Is There A Norman Castle Underneath This 12th Century Hall? | Time Team | Timeline

welcome to the little town of Okuma in Rutland which has a special secret and it's this through that gateway over there is the best-preserved 12th century building in Brittany and it wasn't just the home to lots of Norman knights and Lords it was hosted some of our most legendary Saxon kings and queens but there's more to welcome castle than meets the eye under these lumps and bumps lies some fascinating history well well and getting to grips with it is no walk in the park confuse can we rise to the challenge looks pretty disgusting it away and pieced together an entire 12th century Norman Castle just a stately home with attitude no in three days right time sure and let's get on Brett [Music] this motley crew might not look capable of it just now but time team can reconstruct entire towns families and eras from the fragments of pottery glass and stone they dig up Terrier oakum lies in the tiny County of Rutland east of Birmingham and in the heart of what was once medieval England this rich agricultural land sat at the crossroads of major trading routes making it a magnet for invasion the Romans Viking Saxons and then the Normans in the 11th and 12th centuries it's that last period we're hoping to uncover in the latest invasion a token leading the charge this week is commandant Neil Holbrooke but this edge here won't be notion vertical first lieutenant Phil Harding is our key archaeologist to spy out the home of his friend Staff Sergeant John Gator we'll be looking into the ground using the magic of radar but what are we invading exactly there's no tower no arrow slits no curtain wall not very well Castle II is that really a castle cuz to me it looks like some sort of medieval Great Hall well it is a hall but it's set within a castle if you look around town you've got its defended enclosure that is the fortified center of oaken that's known as the castle so this Hall is set within a castle but we're not looking for walls that go like the Norman invaders needed to defend their settlements they build a tower on top of an earthwork mound known as a Motte and add a curtain wall which encircled a flat area called a Bailey stuffed with other buildings but here those buildings have disappeared geophysicist John Gaeta has already made a start on this area at the end of the hall what we've been asked to look for is a building that comes this side of the hall yeah well we're still looking for we've got one of two responses that could be buried masonry I mean the radio isn't giving us a clear picture at the moment and I'm not sure why to be honest okay so we've got all this jumbled archaeological knitting how are we gonna start on through we've thought over here I think we open up a trench in this area all I'd say though is ignore us with regard to archaeology but you can't ignore us about the services it seems to be chock-a-block full where are the services well where are the fish on the geophysics you can see them in detailed just watch out that you don't get electrocuted gassed or drowned films under orders to open the first trench at this end of the hall where these blocked up doors are a big clue that something was once here it could be an early extension or even kitchens which were often attached to great homes but this wouldn't be time team without an immediate technical hitch Matz gizmo is picking up an electricity cable slap-bang across the path where Phil wants to put his trench what we're gonna try and do is to try and avoid a electricity cable coming across here so what wants to do any star air shot knowing there is the cable [Music] dodging cables is the least of John's worries so far he's not getting anything that looks like a bit of solid masonry on the geophys you can't work out what the problem is we could be in for long three days while the team puzzled over what they have or haven't got outside inside isn't altogether greater puzzle one of the weirdest interior design jobs I've seen in 20 years this beautifully preserved Hall is home to 350 presentation horseshoes donated by visiting dignitaries and royalty 1,000 years of history hanging on the wall big question why horseshoes well we know at the time of doomsday it's owned by the crown but at some point in the early 12th centuries granted to a family called da Faris the norman family they were originally from fairy air in normandy and it's probably for that reason that we have all these horseshoes because although the earliest horseshoe is 15th century it may well be a pun that tradition on the name ferrars Fairy isn't farriers walked Linda Ferrars who built oakum castle about 1185 was a favorite of Richard the first more famously known as richard the lionheart Norman knights like to Ferris had strong links with English nobility through their battle exploits Richard and D Ferrars fought side-by-side during the Crusades this is the people who went with Richard the first Richard the Lionheart on crusade interesting that he's identified as a from normally not from England and he's the first name of the lace look Waka window Ferris and then later in the