Is There An 11th-Century Leper Colony Buried In Cornwall? | Time Team | Chronicle

[Music] thank you a local landowner was laying some water pipes just by this bridge here when he started turning up lots of human bones they're obviously very old but there was no clue as to who they were or why they were buried here now we know that there was once a leper hospital around here somewhere and that this was once a major Crossing between Devon and Cornwall and time team have got just three days to solve the mystery of the Cornish skeletons [Music] thank you [Music] not a happy Chapel not really no you could have done without being in a wet sticky hole couldn't you really good yeah you're gonna be able to get much out of this pitch it's pretty plugging God it is yeah it really is and this weather it didn't help it at all but this is the uh that's right you can see the skull there Tony and the jaw bone there so that's definitely human is it that's definitely a human there's no question about that but we've got no reason to conclude that just because it's here it's a 14th century leopard have we no it could be almost any date no reason why it can't be prehistorical Roman or even even post medieval we've got we need to sort the context out you know before we can understand that what do you mean well we need to fit this in you know tied in the trench up fitted into the geophysics here see if there's you know the extent of its extensive burials there's any walls with it and then you know within the whole area we're going to be looking at Andy Reid who discovered the burials is have been part of a leper cemetery and if he's right then perhaps geophysics can locate other Graves here or the remains of a cemetery wall but was this area of waste ground part of the land which belonged to the leper hospital this tired map of 1845 records the boundaries of the leper colony 150 years after it had fallen into disuse but Robin has a much earlier description of the site a charter of about 1250 some dated about 1250 does give us the boundaries of an estate which look very much like when the hospital was founded on this site that's right for instance uh he says let's see if I can follow this it would be nice to see if the boundary actually tied up with that John where does it start as the boundaries there wind to wit as the water of the Kenzie descends into the river tambi which is Tamar that's that's there isn't it that's the Tamar and that's the Kenzie confluence right and so ascending by the water of the Kenzie even to the ditch of Whittemore that's the Kenzie well that's the point at where the 19th century boundary leaves the Kenzie so maybe that's the ditch of Whitmore yeah and near that ditch as far as the well which is at the head of the causeway well that's that's the road there so maybe that's where the whale was near the head of the causeway the long near the causeway even to the wall of the cemetery of the afore said Chapel so maybe that's going down the road towards the the burial so that fits then by comparing the charter description with the tithe map in a modern map we can see that the original boundaries of the leper Hospital haven't changed since the 13th century and that some of them may still exist in the landscape today what we need to do is going to look on the ground if this winter more ditch there's any sign of that and this um Cold Lake in the room great so that gives you plenty to work on yeah we're quite excited into the rain if we now superimpose these boundary lines on an aerial view of the site we can clearly see that the area of waste ground containing our burials is part of the land which belonged to the leper Hospital look at this I think uh could be a great cut is it through there doing that way well that that would be where we'd expect it to be it looks very very clean on that side and then there's no start material and it is immediately above where our skull is be really good if we can pick it up at the top yeah well I'll carry on to the other side and see if I can find the other side of it and follow it on down history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans enjoy our Rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period history hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones Elena yanega and Katz German not only that but with a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of History through our network of podcasts sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle at checkout large amounts of bone already found in the pipe trench show that we're dealing with the remains of more than one skeleton what's important is to find out if these bones show any signs of leprosy which means collecting even the smallest fragments so that they can all be examined by Margaret Cox our bone specialist when she arrives tomorrow can we automatically conclude that those bodies are lepers well of course at the moment we don't know which side of the road the hospital was but they could be but also we're dealing with a roadside situation you know I mean which is suicides people that were executed that uh plague victims there are a whole range of possibilities and with a bit of luck I should be able to turn up at least some documentary references that will rule in or rule out some of the possibilities and of course there's the locals who also like to think of the possibility of of Civil War victims because I understand there was a a major Skirmish in the Civil War here right on the county boundary but we ought at least to pursue quite hard the possibility of leprosy yeah because I mean since the leper hospital was here for what or 500 years you know in active operation uh I suppose that makes the the likeliest possibility that they were leopards yeah [Music] well puddles may be okay for cleaning the odd find but if this rain continues then we're going to have a swimming pool here so it's important now that we protect the evidence in this trench one other problem this weekend if we're going to find a context for our burials is that a large area of this parcel of land has been disturbed by the building of a sewage works just across the road from the waste ground but for now we're going