Henry VIII's Lost Armoury and Jousting Yard | Time Team| Time Team

five hundred years ago a young man ascended the English throne who was handsome intelligent gallant and really fit qualities which many people thought mating the very embodiment of our fury and chivalry and sporting prowess that man was one of our greatest kings Henry the eighth's Henry inherited Greenwich Palace in London from his father in 1509 he developed it as somewhere he could indulge his passion for jousting and all the courtly display that accompanies it somewhere around here was his armory that produced the King's Own suits of armor and just over the road there was his spectacular jousting yard where he staged and starred in his very own royal tournaments all trace of those buildings has long since disappeared but we're here to rediscover them and we've got just three days to do it [Music] the building's you can see today reflect the grand maritime history of Greenwich yet five hundred years ago a spectacular Tudor Palace stood in their place it was called placencia place of pleasure and it was here that Henry chose to build his premier tilt yards to host his jousts and found his royal armoury yet amazingly no one has ever fully excavated these sites and there are no exact records of what the buildings look like or even where they stood but that's set to change because time teams been given the unique opportunity of investigating both these sites but the armory that process has already begun well it's a typical time team weather and we've got any idea where this armory actually is well within the complex of Greenwich palace we know it's this side of a Ferrari building which is roughly underneath that you know it's to the east of a stable block which is over there we notice to the east of a Tudor tavern over in that corner so yes we're looking somewhere in this corner precisely where we don't know John can geophysics help not really we've done some work already and it's just too complicated we need more time maps to it we have no maps of this period so I can't help you left make health well I think we're back to first principles we've just got to dig a trench and see what's there and presumably somewhere in this area but perhaps Julie and I give us a sort of target I think the only clue we have is a drawing of 1558 which shows a lot of buildings in this area and there's one in a court in the corner over there a line to some of the Tudor roadways that is a good candidate for being the armor can't prove it but it's a good candidate we better get cracking on as so little is known about Henry's Royal armory just finding it's going to be a huge challenge and even if we're successful in pinpointing the right place to dig getting down to the tutor level of archaeology could be difficult Julian who's been searching for the armory for years has warned us that any remains of it may be as much as six feet down so the team wastes no time in getting the first trench marked up and the machines in with only limited evidence to hand to help locate the armory we're going to be relying on historical documents the most informative of which are two views of Greenwich drawn in 1558 by the Flemish artist Antony van den Wingard John for the two targets were after one the tiltyard and to the armory are there any clues on this winGuard drawing which give us any idea where they might be the tiltyard to start off with is fairly simple to identify there are the two towers they're like mock castles which look down onto the tope yard and there you can see the barrier and two fences so that once you've begun your run you can't just chicken out run off the other direction now these are built in 15 14 to 18 and associated with the building account we've got that mentions that is the armoury what sort of things should we be looking for and what does the armoury would look like at this piece what if you think about the way that people would come up the Thames here the first site negative London is on this Pleasant South Bank is called derm placencia and here's the park go up to the hill the Royal Apartments the chapel facing east where are you going to place industry well you can either obscure that great vision by putting it over here or you can place it over the West just here toward London the thing is that we know in 1543 the armoury goes into this dissolved friars church one starter might be the fact you've got groups of chimneys in this building on to the river and a jetty there maybe that's something to do with the delivery of the Tyrael and and and working so it could be that you'd find that that's associated with some manufacturing process that really tutor armories been excavated before nana this is what makes this particular site unique if we find it how will we know when we found it well we'll be able to identify a tudor structure but what happens inside i think we have to ask the armory experts Chris what are we looking for is it gonna be one room or a suite of buildings or what certainly we know there were several rooms being used for various purposes someone just for storage and some of the workshops we're not gonna find a suit of armor no they were all either removed two palaces before the during the Civil War or removed afterwards is there any chance that we could find something that we could associate with Henry the eighth it's possible small pieces like buckles or hinges which may have fallen through the floor could have found the way into the deputy lair we've still got a lot of digging to do before we even get close