chronicle we see him mentioned again there as a that noble man walked into Ferrars distinguishing himself somehow it's interesting isn't it the first always comes first or second in these lists or at least tie up he's high up the list and that's significant it shows how close he must have been to Richard himself on one of his most trusted captains Ockham's association with one of royalties Most Favoured Knights means this was surely a pretty fancy pad given to ferrous status it's likely he splashed some serious cash on buildings fittings and furnishings landscape archaeologist Stuart Ainsworth is joining forces with architectural historian Richard K Morris to seek clues as to what else might have surrounded - Ferris Hall what sort of the buildings would you some expect if you were looking down on the Bailey in the 12th century well I think actually chock-a-block with other buildings here you'd have building servicing the great tall out the kitchens storerooms that sort of things but have to be lodgings that have to be a private chamber block for the lord of the manor and then be stable and Smithy's and workshops all that sort of very busy there are some things going on around this site and I think I need to go from the out on the outside you can kind of come into it and I need to find a nice comfy seat and just fit inside the building and contemplate the typical architecture well I hope they're gonna come up with some better insights than the archaeologists two hours into Phil's trench and there's no sign of a building still John's now had time to come up with an excuse why I think the clay could be the reason why the radars not working if that clays Lord well at least they found the location of the cable laser tape but the cables underneath there pull a little bit then basically if there's any thickness to that clay that could explain why the radar isn't working so because the signal from the radar will be totally absorbed by the clay it can go through concrete you can go through tarmac but the clay acts like a sponge play is the worst thing you can find yeah and we've got it yeah Oakham castle is open to the public and managed by English heritage and for local inspector Tim Allen it's a society's been itching to dig for years you're really quite passionate about this place only it's a site that had sort of it become less it's sort of visible to the people of Rockland and the people who come and visit and if we can do something that raises its profile in the local community makes it more loved and understood that'll be brilliant [Music] Tim's high hopes are being hampered by the not so brilliant geophys results so we're going back to basics take one landscape archaeologist one pencil and a notebook Stuart's plotting the lumps and bumps in the grass to see if any of them look building shaped he's picked out a prime candidate for a second trench here but realistically we're flying pretty blind so bets are open as to what it might be I mean I really hope it's a medieval structure but if it proves to be a later garden feature what least we know that and we can just County from the plan so yep one trench let's get it in now that's funny also it'll be a garden in order to settle the argument Cassie and Tracy open the second trench it's in an area you'd normally expect to find castle outbuildings across the lawn though at least you can always depend on Phil to sniff out some archaeology would you let them well 30 days yet Tony but I really do begin to think we've got evidence of a war I mean you can see all these nice stones they're all really really laid in flat and you can see there is this the slightest of edges coming down there and I think they really could be part of a wall actually going straight towards the jamb on that doorway there this one here absolutely it's bang online but the interesting thing too is we've got this sort of mounded surface that's got all this burning and charcoal in and that really is going straight towards for the door absolutely so it looks like we've got a corridor or a pathway or something that is going through there straight through that doorway man we've got some great archaeologists all about the fire loads of finds out his trench already and the reason for that is overlying all the archaeology that feels has been talking about was huge pile of demolition rubble and most of it was roof tiles like this can you just see with the little hole in there the nail yet for the nail we've had loads and loads of these had loads of nails as well to hold them in and then best of all we have this crested Ridge tile there why's it got a little holder well the little holes are to stop it exploding when it's fired till you go through it and you burst any air pockets in there that you do with the baked potato exactly exactly yeah and these are worth a lot of money so you don't want it to blow up and take out all your Ridge tiles in the in the kiln so you go to great lengths to make sure Wheldon happen so you perforate loads of them so it does seem that there was a really substantial building here which is what we were trying to prove certainly was and it certainly had a very fine roof