Corridors Of Power | Time Team (History Of London Documentary) | Timeline

we've dug some important sites on time team but they don't come much bigger than this because this is Westminster Abbey [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Westminster Abbey is the setting for coronations and state funerals it's packed with the tombs of centuries of monarchs poets architects and politicians the people responsible for shaping the history of Britain [Music] the abbe standing today is largely the ambitious design of King Henry the 3rd in the 13th century although it bears the scars of centuries of renovations but there's one crucial piece of his original design that's missing because he built a sacristy a huge stronghold said to a house the biggest collection of treasure this side of the Alps and amazingly this important building vanished and we've got just three days to find it [Music] Henry the third began to build Westminster Abbey in 1245 it was one of the most expensive building projects of the Middle Ages and set Westminster on course to be the political center of London whenever this talk of a time team coming to London you back off that's right well you're here because of Westminster Abbey you know is the great Benedictine abbey in the country one of the biggest we're looking for a sacristy yeah yeah am i right in saying that that's the room where they kept all the stuff for the services yeah where they keep the the chalices and patterns and where the the copes for the clergy to wear it kept where all the paraphernalia roof for the services it kept so a Rube Orton ruled Warwick do we have any idea where this sacristy actually is yes the the sacristy or what they thought was the sacristy was discovered by accident in 1869 when Sir Gilbert Scott was working on this area and repairing the building and then particularly this north porch and they lowered the ground level all round this side and bumped into walls and this is the plan they produced it that's in this area here this LJ's in here from the north so do we think we don't still here just under the grass what we hope it is still there but there is there is a little hitch in that Scott also ordered the construction of a voltage chamber down here in in this area and then it was demolished again not many years later I've suddenly been overcome by gloom we're not going to find anything are we no I think it's extremely unlikely that they dug everything out and if we did find the sacristy if we found Henry the third sacristy that would be absolutely fantastic you'd be happy I would be very happy please do it better get on then even if the wolves are still there we're a bit worried they may be nothing to do with the sacristy because incredibly later in the post medieval period there were houses and workshops built right up against the Abbey on the same footprint as the supposed sacristy word within Bar sequester's which has we think is this l-shaped building north of the nave where the North transept is there is another one of course well down here that's the more normal place to find it off the south transept right at the point where you can all trooping with all the vestments and gear into the east end of the church right next to the chapter so that's where you'd expect it it's really odd to have a second one and it's very hard time eating that positionally if we did find it how important would that be well I think it would be enormously significant would it be fair to call it a find of national importance oh yes yes I'm going to eat say it would be a major find for Church archaeology no doubt about that this doesn't look like a capable like shepherd's pie I say the good news is geophys have found some wall lines starting at the top the near surface it's an absolute nightmare but as ever there's a problem and it's not just the miserable weather all these lines are services Oh crikey electric cables maybe pipes telephone cables but with regards what you want to find if you ignore those for a moment go deeper into the ground deeper into the radar look at these wall lines starting to show disease match exactly we haven't be wondering why there's the cross wall at that point there that's wonderful I think we should try and pick up the line of this wall that one there man where if we run a trench down there it will also pick up the cross wall here it will pick up the the raft on which it looks as though the whole concept is built the great stone raft and it will pick up the the edge of this area that looks like the vaulted chamber so we'll get a whole lot of things from the 13th century onwards all in one trench [Music] it's an ambitious shopping list Warwick's given us especially if we've got to dodge the services the sacristy we're looking for was said to be built on a grand scale just like the rest of Henry the Third's Abbey and our historian has discovered that his inspiration was partly this man Edward the Confessor the last great Saxon King who had built an abbey here himself 200 years earlier Henry is mad about him he kind of dresses like Edward the Confessor he has pictures of him in his bedchamber but he calls his son Edward would you define the Abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor it is a shrine to Ed the Confessor but it's more than that it's a grand political statement of power I mean look at it it's massive and it's a very international place and Henry decided to build this after he'd been to France and there he'd seen that these kind of three separate cathedrals one where people were crowned one whether the buried one which was particularly religious and he decided to raffle this into one big super building which is Westminster Abbey so Westminster Abbey's role as a theater for royal ceremonies would have made a huge sacrifice et we just need to find it still if we do nothing else the next three days we shall be able to give them a up to