to any archaeology connected with the armory on the other side of the road on the lawns of the National Maritime Museum the other half of the team is busy opening their first trench so somewhere in here was the tilting yard where Henry the eighth and his courtiers would have done their armor mounted their horses and taking part in all their elaborate tournaments but Jonathan is a yard by definition is just a big square place isn't it we're not gonna find anything here where it's not just a yard this is the major center of early Tudor Court ceremonial I mean the most astonishing things happened here in the middle of the tiltyard itself you'll just find a barrier and either side of it knights would charge at each other for the honor of ladies in mock castles added to them were the banqueting house and this is where everyone's sad to eat as it suggests the disguising house where they disguised and had masks and balls and so on and we're just trying to pick up the end of that range here then we can calculate how far down these major features are excuse me Jonathan you've drawn this wonderful elaborate drawing and you've now told me that the treasure is Dell yes it is you're gonna have a starting point then we can try and calculate where they all are by comparison but then we'll dig in here yep so Sophie and we've got the southern edge of the range yet and we're starting to pick up something you can see this sort of crushed brick and mortar here and it looks like demolition material that's probably come from that line of firm rule there Jonathan drink mrs. Tudor well first impression says that it probably isn't that their mortar looks a bit gray and dirty not as pure as Tudor mortar but it is only a first impression but I'd say it's 17th century think you got to keep digging sir right okay [Music] oh it's thought of Henry is this rather fact grouchy middle-aged man it's a bit difficult to think of him doing jousts I think that's true but as a younger man he was noted across Europe as being one of the most athletic of the crowned heads of Europe he was born here in 1491 and obviously therefore retained a natural affection for Greenwich by the time he becomes king 1509 he's an active sportsman on the field he enjoys hunting in the chase he particularly enjoys the tilt yard and so this is for him a way of showing off his prowess both to his own nobility but also more importantly as demonstration of England pound and might and authority over other countries as well do we know much about the jaws that were have there's a very famous job that takes place here in 1527 when Henry's determined to win the respect of and also the Alliance of the King of France and so he brings the French ambassador's to London they're entertained here and then this extraordinary spectacle of this joust is put on form for which we know new buildings are built and a great deal of decoration occurs so is that when the buildings underneath the grass were built yeah the tiltyard towers had been here for about ten years by this time now this major occasion of 1527 meant that extra accommodation was provided particularly for banquets and for masks and dances so we have a series of two great halls that are linked by a long gallery between them and in the first one we have a triumphal arch of a screen behind the king when dining and that's painted by hands Holbein is his first major commission in England the best artisans from Europe were brought in to create this structure for this occasion it would be fantastic wouldn't it if we could find some evidence of this charity it would indeed and I would we actually be surprised if there weren't some evidence because these buildings were smashed down and the site has hardly been touched since so we should be in luck I think after three hours of hard digging it looks like phil has found something at the Armory Mac coming up a look at this oh that's good never knowing that curving war look at this big domed thing I got here look it's running right the way back along I know what that could be there's a big sis fit on a map of 1738 that's got a load of big lose on it oh and I just found one you probably got there the breakfall - over the top but no you mean if it's as big as this and it's dipped in a way like this just think what the damage that might have done to the armory yeah it's not good as each we've got to get a lot of that out on move ah Morris and I are on the job right okay okay Morris so even if we're successful in locating the armory we now have to face up to the fact that any archaeology connected to it may have been dug away but luckily at the tiltyard we've got a lot more to work with our main historical source for revels and tournaments at Henry's court was written by Edward Hall his chronicles helpfully tell us some of the measurements for the tiltyard buildings assuming that they'll find the boundary in trench one Johnathan's now confident he can measure out where the main buildings of the tiltyard are based on calculations derived from Hall's description yep 250 is about here so somewhere about there there should be one of the tiltyard turrets the banqueting house over here the tiltyard stretching beyond us there this is where I reckon the action is how big would this tear of a it's somewhere it probably about 25 feet in diameter maybe 30 foot John yeah I reckon somewhere around here is the big Tower look at the geophysics fantastic results I mean this looks like a huge building I mean I reckon that could be the tower it's not quite the the form I expected cuz