finally it looks as though Phil's got a building that would have been connected with the Great Hall the posh roof tiles suggests something grand but with no dates yet and no idea what sort of building it actually is over in Casas trench it looks like Stuart's punt might have come up trumps suffice to say it's definitely not a garden feature this carve stone suggests a doorway so one inch of the doorway is where your foot is if we can find the other side of this door we can send up how wide it is and that would have an impact on what this building would have been if it's hearsay it could be just an ordinary people door if it's about here then that's a wider door as a horsey sized door so Richard would you buy this as potentially a medieval stables to go with thee if if this is a wide door yeah and their problem end of day one and quite frankly today's archeology has been really frustrating we've got some kind of corridor going through that trench there leading off from the Great Hall but where it's going none of us has got the faintest idea over in this trench well I was wrong it wasn't a garden feature we do have some kind of structure but we can't yet date it the really good news though is round this little corner and John is holding it what have you got John know you've got to come round another corner first oh yeah I'll be basically we've had so much flat today that we found nothing about in we've decided to look at this end of the hall yeah and basically that's where we are on the plan and look at these radar results I think that could be a range of buildings um what's so significant about finding buildings here this is the high stators end of the hall where the nobles would have eaten so could this be the chambers of a lord and lady of the manor will we find the norman high table will we find the Lords quarters will we find his bedroom will this drizzle stop we'll know tomorrow beginning of day two and the weather forecast says sunshine today which is great beyond the Great Hall here they're going to start excavating for the posh end of the Norman castle over here we've got some kind of structure just there behind John but we don't know what it is yet and in Phil's trench everyone's beavering away well they will be when they finish their tea morning team what do you feel crazy thing about time team all the edges of our seats doesn't it it's all go for site director Neil Holbrooke with two trenches open in front of the hall and one at the back we're trying to piece together what this normal complex once looked like and now Phil's finished his morning cuppa hopefully we'll start to get some answers in the stable trench the team are uncovering more walls and they're not the only ones absolutely confused about this the wall on the gfs should actually be running in this direction and we have something that seems to be either added on to it or as part of it I'm utterly confused you're not the only one Raksha there seems to be a second wall underneath the one showing on the geophys and it's on a completely different alignment to the Great Hall so if this is our first glimpse of walk Linda Ferrars posh living quarters it suggests they were completely separate to the hole itself and that's pretty unusual I wasn't expecting this well Rock sharper suvir's with her perplexing trench Phil's going great guns in his he and guests pottery guru Jane young a taking stock of what he's found so far and together it's building a compelling case that were in the Norman kitchen and through passage Tony well you am seeing this there we come and share with me this this star phones to God looks pretty disgusting to me to you it might look disgusting but to us it is our star fight you know what it is a monkey a bit of metal no it's not it's a horseshoe oh you're joking no I'm not what a lovely fine it's a horseshoe from from oakum it really is how brilliantly appropriate is that this isn't a ceremonial horseshoe like the ones up there well this is how I rather suspect come off a table in that niche well horse might have been on the Norman menu but the reason the shoes turned up in the kitchen area could well be because a few meters away Cassie and Tracey are digging what we think is a stable block what's more they've got something to date it got some pottery from the layer that I'm doing at the moment and that's twelve-thirteenths century and that feels by the tumble from the wall right so I think we can safely say it's medieval thought can we put in could this be Richard I think that'd be quite grand bearing in mind how close they are to the Great Hall and how important the horse was to your average medieval knight so I think they'll be a fairly grand stone-built building after a slow start the pieces of oaken castle are finally slotting together these classy stables would have taken pride of place within the Bailey enclosure for the question of what surrounded the Bailey is one for landscape archaeologists to tames with the frustrating thing about looking for a castle like this is it's all never get any tangible idea of what the castle would actually have looked like well look at that yes see what you mean castle