A Village Affair | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

welcome to bitterly in shropshire the quintessential English village it's bursting with pretty cottages a lovely church an imposing stately home all surrounded by empty rolling fields but maybe not quite so empty we've been invited here by the people of bitterly because they think that their village once covered this entire huge field so are they right was quaint little old bit early once a much bigger bustling bit early we've got just three days to help the villagers find out let's hope they're not bitterly disappointed [Music] the village of bitterly a sleepy tranquil kind of place well normally a sleepy tranquil kind of place but with time seem around and you must be joking beautiful more than a net just the right sort of conditions for digging holes lying 4 miles northwest of Ludlow in the county of Shropshire little is first mentioned in the Doomsday Book giving it a history dating back at least a thousand years and it's this history the villages are keen to uncover and I mean really clean nine o'clock day one and the whole village is already turned out tooled up all eating to help us launch a full-scale attack so you need your clipboard John spurred on by June buck hard village resident and the leader of the young archeology Club they've joined forces with us and they'll be honeycombing the village with as many test pits as possible by the time they finished bitterly won't have any more secrets to hide it's bedlam down there the little village could contain so many people but why do they think that their village which is what almost a mile away yeah was originally up here well you look around town and what we've got in this fool you've been doing this long enough to have an opinion as to what this lot is well I must admit I am standing on some rather nulled looking lumps and bumps here yeah does the phrase deserted medieval village very Glee here it's absolutely it looks like medieval settlement remains you've already put a trench in a veneer we have sort of in a very amateurish way what did you find a bag full of pottery all of it dated very reliably to between eleven and 1,300 oh that's medieval what do we do with this trench now we need to see if there's a building here so we will turn this trench it probably three or four times the area and into an area excavation what about down there where the village currently is if we deep test bits in the existing and those test pits have got nothing in them earlier than let's say 1500 1600 something like that it'll begin to look as if that village is later so we start off test fitting down there yeah and over here we extend your trench yeah oh yes please yeah so this is trench one and a half now this is one and a half so we're putting in our first trench trench one over the villagers existing trench although they found medieval pottery they didn't manage to identify any houses so by expanding their trench we're hoping to find out whether the lumps and bumps and pottery really are the remains of an earlier bit early and fills hardly scratched the surface before he's got some results hang on a minute make Tony partner no that's good that's good look any orders well if it was down our way to be 12th 13th century 10 o'clock day one already we have a sniff of a deserted medieval village but a mile away back down the road modern day bitterly is looking far from deserted under the watchful eye of Marianne and the archaeologists the villagers have already begun to pepper their gardens with test pits found in the pots of gold salts playful it's her job to maintain order and report back with the results from the test bits we're looking for dating evidence from across the whole of the present-day village with a bit of luck at the end of the dig we'll be able to chart the history of the modern village and even tie it into the history of the lost bitterly they think once existed a mile away so what what have you learned about the archaeology of the village already well we think the house has been moved that's one idea in fact there's a a very strong oral tradition in the village that the medieval village was up by the church and it was plagued definitely plague that made the move so we've got enthusiasm we've got energy and now we've got theories in the 14th century the plague or Black Death certainly caused many medieval villages to be abandoned but did he cause bitterly to move so far were just lacking one thing good solid evidence for me one lumpy field and a scatter of pottery do not a village make deserted medieval or otherwise but it's early days and after all phil has already transformed the villagers trench and the stone work is beginning to take shape what it looks like you're beginning to look like is that we do have a wall and I rather think that is probably a collapsed wall as well this rubble comes into play now of course whether or not it's a building war or whether it's just a field boundary wall remains to be seen so [Music] early to tell whether it's a wall around the field or a wall of a house but at least it's not just a pile of stones in three days we can't possibly dig up the whole of this massive field to explore every last lump and bump so John and the team are geophysics EF there's any evidence of buildings underground because to really understand all these lumps and bumps you need to employ good old-fashioned legwork to get to know every