Wingard only shows the top parts octagonal but good but it definitely suggests to me buildings here yeah I think we need to investigate those so pull it straight you there's one problem what well I've been told there may be an air raid shelter here it's just possible that this is air-raid shelter and not Tower is it hearsay or are they sort of proper don't know I think the only thing is we've got a dig to find out that's the answer so on the basis of the GF is another trench is put in over at the armory Phil's finding that the more he digs the more disused drains he exposes only a small section of pre eighteenth-century wall is stopping him shutting down the trench and taking the search elsewhere sure we've got a bit of early wall showing up nice which is nice how you getting on oh pretty well a moment big I had to go through tons of material as you can see here to try and work out where this armory might be to summarize it we've actually only got one source really just one lots of stuff published later on yeah now this one source is taken from the expenses state papers expenses ahead of the 8th yeah and he actually says the fitting shops for the Almain works the armory were erected about 1540 westwood of the palace yeah near the friars church and adjoining the Friars Road we know the palace is located in this area the friary church is here and that this road was Friars Road so that means that we're in the roughly the right area in this area in here the other things that are mentioned are accounts for bringing the source materials up by river to a landing stage here right so their site itself needs to have kind of wharfage be near the landing stage right what that leads me to suggest to you is if we're looking for remains of the armory we need to be looking perhaps more down towards the river ah down here yeah yeah and also interestingly on the later maps there's been much less development less he likely did not get so confused on Stuart's advice geophys starts surveying the river end of the armory site to see if his theory might produce the goods [Music] at the tiltyard we've already made our mark on the landscape with two substantial trenches the elegant lawn isn't looking quite as pristine as it was this morning we haven't got much so far in this part of the trench but here in this rubber trench we got our first sniff of what could well be a Tudor wall and here there are Inklings of the floor of the jousting yard but this stuff is good isn't it yeah this is to degree in pottery the sort of thing that they'd have served the food up from the kitchen no any we got the pottery we've got chewed a window glass as well so we've got evidence of the building but the most interesting find is this piece here a nice personal piece a Tudor buckle and not only can we say that it's definitely Tudor from the from the shape of it but we know where it would have been worn it would have been used as a new buckle here by man but the most exciting news of all is that over there by the digger we haven't got a World War Two air-raid shelter after all we've got something else could it be one of the big towers in which the Tudor lords and ladies watch Henry the eighth's tournaments join us after the break beginning of day two here at Greenwich over on the far side of the road where we're looking for Henry the 8th Chaston yard we think we may have got it and today we're hoping to get the big towers where the audience's would have sat when they were watching the tournaments but over here where we're looking for Henry the eighth's armory it's proving pretty elusive yesterday we dug that great big trench there we started getting excited but where's the armory well we may have a bit of it in there I've got an early war and some early deposits but since then we've been looking at the maps again having to think we think it may be more down here towards the river yeah it's the whole series of maps here which show the layouts of buildings in this area which might be partly armored it might actually stretch from up there all the way down here but the importance of coming down here is that there were more yards down here than buildings and therefore the preservation might be better and not so much destruction so the Tudor it's much like there any clues in the geophys job we've surveyed half the lawn look we've got these sort of warlike responses here so we're gonna look at those yes so basically we've got two tension on those 2 one there and one over there you know see what we hit but it's looking promising well we've got an awful lot of late 17th and 18th century brickwork culverts and structures in this one although we do appear to have bits of the original ground surface but that one needs a lot more work on it yet so but we're hopeful not surprisingly Phil who's moved from a cesspit in trench 1/2 a bunch of drains in trench two doesn't share mixx optimistic outlook I can tell Phil well there's plenty of archaeology here but afraid I don't think much of it is chuder on this side the hole of the trench going right the way through there has been cut away boy this drain not only that we appear to have another drain in here there's a big gap it's big enough to get me fingers in it looks like the only possible area where we might have a bit of stratigraphy that might relate to the armory is in that small area at that end well I'm still optimistic filming if you still got some potential in there I but but but but but I mean look we spent all day yesterday up there I know much of an area did we get little tiny bit at