Did Time Team Discover An Ancient Roman Pub? | Time Team | Odyssey

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] 40 years ago a group of amateur archaeologists discovered a wealth of Roman fines in this park at cheshunt in Hertfordshire they were told to keep quiet about them because the British museum thought they might be really important particularly because a huge horde of Roman coins had been found here at the turn of the century somewhere around here is ermine Street the main route to the Roman Empire's most Northerly stronghold at York where we are now is about a day's March from London so am I standing on an Undiscovered town or a military marching post or just a Roman little chef time team have got three days to find out what these important finds are really telling us join us as we try to unravel the mystery of chestnut Park thank you foreign [Music] Park is set on a hill overlooking the chiltons and the Lee Valley just 20 miles from London it lies directly across the line of ermin Street the major Roman highway from London to York but there's no sign of the road in the park today back in the 1950s two families the mullingers and the howletts excavated the site by 1964 they dug nearly 80 trenches they didn't find Hermann street but they did uncover the fragmented remains of several Roman buildings they've no idea what they were and even visiting archaeologists from the British museum didn't know either Gene mullinger filmed here in 1963 still lives by the park what did you ask us to come here in the first place well we thought that this had been hidden long enough really you know we wanted something done about it why hadn't anyone ever done anything about it before nobody was bothered nobody was interested and my husband's dead so that was just myself left to say something so I thought I would well we're certainly very interested we've been fighting for the park for a long way and um decided to see what they could do about this why did your husband decide to dig here in the first place was always a thing he had about Romans ever has been a boy so he just thought there was something here it just felt there was something there on the time and he took it from a military side and he said they always went the top of the hill it was probably the first days March from London anyway yeah how did he work that out well he walked himself from the manor house once in the wartime from Manor House in London all the way here yes there wasn't any transport not down here but these weren't his grounds were they oh no no they belonged to the debnam family and Miss debnam should freely give consent in fact she came and helped history hitters like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you our extensive catalog of documentaries covers everything from the rise of Hannibal Barker to the illustrious Treasures of King Tut so sign up today for broadcast quality documentaries uncovering the mysteries of the ancient world we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and odyssey fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Odyssey at checkout Phyllis debenham's home Chestnut Park house was demolished after she died and the local Council bought the park features in a fascinating diary of the whole excavation there's also a very detailed plan so detailed that it's almost impossible to follow they dug their trenches in a box grid and the drawing looks almost like a child's board game the first thing we've got to do is to see how this grid relates to the meadow foreign as you can see our people have cleared great swathes of this field so we can do the archeology and predictably where Mick wants to dig is here yeah what's going on Professor what are you doing what was it there's there were excavations here 40 years ago which Jen's been looking at he looks if we've got to go back over there doesn't it Jen to to get some of the remains yeah I think it's taken an awful long time to go through the archive but now we've got the documentation and we're here on the ground we know that some of the archeology is under there so this means that our people are going to be sitting around in the Sun for hours waiting for all this lot to get cleared that is just the point Tony it won't be for hours I'm advocating getting a big machine in there to strip that out not one of these little streamer jobs since the 1960s the local Landscapes changed completely there are trees where the big house stood and the brambles where Mick wants to dig conceal the garden and Tennis Court outside the garden railing we're trying to locate the old plan on the ground earlier on I have laid this plan yeah in the aerial photographs with the modern map and set out this area which is where the buildings supposedly are yeah um and that's just over there we're hoping this group of buildings with their strange features will hold some Clues to the size and scale of our settlement whether it was a military stopper Trading Post or just a workshop our first trench will go in here to pick up this puzzling object perhaps a snake-like flew or covered drain [Music] Stone across Jan this is great concrete in the 60s they didn't have geophysics we have and John's got a completely new view of the meadow from the tests first thing this morning that's the island railing along the edge of the field but then we've got all this noise here and a possible enclosure ditch right so this is occupation