shape every contour what bumps lie over what lump you need to get close to them and that's just what Mick has asked our new team member Alex to do fortunately he loves his landscapes it's just so much going on in this field it's it's gonna be quite something to try and take all of this in and report back on this it's certainly a kind of change in alignment there's certainly two kinds of features here I don't know if one's an earlier field system or later field system and a village but quite what the relationship is at the moment I don't know it's a lot to get to grips with even with three days but down in the present village after a somewhat slow and shaky start and at round full of expert guidance we've now got a throng of budding archaeologists so look for stuff that has right angles and straight edges and keep that kind of thing but if it is just sort of a round piece of stone like that I think you're pretty safe to throw that on the spoil piece and they're hard works paying off hello you've been digging now son yeah look at this how's that which is lovely Oh which Kings have Edward the seventh and the date is just too early in his reign and apparently the work many minted at that time so that's really nice that's good and it's in fantastic condition it looks as though it's just come out of someone's pocket rather than out of the ground you didn't just drop it in so half a day down and we've pushed the date at the present village all the way back to 1902 but back in the field at least Alex is beginning to get to grips with those lumps and bumps so what have you found that Alex you come up with anything yeah I think I have we've got what I think is an arrangement of buildings all right that's essentially because these parch marks if we go over here Oh crikey yes if you look at this you know it's just that bit drier and that's telling us that there were stones underneath and there are stones here as well yeah we've got stones here coming out of the grass in fact you can see stones all over the place kindly there's a load sticking out here look this almost looks like a wall here doesn't it yep I mean that's there's obviously some structure there isn't there we've got a platform that feasibly yeah comes down as far as here that's right and it's the way it relates to the end of this Terrace and you've got more stone walls buried yeah so we've got something here also we've got a couple of Linear's going through they're converging which may may be some kind of track way and we've got yeah what looked to be platforms on the other side of that so I wouldn't say village but it's now looks like we've got some buildings here might be a couple of farmsteads or something let's go organize the machines too so we should get cracking on straightaway fingers crossed this could turn out to be some evidence of settlement to find out we're putting in a second trench and if these lumps do turn out to be the walls of medieval houses and if films wall also plays ball then well maybe the villagers theories are right maybe bitterly did move because of the plague maybe if we've nearly sorted it but then again given mixed views on so-called local knowledge maybe not Aston's first law of local research says that the local version is invariably wrong but Astin's second law of local research is that whatever they tell you he's probably right we had a balance up what they tell you right but if their theory is wrong and this wasn't a village that was decimated by the Black Death yeah what court could have caused it to collapse if in fact it did there's a whole series of later E's I mean the most obvious one is in the 15th and 16th century as a changeover from arable farming to pasture farming you'd only as many people for that and people either evicted or they drift away and go elsewhere another common reason especially with a big house like this is looking out they don't want a load of hovels in there in the front so they they knock them down and clear the space in front of them I like the idea that we're exposing the dreadfulness of the landowner in getting rid of all the peasants but whether this phantom village died out because of the plague or whether it was down to hovel clearances is all still up in the air at the end of day one the question is have we yet got enough evidence to show that there ever was a village in this fields at all right now there's only one man able to answer that way up further you're enjoying this only absolutely Tony is your soup no she's better digging and a thirst I could do with a point at the end of the day the village that doesn't have a poke yep the village maybe that's why the deserted deserted modern village have we got a bit of a village out here not in this trench no we don't think we have all right you've got an awful lot of stone Avenue but just because we've got a wall and I'm sure we've got a wall doesn't mean to say we've got a building and a village I think we do have a war I think it's a war or it goes around the edge of a field and you can see actually they they had it in the bottom of their trench look there's one face of it there it was see there's those two big stones up at a shoal of it it's a bit disappointing there's still plenty of mileage in this trench yet we've got to actually take off some of this rubble and then we go down to the soil below that who knows there might be a medieval village there might but there's still no pub in the