Does This 13th Century Chapel Actually Date Back To The Iron Age? | Time Team | Timeline

hi everybody and welcome to this documentary on timeline my name is Dan snow and I will tell you about history hit TV it's like the Netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit TV you can either follow the information below this video or just Google history hit TV and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video [Music] come on don't put your back into it as usual the first job of the day is to get John and his team on the case with their geophysical wizardry I can't see any obvious pitfalls on the side so they've no excuse not to deliver hey Upjohn this must be the perfect site for you it's an absolute nightmare oh come on it is wide open there's nobody about there's no power lines no trees and wide open it's about the size of a sixpence it's really not an easy sight I mean there's hardly any soil on the ground I mean look we straight onto bedrock come on it's a lovely day enjoy yourself enjoy yourself the village of Beadnell is situated on the northeast coast of Britain just a few miles south of bamburgh castle and the monastery island of Lindisfarne our site herbs nook is a small promontory on the edge of the village it's a location steeped in history the question is where best to start looks like someone's done a survey or something of it already yeah it was dug in the middle of the 19th century 150 years ago and they thought it was associated with some Tabb who was a local 7th century Saint I mean the chapel itself is thought to be 13th century but what we don't know is whether or not there's any evidence of anything that is going way way back before that time yeah also people have been picking loose bone up along the pathway on the north side of the chapel we need a section of a trench that takes in the burials on the chapel and then there's this mysterious conker looking thing here it is at the east end of the chapel and there is a strong suspicion that he might be earlier that's the crucial thing when does the story really begin we need to find out when the first structure was built on ABS nook and discover why human bones keep rising to the surface could this be an early Christian site going back to the 7th century and the time of centerra herself this isn't the first time in recent history that herbs nook has gone under the Spade during the Second World War it was covered in coastal defense trenches away from the dig I want to find out what the two newest members of our team have in their sights the first thing that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have a look of what the Second World War damage will have done to the site boy look at than the wider landscape as well and then treat meters all for that I'm really excited about this one I really want to get stuck into the early medieval Dark Age history and find out Houston Abbot is thing I'm most intrigued about I think is this mysterious lump could it be something that's much older or is it just Second World War up on the headland the team are preparing to open the trench over the chapel it'll stretch from one side of the promontory to the other wind how many times Phil's hat flies off in this wind we should put a piece of string around it round it so it holds it on these ears you know Oh [Music] the Reverend Jane wood is the local parish vicar and her church is named after you've guessed it sun-tap Mary Ann's keen to get some background information on the site Jane how does this site the parish church relate to the chapel on the coast once a year on the 25th of August which is an herbs festival the community all go down to the point to the old chapel we start off with a picnic and that that's all shared and then we haven't we have a service and it's quite a festival Jane what is it that you wants us to find in the next three days well one thing we've found these bones have been coming to the surface and various people have found them which suggests as a graveyard down there and if there is I'd like to know where it ends how big it is because obviously people are walking over there and that's not a good idea [Music] this stop is just plain stubborn we want to find out how old this chapel is which means getting good dating evidence but as it isn't a domestic site we're unlikely to find pottery so we're looking for architectural features burials anything that could give us that all-important information well the rest of the team battle the wind Alex Maryann and dr. Sam Newton found sanctuary in a nearby B&B they're scouring the local maps and documents hoping to find clues as to the age of our site unfortunately the earliest reference I can find to a chapel on that site is from this map which is 1707 and it's not particularly clear can you just make that out that splash of red there oh yeah with a little cross next to it yeah exactly so that's giving us our earliest reference to a chapel a religious focus on that site is that the first building that would have been on that site it needn't have been a building start with it might have been a sort of outdoor of like a cross a standing cross the very fact we've got a dedication to a rare 7th 3rd century AD s formidable in her own right on this place alone suggests we've got something earlier but again we have to wait and see what archaeology can or cannot prove so the documents weren't much help the place name adds nook with its