the end yeah we've put in another trench here we come straight down onto drains and bricks there listen this shouldn't just our bad look I think I think this area has been well and truly turning over I'm still optimistic I'm gonna get back down your drain you know dig them out over at the tilt yard where geophys think we might find the towers things are looking a bit more positive well that's much better looks like much more clearly a tude award to me and you know it's early stages but it's got all the right signs I think oh that's where we are yep we've extended the trench five meters in this direction so we're now well into this plot we've got this ward does that mean that we have to talk I record this this means we've got a Tudor structure and in this position it can only really be the tower or an associate instructor because we have the banqueting house along an alley between the palace and the first trench we dug and the tower attached to it so all in all we've got combined building to about 60 foot width it's the right area I think it's a right distance and then we've measured out I just don't know with this four or five feet we're there which part of the the buildings were in yet right we've had some nice finds as well oh good yeah yeah well the good news is they Tudor what's that one this is that Tudor Greene pottery that we found elsewhere as well so good good dating evidence on this piece that's like a piece of tile we see lots of this of a Hampton Court perfectly right isn't it your food now under another gallery that came from the banking house you'd expect kitchens you'd expect supplies of crockery for the dining above so if we find lots more of this kind of stuff maybe cooking vessels in there smashed and dumped good excellent progress so a long last it looks like we could be on top of one of the tiltyard buildings but which the towers or the banqueting-hall well look we've got the geophysics results on the old plan now originally we thought this was a tower in here but we're more inclined to think that the Tarot is probably in this area and we may be looking at the banqueting-hall in this area well that's that's right we've certainly hit onto the material we've got to de Patri associated with it so the fact that the ground looks relatively undisturbed has got lots of promise most of the rubble seems to be in that direction or maybe the walls in situ we're not gonna know until we continue the trench in a direct yeah I think we've got to put a lot more effort into this area now moisture just needs to bring fill in you know to really get an excellent idea so based on the new geophys trenched twos extended to establish whether we've got the banqueting-hall and a third trench is opened over what we hope of the towers 500 years ago this field would have rung to the sound of armor being made but the archaeologists tell me there is a much chance of finding any significant pieces under the ground it doesn't matter though because time team have brought in our own very highly skilled Armour who's going to knock something out for me right what are you gonna make me hi I'm gonna make you a Judah breastplate I'm gonna start with a flat sheet of steel and through a process of cold hammering I'm going to turn it to the final fitted form but because steel doesn't Bend like cloth does it has to be absolutely precisely measured so I need you to give me your best manly form if you'd be so kind saying good well were made to measure and no not all of it some of it in fact was court munitions armor that was made for common soldiers and a bit like today you can either have it tailored or off the peg it's exactly the same yeah how much would it have cost about the same as a car today you know if you could afford a BMW you had a BMW suit of armor if you drove a mini or 2cv well you're out of luck really weren't you so this was a major investment it was a huge investment usually one or two armors in a lifetime with my measurements duly noted down master n starts the process of marking and cutting out a template just as Henry's Armorer's would have done for him [Music] [Music] yesterday I was told we might have found the surface of the tiltyard in trench one but on closer inspection it appears that we got something quite different this trench down here doesn't seem to have in it what I expected it's got a lot of walls it is how it does yeah if you look at wind guards view we've got a whole area in red there if the lawn in front of us is you see a group of buildings just in the foreground oh right and the tilt yard is to the back and to the right of it if where we're digging is on the site of these buildings and possibly an Associated yard yeah then we will be looking at the surfaces of the yard and possibly outbuildings having developed from that in the Elizabethan early Jacobi oh that's some time after Henry but it would make sense wouldn't it that those walls are to do with those buildings there so if the tilt rod isn't there where is it down there it's about four feet at the other side of the hole really yeah luckily this miscalculation is so small it doesn't affect Jonathan's earlier measurement from trench one to the main area of the tilt yard [Music] we'd hoped that the two corners of preserved archaeology in trenches one and two might have turned up some walls connected to Henry's armory but they haven't not defeated we decide to try a change of tack [Music] great I'm hunting for the ghost of the blacksmith that was mark has been metal detecting and looking he's turned up the sensitivity