village beginning of day two here at bit early in Shropshire where we're trying to help the people of the village which is just through those trees over there work out their history morning Ian and whether or not the village once extended all the way across this vast field where the churches but actually it's not them that needs the help this is our first trench looking for the extension of the village and what are we got just a pile of rubble which was probably just once part of some field boundary and as for trench - what have we got oh look another field boundary or something and then along here load of old rubble and look what's this at the other end could it be yeah another field boundary this not much here is there nothing right more in one you're massively negative moods against there I've told you about this it'll be time for your medicine again if you go on like that well why do I get that kind of response when I'm just stating the frankly bleeding obvious and there's nothing in these eyes this was open the end yesterday we're up we've taken the topsoil off trace is still cleaning we don't know what's in here if this is all the same structure look back to here that can we just to feel Michael oh be honest this is like my dad talking now isn't it in that trench can you yet see indications of another evil settlement it's not yet thank you that's all I'm sorry there ask me the next question what are we gonna do next carry on until we see if there is any maybe even occupation here Alex you want to put in another one no yeah of course of course and I've got an area here just up closer to the manor house actually and we've got these very ephemeral earthworks and they look to be like the tail end of plots laid up against a road that once went through the manorial complex it's all it's been that end of this field that's interest to you the map yeah I mean the pottery the fills go up there must have come from somewhere up there so yeah it's quite reasonable the settlement was above it and we should put trench in and look at that well that's them and the last bit of good news I've had this morning I mean you can have a lie down with a bag of cold peas I dread and leave us to get on with it right so let's hope it's third time lucky as we're opening yet another trench in the field to see if we can find any evidence of a settlement up here Alex thinks that the earthworks here absolutely shalt buried walls of houses that one before but as we continue our struggle to find any hint of a village of this end a mile away down in the bitterly we do know exists it's a hive of activity as the villagers own archaeological agitator June rallies the troops for another days on snort across the whole village we've now got nineteen test pits open and as the fines come in Debbie our pottery expert is plotting the results on a map of bitterly it's a crucial task because we're not so much interested in each individual find as the spread of finds as a whole using different colored dots for each historical period found in the test pits this should help us build up a picture of when and how the present village took shape so these three trays are from tests picked twelve behind the school and you can see it's quite a mix of modern and older pottery this is nice that's 17th or 18th that fits with the blue dot that's really nice that's a piece of what's called pressed molded slit where it's not wheel thrown it's formed over a curved former when it's dried a little they've pulled it off the mold put the glaze on and they would have decorated the edge with a cockleshell to give a pie crust effect that's a really nice piece fun so mid-morning day two and the villagers are gradually beginning to push back the date of their village at the moment they are having more success than we are back in the fields we've now got three trenches open we're finding walls and pottery but as for evidence of a settlement there seems to be absolutely nothing up here at all well apart from the one rather large thing that's been staring us in the face the big house bitterly caught and if anyone round here is going to know the lie of the land it's the local landowner there's no bail or anything well just get around here look are you sure about this yeah well we'll play the mad archaeologist card if you stroppy about it we might find a shotgun coming out how no I got done for trespassing recently and you can usually talk people around and I know what you're doing James hope you don't mind us breaking into your garden hi do you think if you'd been standing here a few hundred years ago and you just seen the village here you'd have thought let's get rid of that I don't suppose you'd be allowed to today but it'd have been very typical in the past to move for the village from away from the view it happens thousands of toppings yeah okay so there's the village what about the house what do we know about that gosh well it was built largely in the 17th century but I'm hoping we'll find that there is a much older structure in the center of it does that make sense to you it does yeah I mean we know that the church is normal is so close to the big house suggest that there's something here of that date but I mean ideally it would be nice to do some geophysics around it and to actually go and look at the structure of the building I think that would be the first thing we would like to do good you wouldn't mind the house being turned over