date amount of their services we've got lots and lots of images helens wading through drawings and plans relating to our site to try and find out why the Victorians thought it was Henry's sacristy but they're not proving all that helpful this fantastic plan from 1870 is very clear in showing these lovely walls and they're described very nicely as well but a lot of them are completely different depths and you look at this section drawing you can see that that they're different depths here but the how these are drawn doesn't bear any relationship to how they described so we don't quite know how to how to reconcile the two to find out what's really going on there is no substitute for archaeology Wow look at that it's good news in the trenches been cut in there because it looks like the Victorians have left some walls for us to look at what we're gonna do now is hope that we find going the other edge of it on this showed it's quarter to twelve day one inside the visitors are teaming in outside the rains teaming down and they've just started digging trench one will we find the missing piece of London's greatest Abbey we'll know soon [Music] Westminster Abbey's sumptuous design nearly bankrupted Henry the third when he built it in the 13th century most of its still standing but there's one important room missing is great sacristy despite terrible weather on day one by the afternoon films found some walls although he's not convinced there anything to do with the sacristy when you look at the stoneware it looks very fresh I can't really believe that it is the sacristy no it definitely isn't not yet but then you tell me it is not part of this much much later cellar that we know with peers on the plans if you look at those plans you can see the wall line coming out here that's to that point there and it shows the cellar on this side and if you look at the radar the radar shows the cellar here there's no doubt about that I think that picture there might be stairs going into the cellar do we care about this cellar if it's much later yes what we've got to do is establish where we are on this plan so if we can prove those are stairs then we know that we're on the money [Music] the digs really beginning to get underway now Phil expands the trench to check whether John's right about the position of the cellar and once we've located the walls on Scott's plan we can start to work out whether or not they belong to Henry sacristy that's as far as you're gonna go down for a wall we're gonna need some pretty convincing archaeological evidence because on paper this building looks nothing like an archetypal sacristy which should be tucked away securely in the heart of the Abbey this is the original sacristy which was built even before the one that we're excavating for but what is it about this place that defines it as a sacristy well sacré seas have to be very secure because they have all these valuable treasure in so the door that you have just come through and was originally three Doors one decided another lots of bolts lots of locks then the walls are very substantial there's a stone vault on the roof there are no doors no windows that lead to the exterior so it's a highly secure space you think these are keys in the wall is he so you could set cupboards in with the chalices and patterns you know gold and silver they could have been locked so that's more security as well but virtually everything that you've told me that defines the sacristy is hanging off the walls well when we dig down we're not going to find any walls so it's gonna be difficult for our archaeologists specifically to identify what they've got as a sacristy well that's where we have to try and marry the archaeological evidence with documentary evidence and studied in a general sense and know from what we know are elsewhere it will not turn out to be a building like this with a great vault on it [Music] brilliant if we can't identify Henry's second sacristy this dig could be a complete washout there's a real prospect of three rainy days in London on one of the most important sites in the country and all would have to show for it is a Victorian cellar filled with centuries of rubble one bit of good news though is that the documents confirm that Henry had definitely planned a second sacristy there's a reference here in Leatherby's book Westminster Abbey and the king's craftsman and this says that the King issued a command that the sacristy should be built 120 feet long that's huge how does that tie up with the stuff we've got on this plan of 1869 let's see that is a hundred and twenty there oh look I mean that's not even a hundred feet long it's a completely different length okay but even just shy of a hundred feet it's still a very large building I suppose what this says is that the King commissioned an enormous building and we don't know that it was actually older than 20 feet long do we well exactly yeah and then look he goes on to say a large sacristy was certainly required for the vast treasure which Matthew of Westminster says was unequaled on this side of the Alps so they certainly have a lot of stuff to store that could explain the size of the sacristy but it certainly doesn't explain it's puzzling location what this trench is really come on I mean we build thinks he's found two features shown on the plan which he reckons are entrances to the Victorian cellar so we've moved over here I'm not we've just come down onto this well it's layer a concrete wonderful because I think that is the roof of the vaulted chamber that was built by Sir Gilbert Scott and we have the accounts telling us about building the bolts and then concreting over the top of them okay so far so good but the crucial question is is this the medieval wall I mean it certainly doesn't look like it down here it's actually got bricks in it yeah it doesn't look like it yet but the medieval building was reconstructed as