in here look at the XY plots okay I mean such a contrast between here and out into the field we're quite out there isn't it I mean it looks as though that could be a building yeah and when you look at the rares oh crikey I mean the high resistance in black and showing the wall foundations and so on yeah so it looks if we've got a sort of round ended structure there isn't it doesn't it and that's where the ditch appears to cut through it so the obvious thing is to dig there isn't it can you drop us on that well I've already done it oh we're there right so John's trench will go in here just a few yards from our first trench where Phil started digging now that we've got the Digger in trench one we should have the old back fill out by mid-afternoon we think that the best way of understanding this size will be to find out how the buildings relate to the road are they earlier or later did they run alongside or were they built further back so our next task has to be to find the lost Roman Road to the north of our site ermine Street cuts a clear line through the Hertfordshire landscape but looking at cheshunt from the south you can't see the road at all something after the Roman period happens to that bit of landscape yeah where that road no longer has any important right we do have uh some records of a medieval Park here at Cheshire right so they've dropped a park across the Roman Road alignment yeah and presumably make people go around that's exactly what seems to happen even now it's almost like a Perimeter Road goes down the edge of the Park yeah so we ought to see coming out the other side then indeed and with a bit of look yeah we might see it coming through the park as a crop Mark or a parchment it's very dry at the bottom it's ideal conditions for parts Parks yeah but actually look in that field to the further to the east I think it is oh yeah can you see that line going across it yeah there's a white line across that looks like it looks like a parched out Road doesn't it right yeah that's really exciting to see you yeah it just Bangs straight on the line of that road absolutely clear yeah that's one thing I've got to I think I've got to have a trenches so Stuart might have our first new lead our incident rooms in the local primary school corrender and guy have met up with Roz niblet a Roman specialist from Saint Albans the fines from the earlier dig suggest that something rather important was going on here well they're pretty tantalizing actually we've got a complete roof tile here that's incredible question is does that come from a building or are they making roof tiles here and perhaps using them in a different context we've also got this rather unusual piece of pottery which looks look me very much as if it's a waster you see that Distortion in the rim now that means they might be manufacturing portrait here what do you think was well it certainly um warped but there's this concretion on it which seems to be slack which suggests me it's been used yeah for some other industrial process so what do we think generally is going on here then very good question but we have got [Music] contained two and that's right and that makes it very unusual in Hearts the names derived from two Latin words chess from castra meaning defended place or camp and hunts from the latinfronto well or spring it's mid-afternoon on one of the hottest days of the year but surprisingly just a foot down the ground's very wet sure sign of local Springs ah look at this thumbs down look at that it's that drain it's the top of that drain look what's that in the bottom there big well I see big square tiles homie there's that I got in my pocket here we ought to be able to pick these up we got 20. so Phil thinks this is a drain but is it and is it Roman this one here this middle one is the Chim is a chimney grab all that so now we know exactly where we are and the old plans very accurate in trenched two where we're looking for John's ditch there's nothing so far but natural gravel a few hundred yards away in the lower field Mick and Stewart are chasing the parchment they saw from the air is this the field where you thought we might get a Roman Road because quite frankly I don't see much evidence of it you've just walked straight across it what do you mean this lump behind us where we're in the helicopter yeah we saw this parchment coming straight through this field and when you get down to this end can you see this broad Ridge starts here comes up over and back down here there's about a two inch difference in levels you wouldn't find anything different in anything I mean this is classically what you'd expect for the agar of a Roman Road there wasn't a Roman Road it's the the metal in the line of the Roman Road itself yeah you have to say though that you'd seen this earthwork before we went up and then to find the crop Mark as well was brilliant fantastic yeah I mean all the evidence seems to come together I mean if you don't believe it Tony well we're at lunch John ran his race over then you want to see what you are as well believe that oh that's fine black and white and color it's not a dual carriageway and with this man he's got the evidence right so there's three different kinds of evidence now we've got the earth work and we've got the Crop Marks and the GIF yeah to have three pieces of evidence all pointer is brilliant really so we're going to put a trench across here now hoping we