we're already filming about 15 archaeologists digging what we think is the chapel I'm standing about here they're digging what would be the East End which Mick says is really important because it would tell us whether or not we have got a chapel or not but down here is the mysterious square-looking building which make you said you weren't even going to start on yet and yet you're already poking away at it yeah because in order to do any work here we've got an unfinished stone mound and already Derek's drawing their attention to this one look we have this stone here Tony which looks to me like a piece of sculpted stone possibly ecclesiastical but come round here look because there's also this on the corner look which is a saddle quern stone for grinding grain and it was the interesting thing about that is it ought to be prehistoric in date prehistoric what's the surprise didn't it looks like we're gonna be quite busy today welcome back to the Scottish island of Mull where towards the end of last year two local people Bev and Hilda discovered this intriguing earth work here in the forest because when they found it they think it might be a chapel by the way it was all covered over with trees like this you didn't have this magnificent view that you've got here which shows us the relationship there would have been between the chapel if that's what it was and and the seascape over there this has all been cleared away by the Forestry Commission Scotland it's a standard procedure just so that there's room amongst the timber but now that we're about to excavate down there where Mick thinks there might be some kind of cemeteries you can see it's pretty gloomy around there we need the trees trimmed a bit what they call brushing spot a brushing lads so after a bit of heavy-duty pruning trench two goes in over the striking square feature which mix-ins may be a graveyard but as we've already found a prehistoric grinding stone here it may not be that straightforward Gary come on look at this and the first dating evidence for the possible 7th century chapel isn't looking too good either yep that's definitely fostering a old well now you're asking you see an expert about a towel add eight seconds on the face of it 14 its 15th century this is not what we'd expect from a little Jersey boy all covered in mud I should give it a good clean you can see it's a quartz pebble Oh nope why did you make a noise like a pirate because you get quartz pebbles white quartz pebbles on the chapel sites in the early medieval period in Ireland and Western Scotland it's typical I've heard this before but this problem is pretty skeptical about this why can't it just be an old pebble because he's not native to the site somebody's had to select it and bring it up here and they seem to do that and put them on all altars and saints tombs burials absolutely this small pebble could be a clincher for the chapel argument unless of course not one but two faces of domestic ponds which would actually suggest we're digging a medieval unless of course I give you another isn't it funny how the small things can keep archaeologists happy for hours another piece of domestic but the best way to resolve this site would be to find burials especially ones we could radiocarbon date and thankfully Hilda has a plan it was you who wanted us to dig here wasn't it yes but I wonder whether there might be grave stones in this area I'm hoping John gravestones and possibly possibly look there's the bank you can see clearly in the high resistance if you use the radar what you can see is the red reflections here now they suggest more substantial stonework surviving the problem is we don't know whether it's a grave slab whether it's just an igneous boulder so trench three goes in over the bank of the enclosure and hopefully a burial and if just if it gives us a sixth or seventh century days then we could be at the heart of one of the most important periods of British history the arrival of Christianity you watch this because you won't see me on a computer very often right oops hang on hang on what I mean oh no there we are I can't remember the last time I've seen Mick so excited about the potential of a site or its location in the UK mole is part of an area called dal Riata which is actually an Irish Kingdom which is centered in Northern Ireland it belongs to the same kingdom as much of Antrim does so it's like a sort of colony from there and that's why a lot of the features about this building up here whether it's a chapel or not look to me like stuff I've seen in Ireland and of course their Christian they bring Christianity in and if we turn this round you see in the middle of this is I own there off the end of March is Columbus great monastery and Colombo was the great Saint for this area he died in 597 and he was sending his monks out to all these islands you can see and that influence spreads not only all up the west coast but also through the Great Glen a crossing to the area of the pyx further over it's funny isn't it we tend to think of the Isle of Mull as being so far away from everywhere you see it on that map and bang it suddenly appears to be in the center of the universe and being at the centre of a busy island Network could explain why our sight seems to have archeology spanning some four thousand years have you had anything ever that little bit of Flynn it well I mean this jet definitely shows we've got prehistoric activity up there people living here at those and leaders ago yeah although over entrenched to it now looks like the prehistoric stone we found this morning is basically a strain it hasn't anything to do with the square structure which were still no closer to identifying but back at wrench one Mick thinks there's mounting evidence that we're uncovering something Cygnus I think I