wall awesome well there's certainly something there isn't it after the Normans came a stone curtain wall is put all the way round and what we're looking at here the remains of that curtain wall but that looks really curves too well spotted it is it's the remains of a d-shaped Tower which stuck out from the walls and it's interesting because you can see on this 1787 map and the more you walk around and probe under the ivy you can see where there might have been other towers Stewart thinks there may have been towers in all four corners of the site they'd have been D shaped extending out from the wall on stone bases this would have given them a 180 degree view of the wall and neighboring towers an imposing statement of power and prestige always helped with a sound that's much more solid at end of the strength within Ockham's impressive walls lay a number of seriously classy buildings raksha think she may have discovered the outer wall of walk Linda Ferrars living quarters possibly this is the back end of it it seems to be following the gfs although I hate to say it but you know it seems to be behaving itself famous it's what you'd expect to find this is this is very much what we're opening for that because we got proper Morton masonry and maybe we've got the infill of some sort of ground floor room here and then I guess what would happen if you some stairs or something that would come out of there yeah you'd have an exterior stair up to a main door at first floor right so where we are now we looked up we could be walking into Ferris bedroom we'll be right out there it's tantalizing to think we may have located Royal Knight to Ferrars most private quarters but we still don't have the dates to nail it [Music] undeterred Stuart's on his next mission to reveal more hidden gems surrounding the castle war in other words he wants to get in the chopper and see a bird's eye view of 12th century oakum the Normans were renowned for their castle building prowess and solid defenses to Ferrars was no exception Stuart can clearly see from the air how the Normans diverted the course of the nearby river building a channel to the castle to feed a moat back on terra firma and Stuart's itching to update Neal on what he's found what I've discovered going up in the air and taking a wider view is what's happening is there are two streams what they've done in the normal period is taken a branch off that man-made branch and cut it down to here so how far away's there well it's best part of a kilometre up here I mean it's an incredible investment in time and effort isn't it you're actually diverse a whole river effectively oh they said the Normans are good at that sort of thing you're engineering you know with monasteries and all that bringing water in it they're good water engineers yeah it's an amazing discovery because what the helicopter ride Stewart's findings underline how emphatically the invading Normans stamped their mark on Britain the moat and Bailey or inner enclosure were built right at the heart of the existing anglo-saxon settlement of Auckland these structures were designed to keep the locals out leaving them to beg at the town gates but it wasn't just the Normans who put Rutland on the map it's royal connections go back even earlier historian Mark Morris has unearthed some surprising evidence Rutland was always this anomalous unit which was a piece of land that was given to the Queens of England from the late 10th century as part of their dowry and if you look at this Charter for example of Edward the Confessor Edward was the king up till 10 January 1066 his death sets in train that the process that leads to the Norman Conquest you can see in this Charter of Edwards we've got Rutland mentioned for the first time in any document so Rutland being given as as a dour portion to his queen Edith what do we know about her quite a lot because she commissioned a history of Edwards reign and unsurprisingly as the patron she comes across very well she's described as beautiful virtuous accomplished speaking many languages very good needlework Edward the confessors wife Edith was also King Harald's sister he and three of her brothers were killed at the Battle of Hastings unfortunately none of them had any offspring so unless eateth produced an heir to the anglo-saxon throne control would be handed to the conquering Normans the great debate about her is whether she didn't have a child because Edward didn't sleep with her as she claimed or whether they were just simply unlucky and infertile so she and her husband have been a bit more friendly to each other in oakum we might still all be Saxon we might still be Saxons yes so not only did oakum attract the highest echelon of norman society it was a place fit for the saxon queen edith but what we don't yet have is any trace of anything Saxon in the ground what would really help move things along would be some lovely clear crisp geophys reserves do bear in mind to date Jewry has got nothing right on this survey what's happened to teamwork' as Jimmy puts it all into radar in every lump and bump raksha's edging closer to the ferry's bedroom and the other trenches are certainly