to concentrate on this side of the road in an area of undisturbed ground here which is where the geophysics team are now after their results from around the burials proved inconclusive John we've heard rumors that you're getting a bit excited is that right it's looking quite good I mean see here Tony I'm getting readings consistently 70 75 in the sort of 70s and that suggests that it's just sort of normal soil I wonder if it was a better term whereas I move in this direction the reading is going up sort of I.T 85 95 110 gosh 120. does that mean we can dig here now or um well I mean we want to get a plan yeah of what exactly is here but it suggests to me that these hide readings could be remains of walls Rubble I mean it looks as though we're getting good changes I can't actually identify walls at the moment but I'm quite hopeful we're going to get something good so you're going to print out and then we'll get a printout and we'll have a better idea yeah yeah brilliant okay all right cheers if we have found the buried walls of the leper hospital then we're talking about a hospital unlike any we know today this would have been a self-contained religious settlement built around a small Chapel it's quite a substantial little settlement for the Middle Ages isn't it well this is only theoretical at this stage of course because we haven't actually got the foundations of any individual buildings as yet but uh yeah yeah it was as far as we can gather one of the largest of the 26 leper hospitals that once existed in Cornwall what's this place up here well that's the castle Launceston Castle way in the distance and it's really just to give an idea of how far a leper Hospital would have been from that uh it's a feral distance a mile and a half something like that the original Apple Hospital you see was in launched in itself and then in the 13th century it became usual for these left hospitals to be moved out so the contagion could be taken away from the good citizens and they moved it in this case as far as they could to the limits of the borough this drawing is based on karenza's experience of another site and represents fairly new thinking about leper hospitals but before we get too carried away we'd better take a look at the geophysics results that doesn't really look like I was expecting John to be honest with you doesn't look like what I was expecting either the trouble is I thought well I was getting quite clear wall lines um it's obvious that I'm not and I'm not quite sure what I am getting together can you say that you're not getting much and why are you also disappointed when you've got two zonking great black things this one that looks like a gun and and something that looks to me a bit like a building there I think we need we need John to tell us what he thinks those black patches and indeed white patches might be the black is the high resistance right so this could be so it could be Starbucks or it could be geology and the rock is outcropping close to the circle it's sort of following the Contour of the stream partly yes so the fact I'm not getting rectangular buildings is you know the disappointing thing wouldn't it make more sense to extend the geophysics up here oh yes I mean this is just uh we've only done yeah but we've got the burials down here if they uh they seem to be articulate you know they need otherwise it's not mixed up bones it is actually skeletons in the ground so that's presumably the graveyard or a graveyard and that's where you're going to get the the chapel presumably down amongst that yeah I think you've got to start from the known exactly is it just the other side of the head this is the ancient road we know that on this side there are burials therefore there's more likely to be from the known towards here than going underneath that what is known to be an old road so we might as well keep within what appears to be a natural boundary so the bodies are here yeah and the idea is that we might dig an evaluation trench here or or come off that way from the wall out into those [Music] so you'll have to do this then Mr Cole we did a trench Crusher field not really but I've said yes with this trench underway we should soon know the answers to two questions do the burials extend to this side of the Hedge and are the geophysics signals here showing evidence of buried walls on natural geology meanwhile karenger and I are facing up to another job which needs doing checking out the sewage Works we're just doing some work on the leper hospital that was on this site and you probably know that the surge works is right in the middle of the area of the laser grandson right while in trench two we've already removed enough topsoil to find the answers to our questions so our assumption it was spreads of stones that might be collapsed buildings was was one possibility but it's actually spreads of stones that are probably not related no solid wall lines and that was why on looking at the results okay so I wasn't that excited no so okay we we would do well not to go on any further with that then because you know the farmers rather apprehensive about you know digging his field up and the basic recording job first make sure we got it all down and then and then a rethink so that's one Theory knocked on the head we now know that there are no Graves on this side of the Hedge and no building remains here but the geophysics team will now survey the rest of this field across the road at the sewage Works we've got a new line of Investigation because Roger Williams thinks he can locate an ancient wall which was uncovered here during some building work and if I remember right we had a piece of War like the the one we found was going like that and there was a piece going that direction tea would be great wouldn't it well it would be wouldn't it I'm thinking um obviously you can't remember exactly where it was I mean you wouldn't no no maybe we ought to get the geophysics in to try and locate it the general view is that we wouldn't expect the hospital buildings to be on both sides of the road so if the walls buried under the sewage works are genuine it would mean that our burials are less likely to be part of the leper Cemetery