really high so the things that he would normally ignore the noise background noise he I've asked him to look for he's finding little hot spots in the soil laying it out and I'm going through it with a magnet right and what I'm looking for is the residues of blacksmiths working so as they hammer the sparks fly the iron sort of scale is called hammer scales little platelets which are magnetic and then presumably they could sweep tup and cleaned out every now and then and it's made its way into the into the soil so we know we're in the area of a blacksmith working but not in their workshop because I should have a big bucketful if we were really in the wrong shop do not go down I may perhaps if we get a little closer to working it never ceases to amaze me how we can tell so much from such seemingly insignificant fines after spending a day and a half excavating eighteenth-century drains Phil's moved up to the tilt yard site and has finally got his hands on some much more relevant archaeology I like that stump of wall there fill this one yeah I'm quite excited by that if you can imagine it's got all the diagnostic features of a Tudor wall the bricks are about the right size they're fairly shallow Roy but what really gives it away is the mortar course because it's it's what it's what's called double struck they take the trowel back way 45 degrees strike it while the mortars wet under side 45 degrees the other way and that leaves a crisp line in the middle of the course and it cast a shadow picking out every brick that really falls out of favor I'm in the early 17th century so you can say that's a good tutor wall but I mean all these bits here they are the ones I've been getting their demolition well yeah there's quite a lot of nice stuff in here - there's that for example there's a piece of window glass there's no curve on it so it looks like window glass it's possibly a painted window you've seen um yeah that bit of floor toriel yeah this one this one's a nice one it's a quite a high quality floor tile all these are bits of a tudor building they're not necessarily in the right order but they're all bits the amount of stuff that we're getting yeah it'd be just nice to think particularly those floor tiles that that maybe we've got some of the floral Henry of the 8 himself walked on well I mean this is the palace he loved most so he would have been walking in this area but this is only one fragment of wall and we still don't really know what building it's part of to confirm Jonathan's earlier hunch that we might be looking at the banqueting-hall we need to find associated walls or structures so there's still a lot of digging to be done now that master M's cut the template the next stage is to shape and strengthen it by hollowing it out and although in Tudor times this would only have been done by a skilled Armour today I'm gonna give it a try we're going to use the the hollow in the log yeah and you're actually going to force the metal into the hollow with the hammer so I want a line there okay I'll help you hold it actually hammering but now I would have been a line tickle it go [Music] although we've got a good idea what Henry's armor looks like unfortunately no depictions of the Greenwich joust survived but we do have illustrations from a similar tournament this is Westminster joust from the 1511 but it's exactly the sort of thing that we've gone on here right here becomes not full permanent this is a temporary booth yeah here's Henry on his horse yeah because it took Yahoo also high vs opponent oh yes so he's aimed at the head and he's not such a turd so this is a hit for the king good lord it's intended as a pageant yes it's a way of showing off it's about impressing both the nobility here it's certainly intending to impress foreigners now all that ripped decoration a lot of that stuff would've been kept here in Greenwich when when the pilgrims built those two towers down below we'll have had space for changing rooms they would actually kept this material that's fantastic you know I didn't realize anything like that survived I mean look we can just see we're looking down the whole length of the tiltyard yeah you can imagine if that was decorated on both sides with those kind of figures that kind of decoration yeah the kind of thing we're talking about and that is happening hearing radio the end of date oh and despite opening three big trenches right across the target area were still no closer to locating Henry the eighth's armory but thanks to a small pile of hammer scale we do now know where at least digging in roughly the right place we've had a number of two defines of the tiltyard although our ambition to identify and map out the tiltyard structures rests on just one small piece of Tudor brickwork in trench two but we're sure that this wall must be part of the tiltyard complex and would determine to find more so tomorrow we're gonna pick ourselves up and hopefully ride to a victory Henry the eighth himself would have been proud of join us after the break beginning of day three of our search for Henry the eighth's tilting yard yesterday after two solid day's work all we got was for measly courses of kewda brick but now you think we might have much more I think we got much much more Tony I think we've got the basis of a major building show me well you remember yesterday we had this big block of masonry here and it turns a corner there we've got the foundation trenchant and the walls actually been robbed out so after you've gone I couldn't rest last night and week week late last