not short on finds but in truth we're still in the dark over huge chunks of the Norman complex and there's now just a day and a half to resolve it afternoon day two and we've all been waiting with bated breath for John's geophys results because they could hold the key to this end of the site John have they gone look we've done quite an extensive survey now we've got a big sample of the whole area and clearly some parts of the site where we're not seeing walls and I suspect that due to clay but there is some good news one area shows a concentration of solid radar reflections suggesting floors and walls right next to rakshasas trench building expert Richards got a hunch what it might be could be a chapel it's going to be a ground floor chapel it's not going to be like a first floor all I've got possibly in the chamber block so hopefully it'll have a tile floor remains and you know glazed tiles so if we find a medieval building there's some bits of smashed up glazed floor tile in it we definitely got a chat we're definitely gonna say well there's only one way to test that theory trench number four five deep bad Justin so we want to get it all out time teams matt has his eyes peeled for anything resembling a Norman Chapel can't see any glazed tiles just alone building the complete picture of what oaken castle once look like isn't exactly plain sailing we've got a distinct lack of meaningful structures in our trenches so rakshasas turned to architectural historian Richard for some help but she's unprepared for what Richards thinking so Richard you dragged me all the way to the top of this rampart I'm looking down this this precipice yeah well you've been working away at that trench down there and your walls are coming this direction I kind of disappear into the rampart I think the rampart might be a bit of a red herring we'd originally thought rat's arse trench was where you'd expect to find the high-status living quarters but the curving walls seem to extend all the way to the castles outer defences and Richards theory is that a Royal bedchamber wouldn't be positioned so close to the defenses so back to the drawing board for Raksha and a race against time to work out what her building actually is luckily in his trench Phil's showing Matt what he thinks is a well exactly what you'd expect to find in a kitchen so just like just on the edge of it coming round that's right it's coming round there look you can see it's got lovely arc on it there but the important thing is that it looks like this round here all that they dug to build the well in right so that means that there was already a build in here with stone slates on before that whale was put in right that is an increasingly important piece of information that we didn't know about this discovery not only confirms that Phil's located the holes kitchens which would have put meat and grog on the table of the normal Lords but the roof slates suggest that this could be a building that predates the Norman Hall with new information now pouring in Richard and time team graphic designer Alex are starting to redraw the entire plan of oakum castle and its surrounding buildings this block here the service book I Phil's been digging I think that needs to be butting against the gable end of the hall so first of all wall we're okay but it's beginning to give it kind of life isn't it I like that yeah no it's getting that yeah but the back of the hall though the pictures still about as clear as mud side director Neil was hoping for a chapel in Matt and Cassie's trench from no archaeologists but it's not quite the Sistine yet Matt and Cassie last I was here it was dump the rubble over the top they've all gone now but what we actually got underneath the only clear feature we have is this ditch along here could this be the first sign of a chapel wall well let's get on with it because I'm worried always they say you can heal all that thunder coming yeah you think it's gonna rain before long with the weather on the turn I think it's time to check out how pottery expert Jaynes doing in the nice cozy fines tent what comes out of the trenches helps us date the structures we uncover we've been growing increasingly frustrated because we haven't been finding many archaeological structures in the ground but at the same time the fines have been coming up like there's no tomorrow and look at all this stuff loads of it Jane you've been scrubbing like crazy never turn amazingly productive site lovely assembly shirts come up for material so tell me the story of what you've got here I've got these lovely vessels like this one here which is a jug this is from Nottingham in its 13th century and it will probably be nicely decorated being a knight jug with a knights in armor over the horse running around on the trenches behind in trench three before we have had Knight styles so this one here which is fabulous it's like a coxcomb that's really high on the top of the roof and people coming along and pointing to the top of your roof it would have stood out the cockscomb tile from rakshasas trench would have been part of a stylized roof assembly on the high status side of the hall so even