a house and then hence if we've got post medieval brickwork on the Foundation's so you think that if we go down if we can go down down lower down that wall we should actually find the line of the medic we should hit the medieval wall below that yeah our search for the sacristy is complicated by so many centuries of usage reflected in the finds for the Tudor green which comes in about 30 90 but most was 15th century yeah it's beautiful so it's really really finely potted and hardly fired and also a bit of medieval floor tile now that could easily be 14th century so it's not the only stuff we're getting to the medieval period so far but I see there's not a lot of bone in this joint yeah I mean some of it some of its animal bone but we also have human bone and there's bits of finger bone and that's it somebody's big toe there this is all picking rid of the tops yeah it's all just redeposit ating it's fractured and broken but also what we've got are these they're like little brass studs and the kind of thing that you've got in the top of usually 18th century coffins as decorative stud work yeah so you know the fact we've got both these and the bones suggest that we've got at least 18th century burials Italy disturbed so there's clearly a lot of history to sift our way through before we can find out what was going on here in the 13th century [Music] when Henry built his great abbey his centerpiece was the shrine to his idol Edward the Confessor who'd been canonized the century before so important was this memorial to him that Henry gave instructions for his own tomb to be placed next to it this was one of the great shrines of England and to which pilgrims came from far and wide and their aim was to come and to see and to touch and to get a spiritual power from the body of Edward the Confessor who's inside here and that's what the steps are for here and these niches so you would kneel and pray at the niche contemporary accounts describe this really splendid terms they talked about it listening and gleaming I don't be rude but it it's slightly dull now what we see today is the stone shell made of Purbeck marble which is the frame that held all the decorative details so naughty pilgrims we've been picking off all these bits of glass then well I'm afraid that it is initially pilgrims but later on visitors I think in later centuries we've got a bit left out I mean that is a hint of what it looked like and you must think of that over the whole of this everything was full of this glistening detail and so it would have glowed as a great beacon Henry was an avid collector of relics such as a thorn of Christ's crown an impression of his feet from the ascension as well as a grisly array of Saints bones it's no wonder he needed a super-sized sacristy and we might just have the first signs of it in the ground it's somehow or another there's something running out that way and this wall lines up with that one infiltration exactly online yeah the abbey was built nearly 800 years ago and I think we've got just about every one of those 800 years represented in this trench but very importantly we've got a couple of finds which could well come from the very early years of the abbey what are they Paul we've got a couple of bits of medieval pottery it's Kingston were and it's absolutely what you'd expect to find in London between about 12:30 in about 1260 1270 this building was supposedly built in 1245 so it's bracketed beautifully where'd you find those they came from right down there in the corner next to that wall and if you don't think that's exciting Phil what have you got in your part of the trench in here Tony we've got part of the original raft on which this beautiful Abbey was constructed and if these foundations are medi able then you will see as they come along they turn around there it looks like we could have our first medieval wall so if we've got a medieval wall have we got a medieval building and if we've got our medieval building could it be Henry the thirds long-lost sacristy we'll find out tomorrow 8:30 in the morning and it's another normal day here at Westminster Abbey there'll be four services in here today between three and four thousand tourists looking at the 3,000 plaques and monuments and burials to the Great and the good which are inside there well that actually it's not quite a normal day because in addition to all that we've got the time team digging a great big hole right there we're here because of the work of Victorian architecture George Gilbert Scott during his renovations here he discovered the remains of a massive l-shaped building we're trying to confirm that it was Henry the Third's 13th century sacristy we do appear definitely to have medieval walls we've got this wall here that is actually sitting on top of the main raft of the Abbey you can see there it's built out of chalk and we've got a similar wall of similar construction with chalk in it running through there and that does tie up with what's on Scott's drawing we've even got the curve behind manwiches of the stairway which is shown on Scott's drawing but the crucial thing is that now we're beginning to look at all these things we realize they are more than one date they aren't they're multi-phase not like the drawing zone Scott clearly misinterpreted the date of some of the features he found so we're putting in more trenches to check out exactly which walls are medieval much of what we've uncovered so far relates to post medieval buildings which were built on top of the sacristy and entrench to phase getting a little taste of life in those later houses oh that's lovely its border where it's the bog-standard pottery in London for about the mid 16th then getting towards the 18th century and it's a frying pan handle I mean it's to skillet lovely pretty cool so ties in about when the house is supposed to be here pretty good Nick actually I mean you can even see