can hit what should be a big Stone Bank underneath excellent well if Stewart's right and the line of the road follows the parchmark in the field it looks as if the road could meet our settlement somewhere in the woods near to where corenza is ready at last to open trench four it's impossible to do any geophysics here so we've got no idea what we might find we know there'd been a tennis court somewhere near here but maybe no Roman archaeologist survived back in trench one Phil's joined by Peter Reynolds this knowledge of Roman industry and farming Pete should be able to tell us what they were making here he too thinks the location of the road is all important so we really need to push the story this way because we know that the road is is out there somewhere and we've got this Gap and we want to find out what happens between the road and there are building yeah that's right Katie how are you getting home oh that's the starting to look really good you see this cobblies yeah that must be it mustn't it this must be the surface of the road and then just over here you see this patch here I think that must be the ditch that runs alongside it so we're not just on this side of the road you need to go a lot further side yeah well you said it was anything up to 30 foot Rock wide yeah I mean presumably if there was any cobbles on the surface they they've now gone and been robbed away and we're seeing here the the bedding as it were for the road aren't we that's what it's looking like at the moment yeah there's no time to extend this trench this evening but we'll open it up to the full width first thing in the morning make the amateur archaeologists who were here 50 years ago found a lot of stuff and they recorded it beautifully yeah it did yeah but they didn't really know what they'd got did they no are we anywhere near helping them sort it out I think we probably are because of finding the road down the bottom end there we've now got it in the trench and we could see from the helicopter the alignment of it coming up the the field across there so what does that imply for our archeology what it means is that that they thought the Roman word was that side and therefore their their excavations related to over there we now know that the Roman Road is over there and it means that whatever this is down in these trenches is not right on the street Frontage it's somewhere in the back Garden or the back of the properties so what are we going to do tomorrow so tomorrow we move through into the bushes where we ought to be right on the street Frontage and that's presumably where the most important buildings are so today it looks as though we've been in the Roman back Gardens and the Roman potting sheds tomorrow let's hope we can get into the Roman houses and offices and whatever's there join us after the break first thing in the morning and everyone's out looking for ermine Street what do they survey they line up the line of the Roman Road through the woods why are we still looking for the Roman Road we think that we've got it further down there and surely what we're after today is the fronts of the houses or shops or whatever it is that the Romans had where we've been poking around in the back yesterday morning Stuart um that's right but until we know where the Roman Road is on the exact alignment we won't know where the shops are on one side or whatever it is on the other side so we're going to put some evaluation trenches in here to look for the buildings and Geoff is on the other side see if there's any buildings on that side of the road but we do need to know where the road is exactly to start with and we were Excavating over there yesterday yeah so we're pulling the whole thing in that's why we're going to come back under the woods yeah in our first Roman Road Trench coming out is gravel and clay Harvey Sheldon the Roman specialist from London's just arrived and to confuse matters even more he thinks we're digging in the wrong place [Music] in trench one Phil's uncovered more of the Roman features in the 60s excavation their exact purpose eluded even the most eminent archaeologists but Pete thinks he's cracked it now the only other place I've ever seen anything like this is where they wanted to superheat air to deal with Metals right the fire I think is this end I mean and I think the hot air is being sucked through and you've got a chimney there so that's going to suck it this far so that's like acting as a draw through the piping that's it yeah then there's another one here so once you've got that drawing close it down open this one all right right and then when you close that one down you hope it's going to go down the last bit and we've got superheated gas coming through there into the charcoal you're immediately going to be hitting 900 to 1000 degrees which is the kind of working temperature you want in order to deal with metal iron or whether you wanted to make bronze to pour it into into molds so is this thing naturally powered by air you're not going to need Bellows to fire out that's the whole idea well you don't need Bella you don't need the balance rise so this this is an earlier metal work in establishment I think so what's this on the top of it then ah now I think we're looking at two phases right when they excavated this they they found these piles of tile the pillai that's the little squares there yeah but presumably this that is the flu this is the flu area