though we still don't know what building she's actually got we do know one thing it was magnificent it's always the last few finds that I find so intriguing where everything begins to taper off yeah this one here is really interesting this is the rim of a jar and it dates the late 9th or 10th century and was made in Lincoln you can hear how impressed the skies this one lasts five weeks I'm sure about this but I've had to look under the microscope and I think this is actually anglo-saxon and 5th to 8th century date it is too small to be absolutely sure but it's got a burnished surface and it looks as though it's got organics in it so I think this is probably our earlier I'll tell you one person who'd be so pleased to see that and that's - yeah where are you and the reason a tiny shard of pot will get Stuart's juices going is because it's the first evidence of oakum saxon past within the castle walls as ever though Stuart's already one step ahead scouring the surrounding town in adjacent park for evidence of oakum in the time of its most famous Saxon resident Queen Edith the houses help us severe well at the moment we're fairly calm find within the curtain wall of the bailey armed with a lot of energies concentrators I think we need to be thinking of going outside into the park to the north because the Bailey's has been dropped within a bigger enclosure so I think we'd need to explore more out there while Stuart starts building the case for investigating what he thinks is an outer enclosure or Bailey inside rakshasas getting evermore glimpses of d'affaires taste in interior design this is a bits of plaster you see it's got the impressions on the back but where you would have had like the timber wall really clear as well as the decorated plaster there's a 13th century roof tile with a hole for the nail and a sham furred cornerstone an exquisitely crafted must have on any posh building despite this good fortune we're still scratching our heads for anything that sheds light on the function of this building well it seems like the team of down tools and escape next door to ponder that very question nothing to do with the beer of course no this is a very serious end of day discussion today it's been a mixed kind of day I mean but raptures trenchers been absolutely fantastic those walls are brilliantly preserved how about you Matt well there's no signs of any structures and monitoring yeah no walls or floors but I mean there's still archaeological deposits the bottom so everything to play for you must have got to the bottom of your transponder no we keep going down there's no sign of the bomb and I mean obviously if we go down there will be a bottom but I honestly don't know that get into it is actually gonna add anything to the story I think that trench is pretty much finished so you can move on us where tomorrow I reckon sure where do you think he should dig tomorrow I think we should go and play in the park tomorrow I think we're going to cuts close which is in the park and see if there's any evidence of the pre Norman castle is there anything anglo-saxon oh that's such a long shot yeah you may think it's a long shot done the survey well let him go do the Jew thing would you be prepared to give Stuart a little bit of labour a small bit of labour because it's coming out of field strange reluctantly yes but I want to extend ranchers trenches those curving wolves really fascinate me alright you happy with that so tomorrow hopefully we're gonna be able to pull together the whole story of the Norman castle and will we discover anything Anglo Saxon Anglo Saxon and whilst you're Ainsworth bio right [Music] beginning of day three here at oakum in Rutland and we're slap-bang in the middle of a controversy somewhere in this park Stewart reckons this a kind of anglo-saxon compound but Neil thinks that it's a waste of time looking for it particularly as we haven't sorted out the norman castle yet and Phil won't even come out of the castle to dig the trench Tim you're the English heritage inspector it's actually down to you are we justified I think so it's the feature we don't understand well and essentially we're talking about a small hole in a large feature so the impact won't be very great what is this feature that we want to have a look at this Bank here and what we're trying to do is just take a section out of this bank to see if we can find what the bank buries mr. Grouch is I had a chance to sleep on it how do you feel now pretty grouchy edgy there's so many things we could do on this side Tony and we're a long way from the castle fills in the rights drop as it is really all we want to do is just try and cut in one there yeah one buckets width technology lets us down again Neil's got a blocked nozzle this is the kind of drama we get all the time on time team I'm really looking forward to who's gonna tell Phil he's gonna dig this Phil's Norman kitchen trench is almost finished but he's not exactly chomping at the bit to get cracking on Stewarts wildcard trench in the outer bailey looking for Ockham's Saxon origins but hints are being dropped meanwhile in her stable trench trace is still struggling with the