night we opened up another trench now if you follow the line of this Rob Trent yeah come straight over here look a wall can I come in absolutely yeah look at this right on the line of Phil's robbed our trench that once met the corner of his wall we've got this it's absolutely right same kind of mortar nice and creamy bits of gold in it and there's nothing wrong with that as being a good tutor wall so if this wall is the same as that over there you've got a really substantial building we have we've got a nice corner as well we can start to plot on the site what do you think the building might be well I think it could be one side of either the gallery or the banqueting house on here that had the tiltyard towers attached to it but that's the problem we don't actually know which side it is I mean it could be facing directly onto the tilt yard or it could be actually at the back of the tilt yard we really don't know how do we solve it what a crucial thing is to actually find the edge of the tilt yard Julianne's actually putting in a trench over there to try and resolve that so once we've got the location of the tilt yard will know which way this but everything else will drop into place okay Julian what are we doing with this strange then we're hoping to pick up a tudor wall on this line that we found ten years ago another Tudor wolf it's it's another Tudor wall and I think it's the front side of the building range and I think what you've the Tudor wall you've had over there is the back side of it so that over here we should get the kilt yard itself if we find the tilt yard what will it look like it should be a hard packed gravel surface with sand on top of it and that's where the horses bent up and down that's the business but if we do get the evidence that we're looking for here then we'll be well on the way to getting a full picture of our tiltyard we should be much closer to the dimensions of the entire tiltyard accident yesterday it felt like we were a long way from this point yet now just two hours into day three things are looking very different with a total of five trenches open we've got two two walls in two and for demolition rubble in three and grand hopes for trench five it can only be a matter of time before we can begin to map out Henry's great tilt yard and there's good news down by the river where it looks like we might finally have found something bigger than Dana's hammer scale that could be connected with the armory this looks as if this wall might be early down the bottom down I do think it is actually I think if you sort of like look at the alignment it seems to be on the alignment of the old course of the river times is that right Stuart that's right it is this is bang on what we were looking for the wall we're standing on it's perfectly parallel to the palace and all these buildings rise that goes with this lot but this angle Dave's right it's different yeah and that fits exactly what we should be looking for this is in fact the most exciting thing we've seen so far great so we've got a new dating evidence for this wall well I think if we look at the wall itself if you study the bricks and the mortar that would suggest that it's not as early as Tudor but perhaps it is the Stuart period and also then we've actually got some small fines there's a piece of pipe which is 17th century I think but even more encouraging and which is what courage to me the most is that we're starting to come up with very distinctive shoed of how in some beautiful Tudor green where this is a fragment of a puzzle jug the puzzle being how to drink from it without covering itself in beer what it's doing here is difficult to say maybe a drunken armor I decided to keep it as a trophy after a night at the local tavern now if you've got this sort of data more material down there it's our best chance at the moment to see anything going back I think that should appear in the armor unless it's dead exciting yeah yeah it's just two hours after opening trench five at the tiltyard and already there's something to report Sophie have we got anything here yeah yeah we think we've actually found the tiltyard are you're joking no it's there's this lovely soft sand down here which would be suitable I think for horses to run around on but more important we found these bits of plaster why plaster and plaster is one of the ingredients that's documented that went into making the tiltyard so it's all broken up and disturbed there are lots of little flecks and it's the first place we've actually seen it how we got the edge of the Chilean yep even better we've picked up this is a very disturbed probably robbed Tudor wall but it is the remains of a Tudor wall so this is the edge of the tiltyard the wall on the edge here's the surface excellent just what Julian was hoping for CAI we've only finds we've got a find but it's a good one it ties in very well with this tiltyard surface it's a horseshoe can we say anything about it yeah it's a type course shoe that's called a heavy horseshoe it does date to the Tudor period we know that Henry the eighth was one of the driving forces that brought in heavy horses from France how long did those go on for they were in use first somewhere between fifty and a hundred years but it's a good Tudor date could it be anything to do with Henry I don't mean we could say it's Henry the eighth's horseshoe but it's certainly one of those renovations at last it feels as though we might actually be able to sort out the tillyard [Music] shaping armor was a long arduous and noisy process in