can see a straight line across there and then where you are fate seems to turn and go along in that direction yeah I mean you're entirely right we've got a line going down here another line along here and then up there you always get this platform coming in we see that you use a platform and I think that's exactly right it's one of these squarish platforms they're gaining down on the chapel sites going blocks right which I like outdoor altars or shrines sometimes that are burials in and they're often square like that sometimes with a cross or something in the middle yeah but again it reinforces that idea that we could be dealing with a chapel we make a couple of features that yeah go with it's almost the end of day one and it's now becoming clear that in spite of finding more medieval pot we may be on the verge of revealing a fascinating piece of archaeology [Music] the exciting news is that we think we might be approaching a floor level and what is really interesting is that you remember that wound up there was where we had that medieval pottery yeah so in other words if we've got the floor there and then a buildup of soil and the medieval pottery on the top of that land floor potentially has got to be so much earlier look so the date could it be well I mean it could be anytime from say the 6th century if it's to do with Colombo all these monks right the way through to 1200 something like that so how do we find out I think the only way on a site like this is to get some bone so we can get a radiocarbon date from it that's that's the only way but if we can't get bone from where Jack is digging over on the perimeter where would we get that from well I think the best bet is going to be this lock structure this rectangular structure off the end sometimes I have bone associated with them but the point is they are really rare structure so it'll be a fantastic opportunity to examine one so tomorrow we're going to take one of the most enigmatic and rare pieces of early Christian archaeology that we've ever excavated I don't think I've ever said that before on time you should eat beautifully [Music] beginning of day two here on the Isle of Mull where we're looking for a possible early Chapel and we're all leaving our hotels right now to wend our way up to the site but the big talk last night in the bar or to be honest in the bars was about what Mick calls a lot which is basically a little stone box at the east end of the chapel which could contain all sorts of early Christian artifacts some people are even talking about maybe the bones of a saint it's not often that I hear our archaeologist get so excited about anything so most of our effort is now concentrated on that potential Chapel or syringe type comparison and in particular the box outside its East End and they better leave him oh well I generally wobbled yeah you can come that this is mix not an outside altar or shrine he seems to be particularly keen on crosses but you know what makes one of the crosses and perhaps most surprisingly it's the normally very cautious professor Aston who's behind the suggestion that it could contain holy bones and then I think in other times he was talking about it being like you know like a relic we sewed it presume you have the bones of saints or some you really ought to ask him about this Oh doesn't matter pebble so what was it that people used to put in here Mick and why did they do it the most common thing is there seem to be offerings by people who visit four sites using the form of the courts pebbles yeah Phil's just found another two in the last year another two so that that's very common what's actually inside them is a bit more difficult because there haven't been that many excavated but they often treat you as a Saints burial so there are bones not necessary whole skeleton but you know enough to indicate that since somebody was here and it's usually they're often called sand somebody's bed when you say Saint somebody is this a hermit who was fairly well known on the island very well known locally but nobody we've ever heard of since somebody local in your wildest fantasy what would you like to see come out of here in my wildest France yeah a piece of early medieval metalwork bronze or something like that that would be you know a book clasp but a bit of jewelry but I'll settle for a bit of bone making a radiocarbon well not every day on time team that you can honestly say you may discover the bones of a saint even if they were only known as that locally and we would certainly seem to have the manpower to do it because over intrenched to it now looks like we've spent a whole day uncovering an animal enclosure with a little heart attached for the farmer there's simply no evidence it was ever a war cemetry so we can effectively close that trench down and speaking of possible barriers trench 3 has so far failed to find any dateable evidence that may help us your stones and stones and in the middle one I ain't sure whether you've got quite the sort of stony patch edge so we're focusing on trench one for the moment because we may be going elsewhere as hildren birth who first stumbled on this site have been honing their archaeological skills over the last year and they've now investigated this whole hillside including poking around in the woods which funnily enough is also one of Stewart's favorite pastimes still I sometimes think you spend your whole life walking away from archaeology digs behind us but it looks as though this time it's paid off well I found this which you see there's a wall structure here this is a building but it's not the only one here because Bev and Hilda have found lots more likely suddenly on the woods we found shillings further off with recorded and measured circular and oval shape ons just not far from here what's a shilling