to our team well we'll discuss those limits later [Laughter] well maybe it's best to leave the house for a moment and break him in with a little gentle I just hope James is as carefree about his lawn as the rest of bitter Lee's residence [Music] and their efforts are producing some rather unexpected results on the finds map the first glance at that I thought it does look like pottery it's very very fragile and damaged so that might be a piece of medieval pottery what color you chosen from any medieval is yellow in terms of my key yellow dots I've got a definite one here I thought was nothing was going on here in the village itself in medieval times it was all happening in the field by bitterly cold as you know some of these trenches have started today and we haven't seen the coins process yet so it's getting quite excited to see how it develops well I'd love to know how it's all gonna turn out because like Mariann I thought the medieval bitterly was situated up in those fields and for some reason it died out and the village moved down here to its present location but now we've got medieval pottery down here and up there one big medieval village that is and I'll say it again if we ever find any evidence of buildings in that field this is it's the bit early called estate box we've got some fantastical seals on some of them okay but the one that's probably most interesting for you is this old estate book it's got one particular map in it which i think is quite it's quite interesting this is a parchment which shows Wow the property here and the fields where you're doing the dig yeah I mean what's fascinating to me about this is we obviously don't have any suggestion here of a settlement so it's clearly by the date of this map 1766 you say yeah it's clearly vanished completely from where we suspect it might have been this field boundary here that it's depicted as a hedgerow there isn't it whereas we've got a wall in a very on a very similar alignment that's fascinating yes it is fascinating James's map shows no evidence of the village strong evidence that the wall Phil's been working on for a day and a half is nothing more than a field boundary but then if it is where does all the pottery come from this is fine for a bog standard medieval settlement if this stuff isn't very worn you've got quite fresh breaks on the pottery this is deposited quite near to where it was used what about the stuff that you'd expect to find with the pottery the bone and the burnt wood and stuff any of any of that I mean that absolutely you would expect that if it was a village they would have been eaten animals they would have been rearing they would have been burning stuff there is no charcoal there's certainly no bone I don't know whether it's the acidity of the soil but it is not not a scrap of it this is really strange to me we've got evidence of some kind of medieval occupation from this part that there's nothing else to go with it we can't find any structures really isn't very much here at all where's the village [Music] welcome back to bitterly in Shropshire where we've joined forces with its villagers to investigate its history they've opened a whopping 19 test pits medieval pottery is unexpectedly pushing the date of the present village back to the 13th century a mile away in the fields we've opened three trenches we found more medieval pottery but no settlement in fact so far the only identifiable medieval building that we've got around here is the Norman Church Oh gorgeous little church oh we have we need to look round I'm coming first do you want to go if it have a fertile yeah a little crown and then I'll see you a bit later James the first thing that is obvious to me is all these Walcott's Eliza Wolcott Charles Wolcott John Wolcott who are they a very old shops a family who who I always used to be very rude about because they increasingly hit on bad times my story was always they lost all their money because they drank too much but I was looking through some family papers and I discovered that all these people are actually my great-great-great grandparents so it's a tragedy rather than a travesty now you exactly that to be polite about than that Mick how are you getting on all very good got anything good oh yes come down here and have a look all right it's not a gem how old you reckon that is well I think it must be Norman this is the font isn't it well they it's the font for the baptism takes place on this lead-lined look they put a ledger sheet inside it but around the edge you see it has these these little arches just like a Norman arcade you know in a castle or Oh or a monster or something like that with the pillars does it tell us anything it does it tells us something about the status of the church at that time because I only places that were by the parish churches or minsters could have carried out baptism so it tells us as a proper Church here at that data so if it was a working parish church yeah there must have been a working parish here yeah this this church is serving your community one of the things it does is baptize all the infant's as they come on but so 25-mile a tease what do you mean brother it's worth coming 25 miles to see that well Mick might travel 25 miles to visit a font but I bet the medieval inhabitants didn't my money's on them having lived somewhere near the church question is where exactly Phil's refusing to give up on trench one and a half but it's not