what's been used so it's all blackened than the needs that's the side that would have gone on the fire so you know someone had their there fried eggs for breakfast it looks like we've got a lot of later stuff to get through before we reach the medieval levels the great sacristy that we're hoping to find is an example of the Abbey's extraordinary design which Henry never lived to see completed this was gonna be one of Henry the first chapels it's 50 feet above the floor of the abbey but it was never finished because these high chapels went out of fashion but I've come up here to show you how much this part of Westminster is at the epicenter of English royal power over across there is the houses of parliament and underneath that was the old Palace of Westminster which was Henry's favorite Palace he actually lived there and in those days there was no Road there there was just a wall so he'd come out of his palace through a little gate in the wall straight to here it was like having a very large office at the bottom of your garden living in the palace also meant that Henry could keep an eye on his builders and in Phil's trench were getting an idea of the logistics of constructing his great Abbey we can now see that this wall here which we've always been calling even which we still think is Maddy evil is actually built on the raft and it actually butts up against the basal course of the main abbey so is of a later date we still think it's medieval but a later medieval than the construction of the abbey itself but what is new and very interesting is that you can see that this is actually part of a wall and you can see there's got an edge running across there and that face is actually visible continuing in here just yes little gray mortar yeah and that's a employees that there was once a war coming across here blocking off between these two buttresses apart from the main wall that we know was running from east to west is this what you'd expect work or is this all new stuff this is entirely new we had no idea that there was going to be a wall running between the buttresses here so that suggests that the foundation for the North transept in the 13th century when that's put in they're already thinking of this corridor this room going off and in fact that block there that looks like the base of a doorway is part of a doorway that was built into the wall at that stage to go off in that direction it certainly looks like that because I mean you have to remember that when you're building something like this you put the raft in you build the great mass of the transept and you might leave connections ready for when you're going to add these other lower appendages and then when the scaffold comes down you then add these lower level chambers if there was a doorway in Phil's trench there must have been another one out of the North transept but there's no sign of it on the exterior today thanks to centuries of refacing nor can you see where Henry's build came to an end at his death in 1272 halfway down the old Norman nave which was still standing but on the inside you can see where the work resumes to complete his design a century later there's a junction oh yes they see to the left right Henry the third rich rich surface decoration and all the Purbeck marble shattering yes going to the extension as it were yes just plain just look at the contrast that diapering is absolutely incredible isn't it mean just the cost of all that chiseling it's very incredible well it's not only the chiseling began to paint it and in gild it hmm so where does that take us to on a plan well the Henry the third work got as far as their so they built that buttress yes okay so are they in blank space around here no no no there is still a nave here it's the Norman nave and they're gradually replacing each bay of that as they go along right that's slightly narrower than the building got at the moment so our l-shaped structure straddled the join between Henry's rebuild and the old Norman nave and it would have led it to both ends of Henry's fabulous newly built part of the Abbey we've now found medieval walls in all of our trenches but we're lacking hard evidence of a sacristy [Music] this is the place to view it from isn't it yeah you can actually see the wall of the sacristy from up here yeah I've got a line of it in in one trench over and then phase-change got the other bit but I really do wonder if it's the sacristy what we've been digging for wonder half days no we know it's there from the documents we know it's there from the documents but this actual position is the result of the Victorians interpreting these foundations as the lost sacristy what worries me is that this is effectively either half a cloister or just a stone corridor but he's going out to something that we don't know about that just never been found I can't believe that we're on a site of international importance he's looking for Henry the third sacristy and we might just have some manky old corridor yeah I can't help that tone that's the reality of it [Music] if mix right we haven't found the sacristy yet but it might be at the end of the corridors on the other side of the path in which case it should show up on the GFS but whatever our building is we're getting below the foundation levels and now we're getting hints of the earlier history of the abbey so they have cut severely earlier burials which may I'd say on the basis of that and the level rap be associated that's that original building this is potentially important archaeology because precious little survives of the abbey edward built before henry depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry and as if that wasn't enough Mick suspects there might be some even earlier burials on the site the word two burials about here on the 19th century plan but there's no sign of them they either got rid of them which they said they're demons or they