Mick Stewart and Robin are rechecking the charter to see if we've missed any clues to the location of the cemetery one thing we are sure about this was once the Whitmore ditch let's just go on to the ditch of Whitmore and near that ditch as far as the well which is at the head of the causeway well is it is that the causeway up there the road coming in from from Launceston where that car is going along just now in front of the Bungalow coming along that hedge line following the Contour turning at the Railway Bridge which is just over there that's probably where the spring would be and then turning down the Hedge line back down towards the forward so that where the boundary turns towards the North that is the area of the cemetery wall and channel that suggest the other side the road and that's where the lodge is well it could be either side of the road it could be either side but it's in it's in the area of that return of the boundary well let's stick with it and see what we get in this field I think we can do more more than wait to see what the geophysics produce is off this side of the field and if that doesn't work then if the sewage works with the Vengeance we've got a serious thing about that side though yeah so almost the end of a very long wet day and over at the pipe trench in amongst the other bits of bone we're now beginning to see the faint outline of a complete skeleton as the skull and the two upper arms with the lower arms there crossed over like that we should get their fingers in there tomorrow and we've got a particular instructions from Margaret who's coming tomorrow but the important fingers will be important if we've got to try and prove it it's leprosy here's the pelvis and here's just one of the legs we should find the other one in there so we got the whole skeleton and it is as you'd expect for a Christian later East West that's not a second leg that crazy no I'm afraid that's just a tree route we were very lucky really weren't we because that pipe if that had been laid another six inches this way it would have turned straight through it right yeah it's been really a roller coaster of a day what we haven't found and we're really disappointed about was any buildings associated with this person and usually at this time of day if we haven't found the environment we're looking for I get fairly suicidal but I've begun to learn in time team that things change on day two so let's see what happens on day two see you after the break foreign day two and the colored pens are out because the news from geophysics is that they can't find anything other than natural geology in the whole of this field listen the problem we have is that we've got burials in a small area we don't know how much further they go I think what Nick and I seem to think now is what we really need to do is try and put a trench or just a small trench to see if there are burials at this end of this small area of land we're one sort of sort of hear something yeah somewhere there you see because this this this fun and little enclosure is is very intriguing it's slightly higher than the rest of the field which you would get with constant you know re-burial wouldn't you the bone of building up and so on and you know we think we think we'd like to know whether this cemetery is going on and which direction it's going in we've tried that we know the river's there the road's there so we ought to come this way but if we're not getting anything on this side of the road I think we inevitably now got to think of looking in the sewage Farm we've been trying to put this off haven't we so that means that we would dig the trench that corenza and I were talking about yesterday in physics first yeah physics are located but I mean being as they're talking about a wall with a right angled turn off it I mean I think we can't so we could get the GF is done straight away there's also also the possibility of the chapel being in association with this Cemetery if it is the cemetery so that we could also keep our open minds as far as trenches concerned for buildings well in this enclosure yeah look don't stop discussing it again please can we get on pretty though isn't it very pretty trench should quickly tell us if the burials extend across this area of wasteland and Margaret Cox has arrived and has been busy looking at our increasing collection of Bones so these are some of the bones that have been found here in the past are they from lepers well they may be from leopards but they haven't got any of the Bony changes that lepers eventually develop so they could just be people who've died from other causes they could be people who've died from other courses but they could be leopards just that the disease hasn't affected the Bony tissue yet they could have had the soft tissue changes associated with Leprosy yeah what would the bones look like if they were showing any size of leprosy well the main areas that are characteristic of left really waste away eventually or been to themselves and there's nothing left eventually they come to Little pointy ends um and also it affects the skull and I've actually brought this one with me and this is from medieval Bristol so close to Mexico and what you can see here are the characteristic resorption of the bones around the area of the nose does that mean that the I mean the nose which is cartilage would actually sort of sort of collapsed that's right because the bridge of the nose collapses so the nasal passages become distorted and congested and you get lots of nasal and bronchial infection and that tracks down into the throat and you get changes to the larynx which gives the leper the characteristic husky voice which is associated with leprosy and so the whole of this area this is in fact the most important part of the skeleton for diagnosing leprosy with confidence the the sorts of changes that occur to the feet and hands are indicative of leprosy but they could result from other things whereas these changes are very very characteristic of this particular disease this is an anatomical model of a skeleton it's what we use for teaching purposes back at the University and if you look at the the bridge of that nose and the sharpness