as the fire goes through here we've got to put these piles of tiles back again in a pattern right across this floor okay and it holds up a wooden floor right and then you've got a foundation wall all the way around there and then probably a wooden shed over the top right but Phil this is where it's gorgeous for you this bit lighting is a molting floor diador is seculus mentions the fact that in Britain they grew grain and they grew barley and they made beer out of it which he calls zifos [Laughter] yeah two pints so we've got London Dam only 15 miles down the road because that's a big market for either The Malt or the beer yeah but just as likely I suppose is that there was a a pub somewhere out on on the front up against the main road it's so small yeah right it's much more likely to be a local pub with its own special Brew that's my target for today I want to find the phone in trench 2 we'd been hoping to find the ditch at the back of the buildings and at last underneath all that gravel some flecks of brick or tile are coming up which suggest there's some sort of earlier deposit in trench four we're still pinning our hopes on finding some buildings closer to the road karenza how are we getting on I can see that this listen to that's not natural yeah it's laid over the foundations of the tennis court so we reckon the tennis court was laid out from there up to about here yeah and then you see here you can see it's very different it's also much darker brown with flecks of Roman brick and tile in it we think that's undisturbed archeology but it's an absolute nightmare to dig through at the moment why is that it's incredibly hard the trees here sort of suckle the moisture out of the soil and it's like digging through concrete virtually yesterday John's Roman Road geophysics was spectacular but the archeology in trench 3 is inconclusive so since first thing this morning geophys have been looking for the road nearer to the woods we think it comes through the Land Rover yeah and in this general direction yeah so we're stood here now I can't see that very well John can we can we get it in the shadow or somewhere so we're expecting the road to come somewhere on this line so you think that ready well it's possible it's confusing that it appears to stop so where are we actually gonna put the trench well I think across this line here it won't take long to get a trench in and if this one comes up with the firm evidence we need we'll know how close the road runs to our settlement all right Chestnut would have been about a day's March from London when the Roman cohort stopped for the night they'd have pitched a marching camp on a high ground that was easy to defend [Music] friends Romans countrymen I've gathered you here today because we're going to conduct a scientific experiment we're going to see if surveying techniques have improved in the 2000 years since the Roman occupation what exactly was a Roman marching Camp it's essentially a camp that we put up by a unit of troops on the March for their protection over the night so the surveyors would have sprinted on ahead of the troops and surveyed and built it before the rest got here I think would depend upon the conditions I think it's quite likely that the surveyors would be coming up under some sort of armed guard well you've got the guard the cohort is marching up from London plus what 500 men yes an auxiliary infantry cohort be about 500 men they're going to stay here the night so you've got to lay out the marching camp for them you see this road here that's going to be this Road here you're going to do that side of it Henry you're going to do that side of it how does your one work this is a grandma right that goes on top of that that cross is called a Stella right it's a line of sight instrument using strings you've got five strings hanging down with weights on the interior works as Plumb lines so they're all vertical we can line this up down the center of our road by side by side my assistant here will go down there with a pole and we will get a line down there now because the cross at the top has got a right angle in you can now walk around here look down a line of sight again with these three strings because you've got a cross at the top this is vertical where our dating Peg is will be in our first corner of our section so basically it's simply about making straight measured lines absolutely using strings how do you do that well it's I don't use strings I don't have to untangle to untangle strings this is going to get really dirty uh instead of bits of string and sight lines I'm using lines between me and satellites orbiting the planet so by triangulating the Crossovers between these signals I can computer a point on the ground how long do you think it'll take you um within the hour I should have it done do you all know what you're supposed to do yep thanks very much here's your Maps Harvey will be the final arbiter good luck May the best man win thanks Tony all right well good luck all right uh racing an hour well maybe the Romans love their right angles this groma is a replica of the type of instrument used to Mark out Pompeii we'll catch up with the marking out of the marching Camp a little later Phil who's looking for another piece of the road isn't sure if he's hit the remains of the surface or just natural gravel Jen is opening a new trench to look for more buildings between the road and our Brewery