a shilling is it's like a stone taint it's a temporary building that Shepard lives in when he's tending the cattle which a burned sheep which are brought up into the high ground to graze but what these things tell us is that there there is farming activity up on this Ridge up here there's lots of walls all around it there's all sorts of archaeology on the surface and at the moment it's obscured by all these trees absolutely you've got to remember that 1958 this aerial photograph was taken there's a chapel there there were no trees up here so you can see out to the bay you got you you could see the ridge we're at what you're sitting on the promontory the chapel might have been sitting high for people to see a farm fence might be stood around it we've got to know what it sparked off do to understand it so was there a farming community up here while our potential Chapel was in use if you come up there Nick yeah look at this as you come up what this is you come up without a care for their own personal safety drop me glasses Mick and Stuart take their lives in their hands to identify targets that may be of interest in the wood we're on that building there you see if there's a the chapel site hospital chapel site there is that it's a cairn I found in between but then you've got this crag along the side as well and we'll look through here yeah yeah and the whole thing is one long promontory and so is within a larger enclosure part of which of these steep crags looks I'm trying not to think of it as a monastic site looks remarkably like a number of other sites in the Western Isles it may seem a long shot but they're beginning to think our possible Chapel is at the center of a much bigger enclosure but we should come and look at this okay and to investigate what's going on Mick decides we need to put a trench across a structure Stuart's identified plus at least one more over a roadway and entrance into this newly extended site the once the chainsaws have cleared the area we can find the manpower to dig them because we're still having problems deciphering the complex archaeology in trench one I don't take a look alive Wow that is truly amazing you know this is just about the last place that are you expected to see this there's so many evil Souls a penny right all right it's just extraordinary you can see it's got this this cross going from from edge to edge and inside each quarter it's got three pellets and so I think it's gonna be from about 1280 onwards so late 13th or 14th century I don't think it's gonna be much later than that this coin is just the latest and most spectacular example of medieval activity on this site we've also had 14th century pottery by the trayful suggesting this was a busy place 700 years ago I think there's somebody living here around 1300 who's who had is generating a surplus that they can sell for money that they're doing pretty well really it's quite a high-status place to be it's a compelling story and I have to admit I'm a bit nervous about saying this to you as an Englishman but if this story happened in the southern counties it would be dead easy to get loads of documents to substantiate it absolutely we Scottish historians are tremendously jealous of the English historians because they have a far fuller historical record than we do it's no surprise to me that we've been unable to get hold of any historical documents well you're not really this down yeah we could certainly write but we're sitting in the middle of an area that experiences a lot of trouble during the 15th 16th and 17th centuries things get destroyed and it's not just the documentary history you can't do landscape archaeology in landscape history in the same way that you can do anything Kenny because we it's like a big rubbing out of evidence in the lab what's the rubber well it comes with the clearances and the clearances are well this is an event that starts and Scotland did it rained about the mid 18th centuries and carries through into the 19th century and basically you're talking a complete change on the landscape the landlord's to extract more money from the rostov's and one of the ways they can do this they think is shifting the people off the land so you're placing people with sheep so what we're looking at now is very new isn't it funny because I had this romantic idea of a Scottish landscape and was here when st. Columba landed it's 100 years old yeah so with little or no chance of finding historical records it's impossible to know exactly who was living here in the 14th century but what we can say is that they made their home by reusing a much earlier structure you're backing pebble out there because mix now confident that Bevan hilda's Chapel shaped earth work was indeed originally an early Chapel we really need now are more than just pebbles we need dateable fines to tell us just how early this chapel is and unfortunately trench 3 has proved bereft of burials so we're going to extend trench 1 to investigate the area inside the East End where traditionally the altar and occasionally burials were placed as well as looking directly outside the chapel's walls another place where early burials could be found with just a few hours left of day two we're now concentrating all our efforts on working out how early this Chapel is also I thought last time we were here they were just you me Bev Hildur and a flat forest floor and yet now there's a trench here and it's all because Stuart and Mick have been refining their theories about this site and they believe that hidden in these woods are clues to an even more stunning discovery what I've done is taken the aerial photograph when there are no trees here so you've got rid of the trees laid over a three-dimensional model of the landscape and look what we've got can you see coming around see