further down my Bay's that they are probably are much further down let's be honest if they took them away we would expect to see the cuts from the back field grave yeah I think they must be further on down and the other thing about him is and they're on a different alignment to the present Abbey and all these walls and of course this the possibility is there aligned on a on a much earlier Church which would have to be a Saxon church does it be early ed with the confessors and if we find more burials at that date that'll be absolutely fantastic these burials might represent the first solid archaeological evidence that there was a church here before Edward the confessors because early sacks and churches were often built on a slightly different east-west alignment but as exciting as all this is it's not helping us with our search for the sacristy which is beginning to feel a little desperate this is a hundred note in her book but it's been written by mr. Westlake who was writing a book himself in the early part of the 20th century and he's written down say Chris account for 1535 four-pitch rotten and canvas for mending of a pipe in st. Margaret's church are carrying to the secretary threatens secretary I've checked up and it's an alternative spelling if you like the word sacristy now sent Margaret's I would have thought that this shows Margaret's on the north side so surely if the pipe is being mended in the churchyard it must have been running across to a sacristy somewhere around here but why couldn't it have just gone to the north side of the abbey on that side of the transept oh well thanks for drawing board it's so frustrating the documents only tell us that the sacristy was somewhere on the north side Mick look I've got the geophys from the grass over there let's hope this new geophys can help locate it it's rubbish in this what you mean it's rubbish well this is the demolition rubble from the houses the study until the 19th century oh you mean it's literally rubbish exactly there's no walls or structures that we can see within that so as far as you're concerned the sacristy probably isn't there there's nothing we can see that indicates that in faes trench medieval right which is over there in Phil's trench yeah that bit there this is join the dots isn't it yeah over there we've got this trace you strange there yeah French by the dig yeah look bish bash Bosh Bosh job down there's your sacristy all that proves is that we've got medieval walls in those places it doesn't demonstrate the sacristy this looks to me much more like a corridor or at least alright but you tell me what piece of church architecture exists there is this funny little corridor which comes off at right angles outside of a navvy and disappears back in there again covered walkways what it looks like I know that this is function I don't know but that doesn't mean old National Health Hospital you know to all that it doesn't mean it's a sacristy just because we don't know what it is the secretary could still be somewhere else in the area it might for example be over there by the north door of the North transept or I'll buy that as long as you put your thinking cap on tonight and work out if it's not a sacristy what this could be all right I should have a glass of wine that helps me think a lot better our search for Henry's sacristy may be falling apart but just before the end of the day Dave finds some definitive evidence of Edward the confessors earlier abbey so let's see what you've got there these are 11th century and hand inside floor tiles with glaze on and this is very heavily worn this is an absolutely wonderful find extremely rare this tile it's so rare they're only known at Westminster Abbey and we only recognize them with within the last five years absolutely wonderful find us some more please okay this is more than we could have hoped for because fines from Edward the confessors great Abbey are like gold dust if that isn't exciting enough if mixed to be believed then down here we may well have burials from something even earlier the very first Saxon Church which gave its name to Westminster beginning of day three here at Westminster Abbey and completely by surprise we seem to be uncovering the story of three churches on this site we came here to find the Lost sacristy of this man Henry the third who built this marvellous Abbey that's here today but late yesterday afternoon we unearthed a tile from the abbey belonging to this man Henry's inspiration Edward the Confessor 200 years previously and not only that but we think we may have a row of burials from the very first church on this site way back in Saxon times and if we have then we're sailing into completely uncharted archaeological waters the theory rests on the orientation of these chalk line Muriel's which were discovered by Sir Gilbert Scott in the 1870s Phil needs to find them to see if they were aligned to the earliest Saxon Westminster Abbey but there's still the little matter of whether the l-shaped building we're excavating is Henry the thirds long-lost sacristy although we're sure the walls were all originally built by Henry mix convinced himself that they're just corridors and nothing to do with our sacristy but Warwick's got a new idea he's been searching for evidence of a doorway from our building into the North transept although there's no sign of it on the outside he thinks he's found it on the inside so where is this doorway then what recall I can seize monuments and filing cabinets yes we've got quite a few of both but they're in the middle of this Bay and the central arch you can see the arch is different from those either sighs yes and the arch stands are taller it breaks through the windowsill now that molding there is all original Henry the third work but he's very tall and narrow isn't it it's not like a normal doorway into a room yes well now that's what makes it particularly