in trench one in trench 4 there are plenty of fines but no foundations and I wonder if we haven't got a fire here because here's a rooftop that's the way it goes up if you look underneath all that conspicuous burnt Carmen you see yes yeah so what we might have is a building going on far the roof collapses and that settles down on top of one of the burning Rafters which of course is completely burned away just leaving that carbonized residue underneath so other buildings surrounded the brewery even if they burnt down over in trench 5 Phil's found what he thinks is a road ditch here this is this the the natural orange clay you see it there and you can see that it's bright orange clay there and the bit in the middle is this gray stuff you see it's with a different color darker gray color and and in places there are you little fragments of brick in it that's the in filling that's actually filled it up and to my mind it's the sort of thing that you would actually get alongside of a Roman Road if it is a road then I'd have expected to see more solid foundations but if Phil can find another ditch on the other side it must be the road on the other side of the Hill millions of pounds worth of Technology are up against pieces of string [Music] well Henry's finished pegging out his section and our Roman surveyors we'll find out how long they took tomorrow archaeologists academics surveyors will you have a look at this this is what the children at the local school have just shown me what is this a road and what uniforms are these people wearing Roman therefore what kind of road is this Katie Roman Road it is a Roman room we've seen anything remote totally like this over the last day and a half yesterday morning you were so excited you promised me you'd found a Roman Road you'd seen it from the air you'd seen it at Ground leveling under the ground where is it all we've got is a desolatory piece of gravel oh goodness tell it we're still we still got it all the evidence you've just articulated it's all still there it's telling us a big Roman Road came up through here and I think what we're seeing is a ghost of where it was it was never ever going to be like that with nice big cobbles on top of it was it I'm just still not convinced though because the gravel that we've got is actually sitting in what looks like to be ditches it's not there's not a piece of gravel with ditches either side and what the Ramones have on either side of them if the Roman Road has slipped which they do and the course changes ditches get filled in that's been seen on other excavations that road is there and then it's coming through here maybe our preconceived ideas are wrong what did they build these Roman roads out of presumably not tarmac well here in Hertfordshire they built is out of gravel and Clay they'd put a bank of clay and ran some gravel in it that's what they had to have so the classic sort of view that I've seen of different layers and so on is is a bit of a Model A bit of an ideal is it really certainly as far as this neck of the woods is concerned and they didn't follow the textbook they did it just keep doing quickly as possible using local stuff yeah what's up Phil hi great great news pot Roman pot oh this baby can tell me a bit more about it than that but that is the best piece of news we've had all done we've been talking about Roman Rhodes we've been speculating about it this means it is a Roman Road absolutely this is fourth Century pottery so it is a complicating Factor because that means it's looking like a later Road and we've got other Road surfaces around so this isn't quite what we expected but I don't really give a damn how old it is I'm just so overjoyed in trenched two I thought we were looking for signs of a ditch at the back of the buildings now all of a sudden an almost complete pots coming up so what do you think it is well I think it's one of these black burnished kitchens made right the way down the Southwest in Dorset right so we'll notice they're doing here yeah well one of the answers is it's sold in vast quantities the military right the way up in the north right as well which makes me think this is well it's quite possible but I mean it does give us a date because it's a fourth Century jar what's what's it in there this is a ditch or a pitch or something I think it's been thrown away discarded as a piece of rubbish into what looks like some sort of pit or trenches and then it's just been filled in over right do you use that can wear for cooking after you've had a few meals out of it it's become contaminated with the food stuffs it's not glazed so it's completely useless so they just Chuck it away it's a totally different set of values we think that's something nice we put it on the shelf and look after it now for them it's a universal container bang it away get another one you should coming out [Music] if this is a rubbish pit then we're much more likely to be at the back of the buildings by the ditch just before it was thrown away this part might have contained food or drink made in cheshunt even sold at the roadside Pub perhaps to passing soldiers it's been a very frustrating day today if we have found irman street it's not very clear and until we're absolutely sure we can't make sense of our settlement join us after the break when in our final eight hours we uncover the finds and clues that we need to give us a clear picture of what the Roman cohorts