this this wall mmm coming around here and avoid Diddley the chapel coming down here but what we've actually got we've actually got a large enclosure which uses a very steep crags and the flat ground within it to define basically one large unit with the chapel sittin in the middle bit so what might the implication of that lately well I can think of a number of sites in in you know Western Scotland that look exactly like that and well though or the other sites are all monasteries no they are they're all early medieval monasteries so this could be another one what do you mean early medieval what kind of date do you think this well you know something to do with Columbia dies in five nine seven so you're talking about six six seventh eighth century long yeah we came in looking for a chapel at none of us thought we'd find an early Malin [Music] discovering a lost monastery from the time of some Columba the monk who brought Christianity into Britain via Scotland could be the find of a lifetime but I'm concerned that Mick's imagination has got the better of him I mean this isn't like any monastery I've ever seen I can see ever so clearly in my mind's eye now you've got the church with a little cross a bit on it and you've got the cloister and you've got the refectory no no no different sort of monastery what you're describing there is the typical light medieval plan that you get in Europe and much of England comes you know after about 1100 something like that yeah and it's as you're employing it's very predictable you know you find the church you know where the cloister is you find that you know the chapter says this is not like that what we're talking about on the western parts the country in Ireland and Scotland and so on before about 1200 he's much less regular you can have churches more than one churches chapels a dormitory workshops farm buildings you know all scattered around the site makes them much more difficult to deal with if we have got ministry here that would be really exciting with you it would be really important because every time we find one because they're not predictable there's no model plan we learn so much more about them because there isn't this blueprint to fall back on but there are a number of features that they should have well I have a sort of checklist in my brain of things to look for which I'm not going to tell you that all right I've got to tell you now but some of them have been ticked off some of them have been ticked off and there are others we're looking for he is a tease but at the moment a Colombo Iran monastery is just an exciting even nerve jangling theory what we'll need is physical proof what mixed keeping close to his chest we'll also have to find reliable dating evidence or at least something we can get a radiocarbon date from basically what we really need now is something like a tooth oh my goodness me ah that does look it's on almost must have quite squishy yes that is a human maxillary molar you can see the cusps quite worn down it's an adult and it really isn't quite vile condition whereabouts did it come from it was just under the wall there you know if you get burials in associated these chapels they're quite often are dried up against the walls oh that's another one look suddenly at the end of day two we now find ourselves on the verge of a major new discovery but bizarrely finding burials the very thing that could prove it may be the very thing that stops us in our tracks there is a bit of a problem which is that in Scotland if you find any human remains even on an archaeological site you have to phone the police and persuade them and the procurator's fiscal that you haven't got a crime scene all right well we haven't got a body yet but Jackie am I right in saying you've got a tooth we've got three teeth in fact of you all from the same part of the jaw which suggests that it came from the in situ remains and three teeth consequently count cats isn't as a body so I'm actually gonna have to make this phone call now die because as of now we've got to shut the entire dig down let's hope we can open it again tomorrow you [Music] Roy off you go it's the beginning of day three on the Isle of Mull and we're chomping at the bit to solve the mystery of the chapel site on the hill once we actually get there one time not gonna miss about this dig is the half-hour yump up to the top of the hill just to get to the site it's been raining all night and this is all really skinny like an ice rink even our caterpillar vehicle is having problems getting up here but it's worth it when you get to the top because the archaeology is absolutely fascinating although there are some problems all we've got is a tooth crowns there slide our dig was suddenly suspended last night when we hit human remains and our bone specialist Jackie has had to convince the Scottish legal system that we haven't uncovered a potential crime scene they're coming they've come out for and basically and did almost underneath that world that we might see there which we think is a medieval Chapel wall I mean I know Francis it's an adult because the teeth are worn quite flat and that again is suggestive that you know it's not a modern case because she wouldn't get tooth wear like that that's why having seen that would you be happy for us to carry on absolutely the date that you're talking about more than happy for you to continue and thankfully so with the blessing of Mol's finest we can get on with the job in hand which is to try and find a date for this early Christian chat unfortunately the teeth we found last night just outside the chapel are too decomposed to radiocarbon date but we still have been hoped we've got our teeth in that very small area underneath the plastic bear we know it's not coming this way so I suspect what we're gonna