interesting because it is so tall and narrow it immediately says one thing it is a professional entrance where you could walk through carrying a processional cross which of course stands high above your head but if it's to carry a cross so that suggests it's a passage behind it and not a sacristy doesn't it well yes and no it both answers are correct it is clearly processional but I mean processions can start in sacristy and so I think what we're looking at here potentially this is this long passage is that this is really a robing area and an assembly for procession rather than a sacristy in the sense of a Treasury will you keep all the valuables I think we're understanding it yeah at last we've got a theory to satisfy Mick I am now convinced about this we go and in the trenches films making progress - so does that you fell oh it's definitely articulated down I mean that looks like there's a pair of legs in there look and there's a foot bone so there's the ankle wear but it's not the early Saxon chalk lined burial Phil's looking for for the last two days there's been one big question that's been bugging us why is our sacristy such an odd shape basically it's just two corridors in an L shape well we think we've got the answer but it isn't until you get in here that you understand the logic of it most of us think of an ABI like this don't waste beautifully decorated highly painted we hardly even notice areas like that one or this little room over here but that is where the real work of an ABI gets done and that's the logic of our sacristy it's a place where things are stored where things are sorted out and where people get changed out of the public eye until they process back into the formal part of the abbey dressed in their full glory meg are you happy now Oh ecstatic ecstatic I really feel we've sorted it out but Helen how does all this time with the documents that you've been looking at it ties in brilliantly and what it does is help us understand some really tricky passages in the document I mean to begin with the galilee of the sacristy was Galilee we didn't know know everybody says what does this mean it's so annoying but when you realize what this place is that it's a place to prepare for processions it's a place to put all your keeps on and so on but it becomes very obvious now I do a few processions every year as a member and they're awful if you've only got a tiny little space then you can't organize yourself in a great long line and you don't know what you're doing now if you've got this lovely space which you could call a gallery you can line up and you can check that you're all in the right order and you're all doing the same thing without all that hustling and shuffling and and worry it also sorts out the l-shape because you can take a procession through into the north track appearing as if by magic through that lovely door you can also take a procession into the nave appearing as if by magic it's absolutely ideal Helens talking about our Galilee I thought we were looking for sacristy there are two functions - a sacristy one is to keep the holy vessel golden silver chalices absolutely and the best place for that here is that that one on the other side some faith Chapel the other function is is to keep the robes in the vestments of popes and song of the clergy where so we're talking about two sacristy x' with two different functions yeah most places would have had all this going on in one room yeah here they've got the luxury of keeping the the the clothes separate if you like you know and they're less secure building but Belize ideal to get to everywhere so our sacristy was like the wings of a theatre and water theatre [Applause] because Henry was setting the scene for the most important ceremonies in the kingdom were weddings funerals and coronations [Applause] and this sort of pageantry needs a lot of room for preparation [Music] well that's pretty spectacular what's that this is a cope and it we warned by the priests and it dates back to about 1660 and it may have been used for the coronation of King Charles the second most beautiful it seems good Nick isn't it wonderful yes what else did he go another cope here taking back also to charles ii 1685 and it may have been used for his funeral and these are still used to this day you can see why it requires such a lot of space currently I mean this cupboard goes back what maybe five foot here you pull that out and then if you need to change as well then that's obviously additional space and if you've got twenty fifty people all changing in the same place it really could be quite difficult bit chaotic yes actually I've just noticed over here all the work that maybe ten or twenty monks used to do in the medieval period is nowadays reduced to an ironing board a little rack and pledges starch oh that's a jewel outside Phil's got his work cut out oh there's another set of teeth yeah here's the top set and here's the bottom because he's uncovering multiple burials we need to find some anglo-saxon pottery Warrick was excited to see Saxon tiles last night dating to the abbey that Edward the Confessor built before Henry so this must be one of the oldest surviving rooms in the earth isn't it is this is a wonderful space it's known as the Picts chamber and it is a complete 11th century room you won't go in anywhere older in London it was a Treasury now these tiles are but we've a bug out and our specimens similar to some we have here in the floor now look down here you can see we have a number of them in the floor which have scratched designs on and that as you can see is a sort of crisscross design and this is the corner of one of those tiles it's just brilliant because that fits absolutely perfectly yes so this is something that would have been commissioned by Edward the Confessor himself yes the problem is when we focus on Henry the third we forget there was this massive glorious