would have seen when they marched through cheshunt nearly 2 000 years ago beginning of day three and Mick's dragged me off into the woods again what are we doing here this time well I thought you ought to come and see a stretch of the Urban Street that's much better preserved than we've got on our site and although a lot of what you can see sort of medieval later Woodland and all the rest of it the this big wide embankment we're on is actually the the agar of the Roman Road as it runs north from our side so it's not just this little bit this is a later track yeah the the bits between the ditches from over there to over there so it's right from somewhere here yeah all the way kind of over to uh to this tree line and they were big weren't they well yeah I mean the areas defined by the ditches and of course all that we're doing today is about finding the ditches uh even if the metaling of the road has gone in the middle then the ditches Define the width of the road as it plows through and we've got to sort that out in relation to the settlement it is incredible actually even though these trees wouldn't have been here in Roman times and the whole environment would have been quite different you really do begin to get a bit of a sense of what it would have been like when Roman Legions were marching down the road foreign [Laughter] it looks as though all our hard work's about to pay off our surveying team are now able to tell us that Urban Street runs through the woods 10 yards from where we're digging Mickle put a new trench on the roadside because we're still uncertain about what happens where our settlement meets the road whether we've got a military canteen or a roadside Pub there's plenty going on at the back of the buildings with another find in trenched two where we lifted the storage jar last night it seems to be a black burnished dog dish type but of course they weren't used for dogs it just looks like a modern Dog Bush a bit like a large cereal bowl [Music] Nick we seem to have the line of Stewart's Road over there where carriers don't we yeah that's the ditch on this side of the road the roads beyond that and is this an extension to see whether to join up it's the beginnings of it and there's already stuff in there that Katie's finding what have you got Katie well at first we were really worried that the tennis court that was built here in 1904 has actually damaged all the archeology but in actual fact it stops around here somewhere where all this Rubble chorus and then we've got a feature going through here which may be a wall of a building and then we've got a cobbled surface which may be a street or a courtyard or something like that but Roz you're not nearly as interested in Stuart's Road as you are in this little funny bit here that's right and I think we need to sort out what that is and how it relates to the ditch over there and how everything relates to what we've got in here which Stitch over where the ditch over here this is in this trench yes on the far side of the look yesterday this one here well there's hardly anything there is there it's a wonderful ditch full of black silt where the pottery was found why is that so significant because of the date of the pottery and particularly because of the alignment of the ditch we know from the geophysics which this is it this is the ditch or part of it it probably went on here but the interesting thing about it is it's slightly different alignment to that of ermine street but it's on just the same alignment as a whole landscape of Banks and ditches over in that area on precisely this alignment and the interesting thing about them is that they predate the medieval Park and they appear from the pottery here to post dates in the very late Roman period so does that mean it could be dark ages it could well be yes and that's a period we hardly know anything about is it virtually nothing about it in this part of Hertfordshire it could be extremely important to the history of the area so where do we put the trench we don't dig a chance along here I am I don't do running just where just about here you with us Mick yep now you want to dig a pretty big trench over here not that huge but going through this quite big yeah yeah Ross wants to dig a trench just here have we got time to do both of them in the last few hours I don't know really I think it depends what Roz is thinking of here I mean I'm thinking of the small trench coming out here well I mean would you do this with a machine carefully yes well in which case we probably could yeah I mean I think that's very important in there we need to concentrate on that area you don't want to dig this other one do you well well I I'm interested in these alignments I think they're probably later but you know yeah I mean if it's small I mean you're such a diplomat I know your body language he's not convinced at all we'll dig it all right screw his neck sometimes so if Roz is right this settlement could have been in use into Saxon times although Pete thinks they'd have had to survive without the brewery we've got the flu in position so that the hot air comes from the fire goes under the floor and then comes up through the three positions in the the side walls and the back wall fills the whole of the Interior with hot air and you can regulate that between about five to ten fifteen degrees right the way through to 100 degrees to Malt the barley and then you've got the