looking very promising you know a hint of anything yes sir and trench two is looking or should I say smelling like it was just a cow byre but Alex's punt entrenched where Matt's been digging might actually be paying off so this is looking like this kind of stuff then you'd expect on an abandoned village yes yeah you got a lot stones here though so this walls flaws or just overburden natural well I think these may well have been formed in forming barriers may be between plots you know that you recognize but so at last the trace of a village but exactly how big was it John's devised too shrewd though somewhat lazy way to find out scanning every contour to create a 3d topographical map and sort out house from hump once and for all back at the present village we've also found evidence of medieval activity if these two areas were once joined together bitterly may have been more like a medieval metropolis so in the hunt for further clues we've begun a house-to-house search architectural expert Richard K Morris looks for different styles of construction he believes this is the villages oldest standing building dating to the 16th century so we've put in a test pit in its garden and we found not just pottery but the possible hint of an earlier structure I mean my spirit is bits all the best stuff is under the cobbler but let's not extend it let's just take it down a bit further I'd like to do that if we if they wouldn't mind [Music] and luckily it seems they don't I mean that would be the ideal place I would think uh somewhere over there we do a very neat job right okay let's go and tell the troops [Music] [Music] actually sharp so mid-afternoon madness day two we're not so much digging in the village but digging up the village to find out how big bitterly was watching all the poor folks feudal lady yes take another home June well she seems quite at home as archaeological supervisor I think as for our illustrious professor no I can't believe it either he's actually getting his hands dirty for once this must be the first time in 10 years that I've seen you no no that's somebody new Charlie was last week in there because I dig through these a week at home you see you do love your test bits I do love my tests but why did you choose this is your particular choice yes she's like the Desert Island Discs absolutely love tests person why did you choose this one if that's got medieval stuff it'll show there was something here before the house was built so we'll know there was a medieval structure or medieval farm before the present housing built so we need him to trowel as slowly as he can well troweling as quickly as you don't recognize that would slow no I'm off to the next test pit nearly the end of day two and while it's still a frenzy of activity down here back at the field everyone's packed up well nearly everyone anyway cuz Matt's made a rather interesting find this is all from this end of the trench made the first two or three meters there you go 12 13th century that seems very familiar that down at the bottom end we had this no that is not so familiar that's a lovely piece of floor tile yep we've got any date for it I think it's about 13th century and it is interesting that as we're getting towards the church and towards the big house the quality or the fines is going on tell you what I'd like to put a trench up there in the garden there's no one around for the troops doing man down tools at once guys Mick makes the decisions here and anyway I've got something to keep you out of mischief well felt there may not ever have been a pub in bitterly you said a woman but there is now the film's head it's your own little treat you go off and have a drink reasonable proche it's you free thank you very naughty is a very reasonable approach there I shall have to put the word in with a lot of landlords to it to a doctor or poison scheme it's been great and it ok when we're talking about a village yeah what on earth is it that we're looking for yeah because we've been talking about we've been talking about village for 36 hours yeah if it starts out there yeah and at some period in history ended right up by the house a picture of Malik because that explains it yeah this has got some some interesting features on it and in particular here we've got what we call Ridge and farro agriculture so it's a medieval field system between the two villages so we know doesn't it you just said two villages yes we've got men Eva pottery up by the church in the manor appear yeah we've got medieval pottery in the test pits down here now but they can't be continuous settlement because of the region furrow so they there must be two centres of medieval settlement so when we've been talking about the village of bitterly we should have been talking about possibly the two villages absolutely why didn't you tell us before because we've only known that since the test pits this afternoon hang on a minute also if there's a church up here by bitterly caught and it's a parish church why isn't it near the people well they might have been another one down there originally so there's not one bit early there's two bit Alize and there's not one church there's could be two on that bombshell let's have a drink and really exciting well if I'd have told you would have invited us to have the beer with you drink your bit early and go and [Laughter] beginning of day three here at bitterly in Shropshire where we're trying to unpick