reference to San Deb could easily point to an early structure on the site may be a standing cross mix doing a really important job pondering when I first saw this you see this square thing here or this lumpier yeah remember the site we did look mall on the western coast of Scotland no no you never know where we put in do you but there is a chapel and out the east end was this thing called a locker which was like an outdoor shrine with a cross on it yeah right and then this is in the same position it might be something to do with that but this could all be Second World War so it could be say from when the Vikings were over here when it could be from when the Yanks were over there indeed we think a hole and find out Marianne and the Reverend Jane are hot on the trail of the eponymous and tab Sam who wasn't AB before I answer that question I must be deadly pointed out the correct pronunciation should be sent AB but we'll stick to it because it's what we call around here so fair enough and her name therefore as Old English and it fits with the names of her illustrious brothers Saint Oswald himself her King a martyr very powerful man in his own right and he's almost as powerful brother oz we all of them the children of the formidable old King Alfred of Northumbria who really put North honor on the map in in a very big way some ABS descended from the old gods just like her brothers and so she's got an intrinsic sanctity in her blood so Sam what was the role of women in the church at this time in the 7th century women clearly are playing a very big part in the church so in dad is one of a series of what I would call formidable Alice's we see across the country at this time part of the the the newly establishing religious allegiance of Christianity back on site things don't seem to be going according to plan at least not the plan I saw you two guys you're always the same you say you're going to do one thing you do something entirely different I was expecting the trench that started there when all the way way over there what have we got this little stumpy thing yeah well while you've been having a Kip and drinking about a champagne or whatever else you've been doing what we've been out here we've had a revised strategy yes but we have done exactly what we said we were going to do no you haven't you were gonna put in a trench down there all the way over there we haven't dug it there health and safety so what we've done is we've moved it and we've dug it over there where it's safe to dig it so you've got the separate bit of bit strange what's your magics yeah over here health and safety you put a little safety out and safety you cannot dig this close to the edge of the cliff oh I see so you put me in there yeah the rest of the trench is exactly as we said it was going straight the way across headland that's a very silly hat so you can save defeat again well the archaeologists seem to know what they're doing with the chapel but that's not the only reason we're here for years people have been finding human bones on this promontory and sure enough jack is spotted something lying just beneath the surface of the footpath well Jackie what you got there somebody's arm so you put two bones the forearm and then when we get down the bottom here you can just start see little bones of the wrists coming through there so it looks like we've got our first in situ burial right in the middle of the footpath you couldn't get more excavating human remains is a painstakingly slow process so the path will need to be closed off for the remainder of the dig it's nearly the end of our first day here in M's nook and while I've been tracking the progress of the trenches Mary Ann's been out and about researching the history of the site okay the documents aren't that helpful there aren't many references to some herbs or bits can't really but Sam thinks that the place name is key for the archaeologists pretty tantalizing too there's this feature at the East End my concur which we haven't even started looking at well that might tie in to this idea that Sam had that if it is an early Christian site there might have been a free-standing cross right at the end of the promontory so do we have a very early Christian sighs or is it a second world war gun emplacement we'll find out tomorrow beginning of day two here at beautiful Beadnell in Northumbria where we're looking for evidence of a very early Chapel dedicated to some EEB local 7th century Saint and as you can see it looks as though we've already got the later medieval Chapel wall and behind me there's lots of mysterious lumps and bumps which appear to be much earlier so we're certainly going to excavate those and over here there's the extension of this trench we've kept the grass on top to prevent erosion but the big story so far has got to be Jackie and the bones that she's found including what seems to be almost an entire skeleton right in the middle of the path what can we tell about it now Jackie well almost entire skeleton is correct because we've got the legs down here so we've got the femur here kneecap in it and the lower part of the leg and then across here we've got the forearm and the hand bones but as you get up this end here unfortunately we've lost the bone from that end the skull is gone basically it's been eroded by people's feet as they're walking along because it's so very very shallow at least it's a low now obviously it would have been