wooden floor over the top because when this blue they got the temperatures wrong they burnt the whole thing down because when they excavated the whole of that Timber superstructure fell into the middle ouch yeah to happen often well it seems to be a regular occurrence when they were making beer never a dull moment alongside ermine street but what happened on Urban Street itself what were these roads used for were they just for moving Roman armies about a lot of the movement would be of troops I'm sure but yeah essentially it's the movement of communications which is important too right is that this Roman Imperial Post I keep hearing about yes it is yeah and that would be serviced by a range of stations along the roads at frequent intervals and what sort of speed could they move messages and information I mean if you've got somebody in Rome and he's trying to send a message to somebody in York you know is that going to take months to do that well there are one or two literary references which survive from the Empire which do show that at times of Crisis information can travel well more than 100 miles a day I mean presumably okay that's presumably well we must be dealing with relays I should think yeah passing information on so if this place wasn't an official post it was just on the main road what would you expect to see there I personally believe that most of the places along the main roads have actually got an official nucleus to them and if obviously if you've got Roman soldiers or Roman officials of any other sort you'd expect to see the sort of buildings and the sort of amenities that they would be used to in their thoughts and fortresses so we're talking about pubs and brothels and places like that at the very least by the sound of it well I think we would you know if soldiers are getting money there'll be people there who will be providing goods and services of various sorts for the later period foreign [Music] at last there's something to see in trench for we think it's a Timber building you can see it's got a nice right angle turn there very sharp edges I think it's actually been set out parallel to a cobbled street that we had coming along here now we've taken all of that up now but it did come along here and then underneath it we have this feature coming through here which I think it's a load of Flint packing that's a foundation for something but something quite big so we've got a late Roman phase third fourth Century maybe and something a bit earlier underneath that's looking good actually because that seems to indicate what we've got at the moment is this is where you are right this is the the Roman Road the main Urban Street coming through it's in those trees over there we've got three or four ditches now we've got Pottery out of them and ditches and so on time's running out Kerry and Ian are clearing space for our last trench here Rosie's trench is also underway to see how the boundary ditch relates to the settlement and the settlement to the road but as the minutes tick away Stewart's desperate to prove that he's been right about ermine street from the start hey Alfie we found my Roman road yet I think at this time we have actually oh fantastic there's a very nice ditch running through here yeah which has got Roman pottery and it's not clear what's happening on the other side of it but it comes up and you begin to get on this side of it layers of gravel which are actually Rising yeah through here all the way up a bit loose affected by trees Roots I should think the surface is higher than the modern ground so this side of the road and it's yeah it looks to be and then if you come over to where Phil is he's got more of a metaling which is awesome I mean the real this is where we've got the real crucial evidence yeah oh Stuart this stuff here this gravel is the actual Road surface excellent I mean when I when I when I dug it it was really hard you see at the bottom there's big pebbles and then above it much much smaller Pebbles now that is individual loads of gravel going in to build up the level of the road that is not natural gravel this is fantastic yeah this is the road service you've got ditch this side ditch that side and a 16 meter wide carriageway in between this has gotta Beerman Street isn't it picture yesterday we asked our surveyors to set out a Roman marching Camp fitting pieces of string against satellite technology who did it quickest I can't tell a lie it took me about half an hour to set out the principal principal points compared to their three hours the Roman soldiers would have been dead then we started digging as soon as we put a line in you know because they wanted to get it all done how difficult was it we couldn't beat him for Speed so we we tried for the accuracy angle how accurate were the angles well I went back afterwards and surveyed in their points to look at how close they were to a nice 90 degree angle and on every case it was within a degree or so so it was all right well you're patting yourselves On The Backs but if I look down there I see a little dog's leg at the end uh well it's not as much of a dog's leg as we thought they might be because we was using string to measure they've got marked string it's waxed against shrinkage but of course over that distance which I've never done before we was obviously pulling the string it's stretching and therefore we nearly caught up with him coming down the hill I've