fact for the men that made it deafness was a serious occupational hazard when the armory was working at full capacity the noise would have been overwhelming it's strange to think that Henry placed this deafening royal factory so close to his personal apartments at the Armory trench 3 the one there is the river is now seven feet deep but there's still no trace of any tudor buildings with just hours left to go David hopes Dana might be able to point him in the right direction this is coming right out of the middle of this pit we're working at the moment wow that's quite a lot just with one dip to come out so it means we're closer to where there was a blacksmith working right but not not on top of his anvil or not right around his anvil but it's nearby well I think this is pretty positive it's good evidence looking great thank you I've got more buckets to bring you okay yep it's actually getting there it's really important there that I get some final measurements it is like a suit fitting it's it's more than a fitting because as I said before you can't flex in this coming back to you Henry did because he was really into his armor that's why they set the workshop at were here in the first place but most most people do send a wax or a plaster cast it actually sort of works on you doesn't it more than us does that feel comfortable there's a pocket I didn't and I shall refrain from saying sincere with time running out in our search for Henry's armoury Mick and Stuart see if there's any more information to be had from Dana's collection of minut iron deposits Stuart this is the pile that I was when I was collecting earlier and it took me about three hours to collect this amount this one took me about 20 minutes so this amount came from the spoil heap so it's unsafe I'd don't really know where it's come from we could even been brought in from somewhere else but this is actually coming from the trench 3 quite you know fairly low down at the end of the armoury yeah so this is getting more the deeper it goes down yeah yeah we're getting very new getting closer the debris of the floor so what are we what are we looking at on on here then as iron is heated up it sort of the layer surface layers fall off as they're hammered and that you when you watch a blacksmith you see guys this boss you see sparks flying and what those are little little platelets of iron what about these almost perfect little yeah those like that one there's perfect is there a story in themselves you only get these little spheres if they're heating to a very high temperature right and you doing that if you want to weld oh so it's not just hammering metal they're actually actually welding yeah so that's again part of we're getting more of the story of what was going on in the workshop and so it seems that with patience and detailed analysis is the smallest of fines that's proved to be our richest source at the tiltyard we'd hope to find the foundations of the towers in trench 3 but as yet all we've got is associated to the rubble but thanks to some careful excavations but you Dewar's found in trenches 2 & 4 are beginning to form a coherent picture so you've made progress only since I cuz I saw this little tart here earlier on but he got all this to play with and you've got a buttress congratulations yeah we've cleared away all this rubble then we found this big block here and this brick stuff descending away from the wall what do you think I could be actually that's really nice because I'm Phil's trench next door he had what seemed to be a buttress and in the robbed out wall next to he you've got the wall and the butters together we showed is all part of her a big external wall and we're looking for a first floor banqueting-hall yeah that was thirty feet wide must have had a timber roof with quite a thrust on it so we'd be looking at an external wall embracing a big building like that broad footings to me but all the ingredients ever ever Bank T Hall but before Jonathan will finally commit and say that we've definitely found Henry the eighth's magnificent banqueting-hall he proposes one more test hey Henry if you've got a second yeah thanks I got a theory really that this wall is part of the banqueting-hall 1527 and Edward hall the chronicler tells us it's 30-foot wide and we seem to have two walls that add up to 30-foot but he also says it's a hundred foot long okay now if that's right the two buttresses we've got they should be part of a system that adds up to a hundred feet okay so maybe five times 20-foot but if that's right then this one that one there should be 40-foot between them if not then we can forget the whole thing so it's kind of make or break forgived point on each yeah I would still the distance isn't right in the middle of each because the EK these things should have breaks the roof trusses and each of the roof trusses is set equally apart all right so look okay any so here's the other one the second buttress yeah and maybe you can get the middle up let me down something like that yeah see what you think right just know fifty point two one two you beauty supporti feet so you got you got 24 units five of them yep we've now got a whole hundred for a long 30-foot wide it's got to be the banking us throughout the afternoon master M has been busy transforming my breast plate unfortunately our armory lacks the necessary horse-drawn polishing mill required to buff and shine the armor so that process has to be done elsewhere in Henry's day it would have taken just over a week to make this piece but with Master M's