get either sort of east-west burial right then but loosen large rocks first but we also have another and even more stunning story involving the team now believes this chapel may have been part of an early monastery set up by the followers of Saint Columba a mix now opened a number of trenches in the woods the including one over a potential entrance into his theoretical monastic complex and another over what may be a building well we definitely have a stretch here definitely have something substantial but the only fine that we have is Flint Lake all right so it might be early Christian but also might be crystal it in spite of the strain on our resources mix in his element we are a long way from London that makes you a happy channelization all these are contributory factors as far as I'm concerned right and he's still confident we're locked outside the chapel may contain the lovely dateable remains of a local Saint what we haven't considered is what's happening in the middle and stones like that look yeah are incredibly loose right so I hope you're gonna suggest that it might have had something set up like a post or a stone in the middle or some sort of container some hollow or something yup yeah I mean you were talking about that there will be like you could have briny relics yeah that's right yep correct is looking archaeologically like the ones that still survive but you know I've never seen one taken apart like this but it is looking like what you'd expect well I've no know either never seen what advantage in that because being brutally honest you don't know anything about him and that's a that's a fantastic advantage I think even Timoney who are basically where I'm sitting now we heard pieces can be the entranceway to our channel but that would be nice understood it that way didn't we yeah we have the pole down we couldn't seem to get to the bottom when we were first invited here by Hilda and Bev to investigate this site I don't think any of us could have predicted just what this dig would unearth but it looks like one of the trenches in the woods may be about to give Mick another thing to kick off his potential monastery list over here we've got what pilgrim Bev originally thought was maybe a shilling a sheep pen something like that although Stuart thought that it might be a bit more complex than that how you doing right sure well if she came here this morning it looked like a big jumble of stones but we now have something a lot more substantial we have these absolutely great big shocking double skinned walls coming through which doesn't really go the shilling so it's not a shilling or a sheep pen or whatever because it's just there's too much of it there's too much of it it looks rather complex it's just very strange because it kind of comes round through there and then we have this other thing coming through just through here which we think is a cell a cell that sounds monastic isn't it this twin celled building may not be the final piece of the jigsaw but it really does look like the sort of simple dwelling used by monks on early monastery sites across the Western Isles and they all have one thing in common the influence of the late 6th century monk Columba do you do realize I've been pinching your books systematically the last three days I know tissue in your nose deep in a book on Celtic Christianity or something that's the kind of guy I what struck me most was that Columba who lived what 1,500 years ago isn't not more you'd have thought he would be lost in the mists of time but a real strong character comes across yeah and we only get that because with some of these saints somebody fairly soon after they died wrote what's called a life and in this case is a chap called Adam 'ln there was the the later Abbot of Iona and he clearly spoke to people who knew Columbus and then he puts this life story together this is fantastic the stuff it is he was a child prodigy yep all the other monks where he was training doted on him and a really good education yeah he was very tall he had a very loud voice which I would have thought would have been very irritating I think I'd be very useful dealing with a load of monks on different islands and the thing that strikes me so much about Colombo is that although in a sense he was living this really freezing cold existence of his monk's cell he was also using his status to go all around Scotland sorting out problem yeah getting the whole area unified yeah we know from the life that he he went to various islands he set up all the monasteries on those islands we know the names of some of them we suspect there were others we don't know the names of so he did want to locate a lot of in fat Wow if there was a monastery here yeah surely we would know about it surely it would be in the monks annals not necessarily we know that I own a house probably on more in the later Middle Ages has a whole series of properties down the north and west side of the island but whether they were there earlier on if they are they're not mentioned and that's your problem you see it's nothing like as easiest as down in England so with only a few hours left the race is now on to find a date to link our site with the time of Columbo and we've got a couple of potential targets for burials that might give us there is over here we bring the sand in it sounds quite hollow Jackie thinks she's found a couple of hollow-sounding areas outside the chapel that could turn out to be graves and Matt believes he's just coming onto the floor in front of the altar a classic place for the chapel founder to be buried there's a distinct line of clay along there however that wouldn't stand up who else leave it was just built like that's right and might even be worth just pushing it back over there I think personally I'm amazed that such a