never heard such a list skewer excuses in the whole of my life [Music] now we can see what this Camp might have looked like in Roman times on arrival the auxiliary would have thrown up a defensive ditch and Rampart about a meter high this would take about two hours after which they'd pitched their tents if they were under attack half would dig and half would defend Kent could sleep eight Soldiers with two on guard outside the centurions or officers had their own separate tents at the end of the rows the auxiliary would go to bed at dusk and get up at dawn before taking down the whole camp and marching off to the next post and with just two hours to go carenza's new trench turns out to be unmistakably Roman current or is this what I think it is it's a mosaic if that's what you're thinking it is blimey that's great news we were so surprised because Ian was opening this trench up down here thinking we were looking for the road which we've all kind of forgotten about right now yeah I mean amazing what what we're fascinated about is the fact we've got a tiled floor here yeah and then there's a gap between the two which we think might be a Timber partition between the two floors and then this Mosaic which is made up of broken up bits of the same sort of tile here but it's quite Rough and Ready I mean it doesn't look as if it's set in a mortar floor and even if it's Rough and Ready it's going to be higher status isn't it than the the brewing equipment out the back which we had earlier on exactly it's definitely the fancy end of the building so this is like the public Bar rather than the store room around the back so what are we going to do now well it's it stopped here in the tennis court so it's gonna be nothing more of it here but obviously it's Vanishing into the side of the trench so there's a possibility that this might be the the wide border around a much finer Mosaic in there so it would be great we've got to find out it's ten to four we've got a lot of trenches still open that need recordings no I'm with you on this one everyone's working flat out to find more buildings there's now so much coming up that no one's sure whether we're looking at a side street lined with shops and houses leading on to Urban Street or a series of commercial buildings one behind the other although Roz hasn't found any later deposits she's uncovering evidence of burning and there are more wall foundations with flaws between already made up his mind what the street Frontage looks like although Herman Street hasn't presented itself as a textbook Roman Road there's no doubt in our minds that we've found it and that makes understanding our group of buildings much easier Pete this is just a field now but what was going on here 2000 years ago well I think what we've got is a beer production system this is where we have a flu we've got a grain malting floor in here on a raised floor so you've got hot air coming through making it germinate then killing it off when you finish with that what you can do process it more heat and on this particular bulk here what we've got is a an area of burning over there and then as we look towards this way we've actually got butts of stone walls look and next door to them there's a half so it's it's the next process yeah it's a lot of heat and heating wardrobe needed exactly right you've got lots of Heat lots of boilings up and at the end of the day you end up with beer so as we come through here the road over there we think we found where they sell it the pub and this is the pub we think this is the pub yeah down here we've actually found a tessellated floor and if you look just on the side there we think there's a slot running through and maybe where Phillies is the bar so we're looking at Roman lino in fact Phil you're in your element you're where you've always wanted to be you're right in the middle of a pub well of course I am Tony it wouldn't be me would it if I hadn't got something to drink off it too oh thank you Gene when you were here 40 odd years ago you found two pieces of testing yes it did yes and so you left the floor for us yes I hope you think that the archeology that we've done is up to your standard better much better and I think you did a marvelous job I wouldn't have missed this diff or anything cheers thanks cheers [Applause] so our settlement had a pub shall we call it the centurion's head which was making its own zephos in a big building at the back it might have been the heart of a small group of shops and hostelaries earning their living from the passing trade on Hermann Street on either side a butcher Baker the sandal maker not forgetting our metal foundry probably all grew up around a well and of course any good settlement would be protected by a ditch at the back over many years this place became known as Chestnut derived from the old words kestra fulter the defendant place by a well [Music]

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 106,859

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, time team, time team full episodes, time team season 1, time team season 20, tony robinson, tony robinson documentary, tony robinsons romans, Rome, ancient rome, ancient rome documentary, ancient rome didnt exist, ancient rome the rise and fall of an empire, roman villa minecraft, roman villa style house, Odyssey, odyssey

Id: 1_-EhqX0mQc

Length: 48min 58sec (2938 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023