building already here at the Confessor and yes I mean Edward the Confessor didn't build the first monastery here he was rebuilding something that was here earlier so the sanctity of this site had been established hundreds of years before the Confessor and it's the original abbey that we're putting our resources into because nobody has ever found any archaeological evidence Forest raksha yeah you know we're looking for those chalk-line burials yeah oh I might have one also what you remember about the alignment yes on the skew that's right one should never go anywhere with a compass yeah they aren't beyond a skillet yeah that's Jewish that way what's this space I know it's a tall order to find out if this burial really was aligned with the earliest abbey at Westminster and Tracy has spotted something that might have been part of its fabric in the Victorian stairwell yeah and they see the difference in the carving on that this looks very much like Roman rustic stone carving oh is that oh that's carving is it well yes you see all these medieval and post medieval stones here they've got dressing on them you can see the stripes where it's carved into the surface here they're dressing the stone for use this one is completely different here you've got this surround coming around here but that's carved the decoration the pattern is in relief so it stands out right yeah I see that but I mean there isn't really a major Roman sight right near the abbey is there not right near the Abbey no but the theory is it could well have come from the earliest phase of a building and then it's just been incorporated into walls much later on it's fab thing defying that that's a really nice everybody involved in the abbey is on tenterhooks to find out what else we can discover about this historic site in the final hours of the dig Jackie's already identified several burials including an 8 year old child their alignment and level suggest that they're probably from the time of Edward the Confessor but what we really want is to pin down a date for the chop lined burial this is definitely been disturbed by the Victorians yeah this is all Victorian back Lots in here and this means that any fines from the grave might be misleading usually fines are vital clues for us and this dig has produced vast quantities which the students of Westminster school are helping us process what we need is something dateable from the very bottom of the grave that looks more like a bit of tile or brick to me that's not pottery but you can't give us a date on it it's tile or brick night it's not my job the good news is that now we can see the chalk lines grave it's clearly on a totally different alignment to the later burials so this ought to be associated with exact that would be incredible it would be fantastic and in order to be able to work out the date of the building to which this grave relates what we need to do to take a small sample of bone from the leg and have that radiocarbon dated what about pottery dating nopal one really interesting bit we have got is this now this is much higher up in the general jumble but it's a piece of Saxon pottery it's late Saxon shelley were late 9th to early 11th century so pre ad with a confessor mori does does it make sense that that piece of pot is pre Edward the Confessor oh yes that is wonderful I'm going to get that I mean the fact that we've now got a Saxon pottery of the period probably of Dunstan who founded the church before it with the Confessor and now if we've got a grave that could easily be of that spirit also we're beginning to get new horizons in the archaeology of Westminster has anyone ever found anything associated with Dunstan on this side no we do not know anything about Dunstan's Church or quite where it was or anything structural to do with it we haven't anything and this and the grave could be the first solid indications that we've got some Dunstan founded a Benedictine abbey on what was then thorny island in the 10th century but there are stories of an even earlier church at the end of the day after six hours solid digging Phil finds more evidence that the grave predates Henry the 3rd sacristy right now cracked I ran this wall cuts this grave in other words the grave is earlier blended absolutely sure about it now yes but the final piece of the jigsaw will be the radiocarbon dating if I put you on the rack what date would you say that very well you don't want much do around 950 oh not good enough that's too late go on that's too late I think it should be early of that I think it'd be nice for is about 800 so when 99.9 percent sure that this burial is anglo-saxon which is a first for Westminster rapid but it all depends on that one little bit of bow I wonder what days it'll be we've had quite a journey here at Westminster Abbey we came here to find Henry the thirds lost sacristy and in doing so we've discovered it had a totally unique role it was the backstage area for the spectacular Royal processions that were at the very heart of Henry's groundbreaking design but the totally unexpected find was the first evidence of an early Saxon Church which we now think was built on a different orientation because the carbon-date suggests our burial dates from the early 11th century earlier than Edward the Confessor and this was a critical period when King Canute built the very first Royal Palace next to Dunstan's Abbey and the stage was set for greatness [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 45,177

Rating: 4.8676124 out of 5

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 full episodes, time team specials full episodes, time team special, time team season 17 episode 1, tony robinson documentary, tony robinson motivational speaker, tony robinson worst jobs in history, tony robinson walking through history

Id: CCA36NHOMVk

Length: 47min 53sec (2873 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2019