deeper in the past how do we know that well if you look to the land to either side you can see it's much high sea so actually the original height would have been like that yeah so there's all that difference in yes and you can see here even where as taking the turf off the turf is lifting the bone up with it yeah we've informed the authorities that a skeleton has been uncovered on site and the local coppers have turned up to investigate well we are right in the middle of the path there's parts of an adult left over there you can see that's the arm that's the arm there and the legs there the implications all are that we're dealing with a medieval very I'll just bring you down oh the windows get a couple of lines off you know that effective yeah little statement uh-huh okay while Jackie is assisting the police with their inquiries Phil's working on getting down to the original floor of the chapel but it's a bigger job than he'd expected well I mean apart from just beginning to get the layout of this building which is impressive we are actually getting some some fines but you see we've got within the same layer we China and medieval pot so what is that white China and that's you know that that's probably I don't know 14 15 16 century something like that still no idea how much deeper you're gonna need to go no I mean we just have to keep digging till we get to the bottom we must reach the original floor to give us a chance of finding evidence that could date the chapel over in the pathway trench Jackie is meticulously excavating her skeleton outside the South door of the chapel Ian and Matt have yet to hit archaeology so far we've not been able to answer any of the questions we set out to resolve could John's geophysical results be about to give us the break we really need i hope you've not been holding your breath i mean it's all very confused where we've collected the data I mean I don't really know what we've got I think my main worry is we know there were World War two trenches cutting across here right these trenches will explain the confused pure physical results right I mean the Warriors have they disturbed the archaeology below well we shall find that out H because that bit there he's actually going through where the doorways are into the chapel that's the South door in the safe door right and it looks as though it misses that point of interest at the end of the chapel and our results suggest that probably isn't modern oh that's a relief at you because we are going to dig that so this the trenches missed it but it's not modern it's still worth us looking at in relation to the chapel so the G Affairs didn't give us exactly what we were hoping for but we did get some valuable information about the mysterious mound that I've been calling the conquer now we know it's not a recent addition and wasn't affected by the world war two trenching it's shot to the top of our to-do list result after seeing the disruption that showed up on John's geophysics Survey Alex is seriously concerned that the archaeology in the South doorway trench could be badly damaged how's it going Matt we've cleaned down to what I think I'd like to think of as the first kind of undisturbed archaeology you say undisturbed yeah well that's great news to me because this is the area where we were most worried about that second world war damage coming through the south wall of the chapel here and this is of course where you're digging so it looks like the Second World War trench would have come across something like that the only damage that we do have actually is from the 19th century and chlorine so you've appeared to have found the barrel over there like had a good look at it a couple of it's about an F favorite so we're Second World War [Music] okay well when Alex concentrates on the more recent history of the side Maryann wants to go back in time to the 7th century when San Deb was alive she's keen to find out how our site might fit into that early Christian coastline Sam and Mick figured that an interactive lesson is probably the best solution personally I think it's just an excuse to relive their childhoods right so we've now got all the early anglo-saxon royal centers we've got Edinburgh that way we've got Bamburgh near us we've got Lindisfarne and in all the monasteries that get established in the seventh and eighth centuries along the coast the red bucket represents Beadnell where our sites located we want to know if we can add it to this pattern of early Christian size you know this is all established say from 650 right through to right 800 there's a golden a Northumbria not only all these monasteries but they're full of people producing these great manuscripts with illuminations and color and so on they have no reason to think that anything's gonna happen they're going to carry on as Northumbria forever I mean something happens in yes 793 out of the blue across the horizon it comes to the attack at the Viking you mean literally out of the blue because it's the Vikings coming over the sea across the horizon you see the problem is the monks on there think that God is looking after them and nobody can walk in and Nick all the the treasure and kill everybody I think you know a bolt from heaven or come down and kill the perpetrators but it doesn't happen and these local coming over the sea realize that there are these places full of treasure that are unfortified so you can damage all those coastal