potentially crucial early Christian site has completely disappeared from the records but maybe just maybe this site has been commemorated in folk history it's just no one's noticed until now some people have said that if this was indeed an ancient chapel there should be a Gallic name for it which has come down into the onto the later maps now if you go around and you look for the closest possible place name we're here and look this name here you better read it Alistair call you'd click a cut which is the wood of the cliff of the cat so it may be a reference to a wild cat and it's been suggested that this holy name might possibly have been a kill name instead because it's very similar though this is often a problem in Scotland we're looking for early chapel sites and we have the police team killed which we think may be a chapel but it all depends on what the first surveyors thought they heard when they were speaking to the locals was it a kill or was it that coil do you remember when you or I were excavating in the Isle of Man about three years ago we dug a chapel site there do you remember and that was called a keel wasn't it it's the same language essentially yes absolutely but it is its what a kilometres away from our society and if if only we we could definitely say that this place name belonged to this place then I think we'd have our name it's a tempting theory that someone simply misunderstood the local Gaelic pronunciation of chapel and maybe we do have a name for the site but that's all on hold now because we may just have hid burials at the chapel it's possible you know I said that I thought it was good me another of these features this way it was a very narrow gap between well that's all there is also very soft so you think there's a Grove that's there might be something else that sighs who might have a kind of line of these oh well that's just what you get outside these chapels in the north isn't it I mean they're so closely packed up against the church or Chapel where there's no space between them cleaning here under the altar area yeah you can see this cut there yeah there's a void in there people just jump in here Tony that's all right yeah get in there it's very difficult to see but that's the void their keys if you look down right down in that hole Oh grave what's that in there white stuff in there I think that's bone is pretty degraded like the other stuff I think I'm faster and it's under where the altar would be isn't it that's the most important place that's the founder that's the chap of kill it is look where it is right at the East End Oh fantastic what a find that is just you pendant matt has just uncovered the grave of someone so important that they may well have been regarded as a local saint and the news just gets better on this phenomenal site this tiny amount of bone was enough to give a radiocarbon date of the early 7th century within one or two generations of Colombo it would seem that we're amongst the remains of one of the earliest chapels in Britain I think we all finally understand what we've got here it's one of these things called a loc'd which is like an outside altar constrain it ought to have a cross or something marking it Phil I reckon as you've now got that I think we're out in the middle absolutely Mick I mean and you can see here look at the way these stones are all in a line stacked up that is probably where it's a stunning discovery but what's almost unbelievable is what happened next with the last straight of the day we found this hidden in plain sight amongst the hundreds of stones we've been examining for three days is a part of the original Celtic cross that would have stood proud outside the eastern end of this Chapel but the chapel didn't just stand here in splendid isolation we now believe it was at the heart of a small 7th century monastic site which must have been founded by the monks based at some Columba's Iona monastery [Music] it's a find that will enter the history books and we even think we can give a name to this monster [Music] Tony you remember I was saying that one of the problems of identifying this site as that of a chapel was that we didn't have the Gallic place name it should have come down in folklore I know that's so frustrating his name yeah and Alastair had that a theory that what was marked on the map has collie Cragar Kate could have been a corruption of kill crack Kate what do we think the name means well Craig a cat means cliff of the cats and we're on a cliff so it would be Church at the cliff of the cats now if we were looking for the person the name of the person who might be buried here we haven't got it yet but looking at Craig a cat might be a very good place to start and what's so frustrating is that if some eighteenth-century bureaucrat had known the Gaelic and had written this all down properly then we could have solved this mystery day and a half ago except I don't think we would have had it to solve I think somebody else would have come here before now that mystery is what's preserved it for us but three days ago I asked you what you'd like us to find can you remember what you said I'd like you to find the flower place well we certainly found you the floor we found you what's underneath the floor and can you remember Hildur what you wanted how about sits banks and bombs and we've got bones of plenty have a way that may well be the skull of the man who originally founded this Chapel over 1,500 years ago so we've got your chapel we've got your monastery and we may well have got you the bones of a saint believable just absolutely perfect auntie [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 224,025

Rating: 4.9423275 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

Id: j58tAfNXzgM

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020