the history of the village and yesterday afternoon I found out that in times past they may well not have been just one bit early but two-bit Alize one up there and the other down here not only that but they could have been two churches one up there and the other down here and then yesterday evening Mick says there could have been two great houses one up there and the other right here if we can prove the existence of to medieval manor houses then it would look like mixed to village theory is also spot-on where there's a manor house there's likely to be a village he thinks the bitterly quartz was probably one of them and that another called Park hall near the present village could have been the other way just look at that photograph and just see what you've got and that's only obviously a fragment of a much larger building and probably of the late 16th century so did this survive til fairly recently if there's a photograph it was taken down pulled down in the 1950s that is that that's that lump yes but it's interesting these on what is probably at earliest sight isn't it but yeah you can see here look tearing as the arms of a moat going around three sides of this yeah which suggests it's a medieval site that these things plunked on well that would be more significant for us and the story of Italy wouldn't yeah but is to shade your ancient monument does that mean we can't put a trench in we haven't got permission to dig here but but they wouldn't almost certainly have been a fourth arm to this moat yeah it's unlikely to be just that shape and that would have been across here but we do have permission to geophys here to see if we can pick the liner that up the thing I like so much about this is that it's entirely transforming our notion of this village if mixed right about the moat being medieval and not Tudor we really could be looking at not one bit early but perhaps too bitter Lee's each clustered around its own big house but if Park Hall was a Tudor new-build bang goes the theory trouble is we've got less than 10 hours to find the evidence that could clinch it although we can't dig out Park Hall John started to geophys to see if the Tudor mansion was built on a medieval mountain house mix hauled in some volunteers to dig yes another test pit as close to it as possible and if it produces high-class medieval finds it'll help us prove the existence of the top-notch residents here and up by the church we're now throwing our weight at the other big house bitterly caught to find out if it was once the manor of the other medieval bitterly as timber friending up there this house has got a lot going on all quite promising but since we obviously can't dig up this big house either Phil's finally got his way putting in a trench right next to it to see if it too has made evil origins and although the big guns are now focused on the big houses the villagers well they're still happily digging away at their test bits because if there was a big house down here it's still the villagers test pits that will establish whether the village grew up around it [Music] archaeology isn't supposed to be fun you know really what are you doing no tell me what you've got we found quite a bit of pottery some of it but told us maybe evil oh there we go well we're right opposite Park hall and down the road and bitterly courts right up there so this is possibly the hub of medieval activity and the more they find and the more they wash the more precisely we're homing in on medieval bitterly I've just been a bridge cottage and they found some medieval stuff honey so June I mean it's it's really starting to pay off it's just amazing it's absolutely amazing and what's really stopping me is that true these sort of firm the tightness of the medieval finds there it's here yes this is the medieval Corvis yeah this is this is probably where it was yes thanks to the villagers hard work I think we've nailed the location of one medieval bit early and it does seem to be focused around the site of our potential medieval des res Park Hall back at our other bit early what everything's gone rather quiet our first two trenches have run their course no settlement Matt still has a hint of a house in his trench but we're now really focusing our attention on the trench by bitterly caught well most of us anyway two of the team seemed to have sloped off but I think the cause is justified a reward for our enduring test pit volunteers we need a prose and we thought the best pros we could give a but in archaeologist is a travel yeah could you make us a trowel sure bill - yeah right for you pump on that I'm gonna do this yeah yeah right [ __ ] if you can hit that there there [Music] do you remember this in the contest no Phil this is a prize for the villagers but then he's not the only member of the team who seems to think he deserves something some got all this stuff from the top of that hole there is that medieval this is lovely the everybody said oh it's stone took it away my pot washes right washed it and of course once it's washed you can see the fabric it is actually a piece of pottery but you can see the curve and it's a big piece and it's freshly broken that hasn't gone very far so we're on the site of where somebody's living in the 12th 13th 14th century and is this fancy stuff can we get an idea of the status this is present stuff this is he's the big pot of pottage sitting there months on end on the half while he took