monasteries as the Vikings raid them montt where mirth Jarrow with the monks well the monks leave Lindisfarne and they eventually end up at durham which is a fortified Peninsula in the weir valley and it's that it know that still because in the 12th century people from durham seeing all these ruined and wrecked monasteries from a couple of hundred years before decide that they've really got to reestablish them they rebuild in this farm they rebuild Jarrow and that could well be when our place at beaten off is established as part of that process all reestablish and we establish this time we have to repair them because they all get repaired in the 12th century so beaten all could have been an early Christian site abandoned during the Viking raids and rebuilt in the 12th century or it could simply have been established when the monks returned from Durham to reclaim the coastline we really need to find something we can date it's halfway through day two and things are beginning to fought out at the far side of the chapel we've discovered a skull and over by the South doorway Matt's finally reached something useful there's two interesting things are on this trench this end of the trench but a wall coming along there it seems to turn a corner and go off in that direction beyond the end of the trench and that was pretty unexpected it's on a completely different alignment to the chapel doesn't seem to join up with it it could be an earlier structure what's slightly more expected it's down here can you see these stones had a few bones come out of it some adult foot bones there and just a child or baby's leg bone as well so two individuals is this what they call a kiss the sort of stone lined burial yes you can see it coming across there along there be going out this direction beyond the trench what are you gonna do with it now well I think we might just keep on going in side here see if we can find any more bones and then possibly extend either way I think the mystery so that mystery wall means there could be a second building on the side which is great but we still haven't gotten it dateable evidence and we're running out of time well the team are breaking their backs on the headland Mary Ann's discovering why there were so many early Christian monks in the area is there something about this coat that drew them here particularly yes there's a real pattern here in this and all the landscape under these northern skies there's a sense that the coast is at the edge of the world we're right out on the edge of the known world they're turning their backs on everyday life and they are contemplating infinite in these remote spots these are the northern equivalents to the Desert Fathers wrestling with their demons in our quest for knowledge about the site we're leaving no stone unturned alex has just been volunteered for the risky job of abseiling down the cliff face we're keen to find out what he can discover from the layers of deposits crumbling into the sea can you see there well we've definitely got archaeological deposits here yeah and if I actually just lean up to there okay that is a mussel shell now what's it doing all the way on top of our from on tree here how did it get here yeah yeah yeah so that's someone obviously living up here and eating seafood so could it have been some kind of dump around here do you think we know we've got the same sorts of deposits are rolling out of Lindisfarne holy Island just further up the coast and so it's just as likely that if we've got human occupation here that they're going to obviously be throwing their waste out and this is what we're seeing being exposed here by the weather right well let's see who's in the lunch queue first shall we certainly not gonna be me is it guys middle of day two here ABS nook in Northumbria and we've got skeletons coming up all over the place we've got really interesting walls and absolutely no dating evidence no that's why it's not so far no but we always knew that was gonna be a difficult thing to do so what are we gonna do well we've had permission to take some of this stone wall away so where's the bit we're gonna remove well you see where floors green boxes yeah it's the stones just beyond that we're gonna be able to take them down and go straight there and hopefully we might find some kind of architectural feature during the seventh and eighth centuries this coastline was a hive of activity only twenty miles down the road on the island of Lindisfarne the local monks created a priceless and unique work of art one of Britain's greatest treasures the Lindisfarne Gospels Susan Moore is a professional calligrapher an expert in using the original materials and techniques of the period it's not amazing the pages are made from calfskin vellum so the calfskin is treated with lime they take off the skin and a hair and then it's scraped and sanded until it's a really nice surface to write on really better than paper actually did they have to make their own painters we did they couldn't just buy the paint so we had to go right back to the natural materials and some pretty weird and wonderful stuff there I think the purple is made from rich and mixed with stale urine I'm gonna have a go what are you creating one of these pages okay but Alex I'm gonna send you on a bit of a shopping trip how goal was to find out when the first structure was built on Ed's nook and the Reverend Jane wants to know the extent of the bearings