archeology over in the posh end raksha's trying to make sense of a jumble of walls in her trench and next door in the chapel trench mats similarly frustrated every time I think about a wall in this trench investigate it and give it a scraping nothing it's not long before he and Cassie hit quite literally on the reason for the lack of any coherent structures well well they have it it's a devastating blow it wouldn't be allowed now but when this modern sewer pipe was put in during the 50s all the Norman remains were churned up and destroyed leaving Matt and Cassie at rock bottom with no Chapel but in the outer castle Bailey there's one man who doesn't need stuff in the ground to paint an evocative picture what we've got to do is look at the place in context or the castle in context for instance just what we're walking out of now if you went back to the 14th century this would be a gigantic fish pot outside the castle yeah the bank we've walked up in the 14th century is the edge of a big garden enclosure these things are referred to in an inventory so we've got a nice picture what's going on with the Norman castle and what's around in that peered but we still got this outer enclosure issue to address and I think it's compelling evidence that the castle is dropped within an earlier enclosure ok this isn't just a crackpot theory we've already found one piece of Saxon pot and know that when Queen Edith was here in the 11th century oaken was a significant Saxon settlement stewards convinced that the defensive mound running around the outer bailey was there before the castle it's what the Saxons would have called a burr so you think that this Green Bank is actually the anglo-saxon verb I do and that Green Bank that's up there is that's the perimeter along there and that's what we're putting the trench in and that's why you're so keen to see if there's any evidence of Anglo Saxon activity it's the structure of the bank what's it look like how has it made what material does it have does it have anything in at all but it's something different to everything else that we can see in the landscape right I'm sure this Phil gets stuck in with his usual gusto he makes two unusual finds right away half a plastic spoon and a ballpoint pen while Phil digs for Britain in an attempt to find something anything Saxon work has started on a traditional item long associated with the whole casas found herself a new job as a blacksmith's assistant now when you use a hammer you don't use your wrist we've called in blacksmith John Spence who was responsible for making the last three presentation horseshoes in the hall horseshoes have been made by hand since the days when walked Linda Ferrars might have ridden into the hall from a hunting expedition but instead of bellows and a hammer we've got the luxury of a blowtorch of 2,000 degrees centigrade that slices through metal like butter 350 horseshoes dominate this extraordinary Hall and although we might not be quite the royal visiting party we couldn't investigate oakum without adding something of our own to the collection something unique I'm sure this will take pride of place among the others but as our dig is revealed there's much more to oakum than ceremonial horseshoes time teams finds expert Danny has had a work cut out investigating find after find that the site's thrown up you've come up with some lovely stuff yeah yeah we've thrown some really nice things actually one of them is this medieval axe head you can see the blade here and then this bit here is a socket that's where the handle would have gone oh yeah so it's quite small it is actually it's probably for woodworking what about this coin this are it's not actually a coin I know it looks very much like a coin a metal it is yes this is kind of years before they didn't have calculators and things like we do now so it's almost a bit like you know how they aren't abacuses and this is what they would used to actually sort of reckon up with and it's got the head of Edward the first on it and his dates are he's 1272 to 1307 that's lovely for US isn't it without medieval cast it is isn't it yeah this has got to be my favorite and fine at the entire take there's a little spoon I know it's lovely isn't it yeah this is an apothecary spoon so it's used for dispensing drugs and for herps and for medicinal purposes so that's why it's so small because you're actually sort of using very controlled measures great but isn't it lovely these beautiful fines are an insight into daily life at oakum in the 12th century not just a stately residence but home to craftsmen housekeepers and Urbanists it's not quite as easy to identify what was going on in rakshasas Trench though it's something posh but probably not a bedchamber and with hours to go the walls just keep on coming well obviously we've got this this main chunky one running through here yeah and then you can see as I'm stood here there's another wall on a completely different alignment they don't really match the main building either so they're two buildings that we didn't even know we're here at all but Rob's been parroting away and he's got himself the holy grail of pottery