all beans into it you get the impression of what a medieval house was like and I'm pleasantly vivid picture Mick but I thought we were trying to find a luxury medieval home if there was one its owners seem to have had a few grotty neighbors right on their door a mile away along the road at the other village we've been carrying out the same strategy with a trench right by bitterly court Phil's got some results right Phil we've got bated breath what have you found I am intrigued boy well looks to me like a piece of roof tile I'm sure it's not pot and rich had been an expert on matters on architecture oh I'd like his opinion it certainly looks like a glaze rich tile bitly going on the very top and this is a point that's been cut off perhaps so you'd have that typical dragon back kind of thing on the ridge if so that's a very high-status building 13th 14th century but it's pretty tenuous evidence isn't it I think so accidental that from this trench which was deliberately put in to be as close to the big house and to the church as we could is it so accidental that this is the one place where we get evidence of a building with a high-status roof I still think this could be very significant i pinning our hopes on this so after noon day 3 our to village theory is still looking good evidence the bitterly court had medieval origins and that there were some associated buildings nearby down at lower bit early we've nailed the settlement but what about the big house John we were after a moat have we got one on the geophys half a moat half a boat is better than none it's not a complete moat sure this is what we can see on the ground where the dashed lines are that's where the water is there's the house in the middle here now the geophysics shows the moat continuing up to the house but at this point behind us there's no suggestion in our results of the ditch ever having completed the circuit hang on there were two choices weren't there it could either be a medieval site with round it or it could be a Tudor site with a moat around it does that help us decide which we've I think it does because the fact that it's if it's incomplete if the geophysics is suggesting that then that suggests more of an ornamental moat rather sort of semi defensive mode with your big house here and then this body of water running around the garden facing south on that side of the house so does that mean that this is much more likely to be a Tudor building because the Tudors wouldn't have been worried about attack whereas the medieval people were yeah we can start to forget about the idea of a separate Manor and then all that discussion we had last night about whether it had a church with it and so on we can show all that to one side because he doesn't look like that though it's quite a magical place this bit early now you see it now you don't know medieval manor house in the bitterly of today and no church either but it does look like the bulk of the medieval village was down here so we're back to just one bit early so why are the village the manor and the church so far apart and why did everyone think there was so much going on in the fields well we've now completed the topographical survey which is our last hope of an answer there are lots and lots of lumps and bumps you see why the people who lived here thought that there must be a settlement here we just don't have the features we'd expect associated with a deserted medieval village you know with Holloway's raised platforms got a regular and street system if you like we just don't have that doing now what about the wider landscape Alex well if we zoom out a bit and that that's great in it because that really brings out this road here this is a road I've been interested in it's on a north-south alignment it goes all the way down to timber Ewell's to the south and it goes all the way north up to Wenlock edge and that I think is is an early it's a Saxon route if not earlier it could be prehistoric okay and that's the focus for the church and the settlement there so the church is there essentially because it's on that roadway I think so I think that's the focus at that point so it does seem that in the 11th century bitterly grew up along the main road with the church a manor and a few houses around them and a few more down here Alex even thinks that road could have been an ancient trackway judging by the lack of pottery we found after the 14th century it looks as though bitterly was hit by the Black Death which is what our villagers thought but it wasn't completely obliterated instead the surviving village began to flourish down here at its present site and disappeared completely from the fields by the house just why that happened is something that June and the villagers will have to keep digging for and it's been just an amazing experience for all of us after what we've put them through I reckon they all deserve a prize I think what I'd say to you is if you can bear it you ought to carry on because you will no doubt learn a lot more if you spend another couple of years doing this so thank you very much for all your help and and also for it's been a really welcoming place to come to us news yeah so thank you very very much [Music] [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 138,013

Rating: 4.8978238 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: 0FJA0s7pMsY

Length: 46min 17sec (2777 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020