to answer those questions we've dug three trenches the pathway trench the South doorway trench and the chapel trench but as yet none have produced the evidence we need it's time to dig one more this is the moment I've been waiting for that's the chapel there right so it's here on this drawing and over here is a thing which I called the conquer because it's got little spikes coming out of it actually looks more like a space invader but people are still all calling it the conquer now and that's here excuse me lads and you reckon make it could be quite early don't you it could be yeah I mean it's little sort of structure like this off the east end of a chapel like this you know you're thinking perhaps base for a cross or place for a shrine or something like that on the other hand it could be Second World War well I don't think it can because John's looked at the geophysics now and he can see the concrete bases of structures up here and this isn't one of them so if there ever was a little mound of stones with a cross on the top then this would be the perfect place for that's what we're hoping keep your fingers crossed down in trench one phil has colored a willing pair of ears for the Reverend Jane it's a unique opportunity to see layers of history peeled back from a place that's always been close to her heart for seven years I've been holding a service level here on celebs Day and here we are in it you know they dug it over in the 19th century I've been told that okay now their interpretation of them was the where we're standing now would be at the east end of the nave so they are suggesting that you'd go through there and the high altar is in front of us that's where you go that's not where I go [Laughter] if this was the nave and the Chancellor's you'd expect that it's always gonna be built in one go you look here you've got a straight joint going all the way down there if it was all in one phase they would be if they all knitted in together and so what it looks like is that perhaps we've got two phases that it's later than this that's good because what it would mean is that the original chapel was literally a rectangle very similar to what you'd expect in the early Christian a chapel it seems likely that our building was constructed in two stages the original was similar in shape to early Christian chapels while the extended version was more like a type of structure built in the 12th century the intrepid Alex has managed to track down the last items on Marianne's bazaar shopping list Alex well he got me some seaweed here with lichen on good luck making pigments out of this stuff swans feathers as well just said it couldn't be done some eggs some charcoal good copper some copper as well I've got my work out Kassie this trench is in our mystery lump isn't it it is as soon as we've taken the turf off we're pretty much immediately down on lots and lots of human bone and what we're finding is we've got neonates all actually probably slightly only baby's bone neonate being newborn you know very very tiny babies I mean this one's no babies in the plural yeah we've got where are they one just over there it's quite hard to see in the dust this and just some ribs and skull at the top yeah sort of curled round to the left so he's got his arms up in his neck drop and the same with this one is the skull just here a little eye socket you can see how tiny that yeah and then there's a humerus and it arms just down there back around there and it again likes of facing this way have you any idea why so many newborn babies might be in the same place well the the idea is that as a complex like this falls out of views and the center moves to whatever your new local church is that it continues the site continues to be used for the burial of you know very tiny influence that people who aren't baptized if you like people that haven't quite made full status to end up in a church aren't so so they're a little bit of a problem and you take them to as near as you can get to a homey place and it seems to be that you you take all the babies to the same place how do you find doing this kind of excavation I should find it quite tricky I think the people inside I'm the sorriest when it comes to digging up for little kids I have and it's when you see their fingers and it's just like your little baby's fingers and then they never really got a go that's the trouble when we came to ABS milk we didn't expect to find a cluster of baby barrels outside the East End of the chapel it's a poignant insight into the way the site has been used through the centuries but it's also difficult for us as each burial would take time to excavate in the chapel trench the central wall has been dismantled in the hope of finding some dateable architecture but it's a long shot it looks like the only way we're going to be able to find out when this chapel was built is to find bone that we can radiocarbon date Maryann's learning how to create the pigments that the 7th century monks would have used to produce the original Lindisfarne Gospels looks nice makes it brighter and richer regular chickens are regular chickens egg come on Delia [Music] that's a gorgeous ready orange color what color does the like and make that makes a purple but it's not just a lighter you need to to treat it so it actually needs some urine on there well down the pub tonight no prizes for guessing who will be asked to provide a specimen we've come to the