what is it Rob tada what is it well I'm reliably informed by our pottery expert that this is 10th 11th century pot and crucially it's come from this deposit here which is a sort of make up the leveling layer that runs underneath the bottom course of this wall that might be exciting to archaeologists but it's not really exciting to proper human beings is it well actually is it tells me that this is much older than that building there ah so we've got cast-iron dating evidence I think that's a result identifying what sort of building this unusual wall belong to an impossible task but underneath it rakshasas got a wall that nobody was expecting to find it's the first ever structural evidence of a Saxon building a token earlier than the norman castle and if we've got one Saxon building in the inner Bailey could fill match that with something Saxon in the outer bailey famous trench going on well my famous trench is nearly complete actually I'm just doing a bit of record here so what have you got what we do have the tale of the bank you can actually see it in this section here you see this gray material and it literally is a wedge this is the material that is washed down off the bank now they're really interesting bit the crucial bit is this bit here you see this reddish clay layer because that is the old ground surface and that is the bit that is totally sealed by the bank and it's the the bit that would give us a date for the construction of the bank you say would give us a day it would give us a date for the construction of the bank if we found anything Stuart no fines absolutely no fines well that could be a bad thing yeah it could be a good thing in what way could it possibly be a good thing well if this Bank are being constructed say the 13th or 14th century when there was lots of activity going on after the Norman peered the beer background pottery background batil have been chucked up in the bank on that surface the fact it's clean suggests it's being put on the surface where nothing else was happening the implication for that will be that it's early this is this wonderful theory that Stuart's got you want this to be a Saxon Bank the fact that I haven't actually found any evidence to knock that theory down for you is a good thing here is an argument I perfectly accept the argument what I would say is that I believe that this Bank was built on a virgin site that's probably as far as I and could be earlier than the castle it could be earlier than a castle it could even be earlier than the Saxons you know we simply don't know with all the other evidence you've got it seems to me as a punter I think you've made a compelling case for this being an Anglo Saxon bull ride it's tenuous but this find on lack of find rounds off an exhausting three days where time teams rewritten the Ockham's history cochem castle was built within an earlier saxon enclosure the splendid norman hall was encircled by walls and towers adjoining this were the kitchens and a service block which in turn looked out over a substantial barn or stable behind the hall was probably a chapel and an incredibly lavish building stretching to the curtain wall it may even have predated the castle together oaken a place fit for royalty and home to one of the leading Norman knights of his age it's been a really good three days isn't it lovely sight but some very difficult archaeology yeah frustrating perplexing some dodgy geophysics it gave us false clues do you know when we actually found the archaeology it was fantastic quality didn't find it when we looked Phil it's been a real emotional helter-skelter over three days for you isn't it it has been an absolutely emotional helter-skelter Tony and I mean what I've learnt more than anything else is what a vivid imaginations sure ain't that we can come up with what seems like a very plausible story from absolutely no evidence being on the receiving end of Phil's fury actually you did manage to provide us with a whole different strand a whole new story around outcome the anglo-saxon story you must be pleased well I hope so I've never learnt an awful lot this week I've managed to avoid buying Phil a drink for a start off but to be able to look at the castle in the town its place in the town how the town's evolved that's a great thrill to be able to do that so yeah I've enjoyed it enormously it has been a funny old dig so often we find walls and we find floors but hardly any finds this time we've been inundated with shared loads of finds and hardly any structures at all but I guess it doesn't matter what's important is that we tell a good story although I'm never gonna be able to stop Stewart and Phil I'll do [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 270,283

Rating: 4.9103951 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, time team, time team full episodes, time team season 20, time team specials full episodes, medieval documentary, medieval documentary history channel, tony robinson, tony robinson documentary, tony robinson time team, archaeological discoveries, archaeology

Id: RRhHC4YajIk

Length: 47min 2sec (2822 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 03 2019