skill and a little bit of time team ingenuity we've done it in just two days I've got straps on it a very common way of holding breast plates on in those days just really snug that's the idea what's this that's to protect the stomach it's called a folde it has sliding rivets on the side so that when you get on your horse it all lifts up nice and flexible six o'clock and the remains of the armory have proved too deep or too disturbed for us to find but thanks to Dana's minut hammer scale we can now say for certain that on this site not only did our murres hammer sheet iron in two suits fit for a king they also welded it here and let's not forget Stewart who's been busy digging out original source material and has managed to pull together a vivid picture of what the armory may have looked like what was the extent of this armrest you I'm not sure whether we're dealing with a garden shed or something that's you know huge complex I think it's a bit bigger than the gardens right I've been looking at their original accounts and inventories and work that's being done here in that period and we're actually able to build up quite a nice picture of what's going on there's a cutting room that's where the plates are actually being a shape there's a workhouse which is probably the main the main work area or palpating taking place there's a locksmiths office there's an armory stable there's an armory store yard there's a staff house and there's a horse-drawn polishing mill so it's quite an extensive yard with with buildings around it a very least it is and there's also 22 Armorer's in 1511 yeah plus they'll be apprentices and so on as well but the interesting thing can give us some idea of shape and size of what's going you've got this horse-drawn polishing mill well that in itself needs 10 meters just to perform that function and it's probably in a yard so you're going to need all these buildings probably in a courtyard arrangement with a yard for the mill in the centre so it could easily occupy several of those patches of grass that we've got out there without any problem at all so I ought to be thinking of a sort of like a small factory with a lot of activity going on in eating different in different buildings in different rooms I've got some it's a really good word describing its bang on yeah yeah we may not have found any original suits of armor but we've managed to get our hands on a copy of one of Henry's that was actually made in Greenwich at six foot two Henry was a massive man for his time and the only person here who comes close to filling it is film the original of the suit was made in 1540 and it's thought it may have been Commission's to imbue Henry with youthful vigor just before his union with Anne of Cleves [Music] but is unlikely that I never got to see her husband in this suit as the marriage lasted just six months with the end of the day fast approaching Johnathan's now confident that finally our five trenches have given us enough to work out the layout of the tiltyard this shows the alignment of all the halls disguising house of 1527 gallery the banqueting house at the same year off we go to the tudor palace by the river and here are the tiltyard towers looking down on the action below yeah but on this site we need to be able to fix them don't we we would be looking at the end of that range going down toward the Riverside palace in the Tudor period yep here in this trench in the foreground here we've got some service buildings so that's off the drawing just down this area yeah now we're looking into the tiltyard proper and we'd expect it to be on the right-hand side stretching back toward that road and the middle trench is probably about there oh so that's actually in the till job well it's picked up the gravel the sand and the plaster associated with the toilets all the pebbles in it yeah and a bit of horseshoe yes yes they've even got a even a bit of horse there too which is nice now honest on the the trenches toward the back we've picked up on some tudor war which is probably about there right Edward Hall in his chronicle tells us the banqueting house is 30 foot wide and the distance between a Tudor wall in that trench and this one here is 30 feet that seems hardened it so that's really yeah pinning it down nicely and we're really singing when we get toward the back because where we expect to find the Tudor tiltyard towers the geophysics shows a great mass there yeah and what we find in that trench is a whole lot of masonry that's associated with Tudor demolition that's a lot clearer now let me see where that fits in [Music] [Music] people usually associate Greenwich with his great maritime history but after three days battling we've managed to put a crucial piece of Henry the eighth's regal history on the map we can now say that over there was the tilting yard where Henry himself laid about his opponents and over there was the banqueting-hall where he feasted after the tournament we took a bit of a battering over the three days and had a bit of a struggle but in the end we fought through to a noble and most excellent victory [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 152,486

Rating: 4.9155936 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, Henry VIII, Catherine Of Aragon, Pope Clement VII, English Reformation, Church of England, Jousting, Chivalry, Divine Right Of Kings, King Francis I Of France, Laws In Wales Acts 1535 And 1542, Edward VI, Anne Boleyn

Id: Ipco5PuvvgA

Length: 48min 50sec (2930 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020