end of day two and it's time to face up to some hard decisions when we came here we set out to go as far back in time as we clear on that maybe even the yeah now we've done fantastically well today certainly in terms of skeletons but the fact is that they're preventing us doing what we came here to do in the first place I suppose that our problem is where can we get deepest into the site to get what might be the earliest material because we all the skeletons will take forever it'll it it'll slow us off so I mean I'm wondering whether we shouldn't pick certain of these trenches which will get us back to the deepest the early stuff and now we've established that there are our burials all over the place like you say I think we should select yeah separate ones for further examination you're going to say different trenches are near where we should be digging is the ones where we can get enough radiocarbon samples to get firm dates to compare back to the chapel oh we've got to do 25 wait God do nothing of the sort this is gonna go on a still closing time finishing their argument up there is one tiny thing I said I would do for Mary Ann this evening beginning of day three here in Ed's nook in Northumbria and we've got a major problem as you can see there's a skeleton there slap-bang in the middle of the path without a head over here in this trench we've got a jumble of bones plus a skeleton with its head in this trench here we've got the skeletons of three little babies four little babies thank you Cassie as you see things are changing all the time in this trench this a jumble of bones down here we've got a stone burial box in another jumble of bones and the problem is all these bones understandably take a long time to deal with which means we can't get down to the archaeology and answer the questions we came here to answer which are how old is this site and can we link it to its patron saint san Deb and the debate has been going on long and hard all through the evening as you can see there's a few bleary eyes here today in particular this pair what are we going to do about these trenches we can't dig everything can we know what we certainly can't deal with all the burials in every trench and and I think we're agreed we don't need any or trenches we've got a lot of work on but you disagree about which trenches to live and which trades to do the difficulty is deciding which ones will give us the early material or the earlier barrels that we can get dates you're gambling getting down to find skeletons which we might not actually get you do realize that between the two of you you've argued for every single trench except trench five the one with the little babies in it which is the one that I want to excavate don't laugh on me Joe grunting the reason is because mixes that that could be where the earliest part of the site actually is you might have to swallow your pride and and actually accept that because of the babies in there we cannot resolve that trench without something to date we're unable to prove the age of the chapel as this is a religious site we're unlikely to find much pottery so our only option is to look for a burial either under or next to one of the walls Maryann is ready to start work on her Lindisfarne gospel she's using similar materials and tools to those the monks worked with over a thousand years ago but she's only got one day to create her work of art see this is really hard it is very detail work absolutely minut is it likely that they would have worked outside I think it's quite possible after all the windows are very small and if you've got a nice sheltered area the lights brilliant when you're working outside we've got an extra piece of equipment on the problem tree and within minutes it pays dividends this has just come from the spoiled that Alan's detecting on at the moment it's a medieval silver coin so you can see just about make out the portrait of the king what I can make out is the words Rex and King of England and I've managed to date it so far between 1277 and 1379 what do you think then Jackie well I think what you thought was just asked early yesterday part of an articulated in situ in dividual here you've got neck vertebra coming down here and then across here we've got the shoulder so I think we've got an undisturbed burial this is the kind of staining you get from shroud pins now the problem with shroud pings is that they have a very long life so it's not very handy for dating but there have been none found before the 12th century so another great find but still nothing to link our site to the 7th or 8th century and we're running out of time [Music] so I try with the magnifying glass it's the course if that helps such fine work oh that is better no reading glasses back though people argue about whether they might have had some kind of magnifiers but there's no evidence for it since we've been digging this site we've found plenty of skeletons but none close enough to the chapel to allow us to date it what we really need is a burial that's adjacent to or inside one of the exterior walls in the southern doorway trench the burials seem a bit like buses you wait for ages then free turn up at once so what have you got there I've got this chap here and that's his skull and his face is facing up that way that's the top of his humerus so he's running that way I've got the arm bones in the hand of another burial running through here like that and then down here I've got the pair of feet what those bones are telling us where we've actually got now a skeleton which is going underneath the stone kissed that is very very good and we were beginning to get some idea of stratification the lowest burial is of most interest if it's still in its original resting place it should give us a clue to when this site first came into use if we can get some more bones from that pair of feet down there we could get a radiocarbon date for this side of the chapel would be great oh yeah roll on some ABS [Music] so what we got here than Emma this is the 19th the topographical survey has been completed and it's revealed something rather intriguing a piece of information that could tell us more about the later use of this site this feature here now this is the thing this is this is interesting me now have you got the World War two trenches then yep what is interesting here is they break with this regular crenellations don't they yeah when they hit this Mound I mean it'll either come across well I would have thought stone or now something permanent yeah that's caused them to go round it that's like a raised platform that we can see there I'm sure Mick will be interested in that when the Lindisfarne Gospels were originally written they'd have taken a skilled monk over five years to complete its astonishingly difficult finger swipes back but you've done amazingly well we have that for church please it'd be lovely a real reminder our time here of course things are really starting to come together now jackie has almost completed the excavation of the bones in the South doorway trench and over at the side of the chapel work is finished on the skeleton Tracy uncovered three days ago we set out to discover when the first structure was built on ABS nook it's finally time to give the Reverend James some answers great things have happened since yesterday yes but first I want to tell you something about the site before the chapel was here people were here before they even built the chapel so how did you find that out well you see the the evidence is in here can you see there there's a very dark layer now that layer has got charcoal in it and it's got evidence of where people were actually living we've got it over in that hole over there we've got it over here and the foundations of the chapel cut through that dark layer so that dark layer is earlier than the construction of the chapel people were here who knows whether it's got anything to do with synapse it may do we just don't know how old that is but the first building is this square chapel that we're now standing in and it's a double square and that type of plan is more associated with early build and say earlier than 1100 we now took this away and you can see here this is the foundation of the main east wall that went right away through yesterday was talking that maybe this would be where the altar originally stood now I think later on you were actually going to be redepositing some bones that have been found at eroding out of the pathways that have been brought in by local people might I suggest that this could not be a more appropriate place I mean this marks the place where the original altar would have been a better place to blow back yeah the very first building that stood on this site would have been a small chapel possibly seventh or eighth century we think this was extended in the 12th century to form and longer building the mystery wall mat found could have been part of a priest's dwelling and the mound that alex pointed out on the topography may have been the base for a large fire a sort of primitive lighthouse our enigmatic conquer trench remains a mystery we chose not to disturb the baby skeletons any further and closed it down we'll never know for sure but it's possible that this area could have been the site of a very early standing cross to help us date the site we took radiocarbon samples from four of the chapel burials surprisingly they all dated to between the 16th and 19th centuries this means that ebbs nook was used as an unofficial cemetery for centuries after the chapel had gone out of use the burials here would probably people excluded from the parish church yard perhaps those who couldn't afford a parish burial or even bodies washed up on the beach at the end of our three days here on ABS nook there's just one thing left to do over the past few years the community have been picking up bones from the site now it's time to return them to where they belong [Music] God our Father in loving care your hand has created us and as the potter fashions the clay you've formed us in your image through the holy spirit you have breathed into however fascinating the chapel itself may break it's this area of the site the conquer that I've been continually drawn to over the last three days although none of us could possibly have guessed the secret that would be revealed here all these tiny little skeletons babies whose mothers clearly wanted them to be buried in a church but for some reason or other they couldn't so instead they placed them somewhere they believed to be holy and in doing so they carried on the age-old tradition that Abe's nook is a sacred place [Music]

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, time team, tony robinson, archaeology, dig site, british history

Id: Hyu-luaPq6c

Length: 45min 23sec (2723 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020