of these edges here and the profile of those edges while there is a bit of variation between individuals whereas if we put that one sort of like that yeah as you can see you can see that all this is gone but see how sharp these edges are too yeah that's what I mean by the resorption that causes this if you like the bone disappears and becomes rounded and thickens on the edges and eventually that would all Resort back that would disappear and the teeth would fall out so you lose your teeth as well as have a sunken nose and the palate would become very porous and would eventually perforate through so you'd have problems eating normal food because you wouldn't be able to masturbate properly so it really was a very unpleasant solution well it still is a very impressive disease As We Know well wouldn't you know it just look which bits damaged on our skeleton but the rest of it looks complete including the all-important fingers and toes and Margaret's very keen that we follow all the latest ideas on collecting forensic evidence Phil if you're getting close to the the feet do you think you could actually cover yourself up so that you don't contaminate the samples are you serious of course I'm serious if we want to do DNA analysis and also Gary as well because you're looking at the hands and the the facial facial region and the DNA specialist will want those if there are any affected bones those are the bones they'll want no I mean if there's a good scientific reason yeah collecting evidence for DNA testing is relatively new to archeology and certainly this is a new experience for Phil like a Snowman hey didn't you take your pouch off you've got an expressionist on your side look right right I don't know why we're bothering with this you're so riddled with infections across the road in the sewage works we now have another trench underway which is positioned to uncover the wall found during the building work here in 1993 and could be proof that the leper hospital was on this side of the road while at the waste ground Andy Reeve is keeping a close eye on this excavation and although we've found more of the pipe trench it's beginning to look like there are no burials here the main thing is that if this was a cemetery and a water pipe went through it then rather like the uh the trench that we came here to look at originally then there should be shards of Bones scattered all over the place when they backfilled it and at the moment we can't see anything all of this bit here is the clean as a whistle firm just how big the burial area actually is Mick is suggesting another trench here if we've got no burials there and we've got this stack here yeah then let's at least see if this is sterile as well or if they're coming this way what we do know is that we have one complete skeleton and the remains of several others in this trench Victor sketch shows us how they cross each other and are not all orientated East-West as we would expect in a Christian graveyard but what are Margaret's First Reactions to seeing the bones in the ground despite the fact that the remains are fairly fragmentary we still be able to find a lot out on the remains well it looks to me as though the the teeth in particular is suggesting this as a young individual yeah um you haven't got any wisdom teeth there at all on either side of the mandible and there is space for them to come through so that indicates the person's age below 25 right and likewise there's very little wear on those molars which supports that young age and equally the master process the the Bony chunky bit just behind the ear looks fairly small which suggests that it's possibly a female right obviously we need to look at the pelvis in particular to be more confident about that but my instincts at the moment say we've got a young adult female here a leper Hospital in medieval times would have had to be self-sufficient and we thought it would be a good idea to ask the white company our experts in medieval skills to demonstrate some of the herbal medicines that might have been made here 700 years ago so all of these things would have been available to your ordinary average medieval person with it yes they would yes and do they have a cure for leprosy no they knew that there wasn't a cure Tony they said that only God could kill leprosy what they did do and what the Physicians advised them to do was simply to try and treat the symptoms as you know with Leprosy you lose sensation in your fingers and your toes so you chop your finger or you'd you'd macerate Your Hand by accident and that causes sores and then they develop into ulcers so they just dress them to try and make them stop getting any worse basically and that's what we're doing here with these herbs we're making a poultice to stick on the ulcers how do you do that well I've got yarrow here and this is Marigold they're both for healing wounds what else are you going to put in Sylvia we've got in there we've got elderflowers and sink foil and how do you transform that into a lotion well we're going to heat it and because it's got the grease in it and the oil with the action of the heat it will draw all the good things out of the herbs into the ointment then we'll strain it and put it into pots and what should the Tabitha's making Tabitha's making headache pills she's using she's using this which is fever fume yeah and she's grounded into a paste which will will be for headaches migraines we mix that with beeswax and honey and make pills out of it normally it's Phil who takes part in this kind of thing he's so busy up there he's also streaming with cold I just wondered whether we could prepare something in order to make him better what would you use right we have here which is root over the Chris it's not um licoristics as you know and would that have grown in England in medieval it was imported it was it was a nice medicine and we have elderflowers some of those in and we want the chamomile that they put all of that in all of the chamomile yeah that's right yeah now he also wants some ginger yes small slices thin slices thin slices first well if you could carry on with that I'll come back later and I'll see if I can persuade Phil to have a drink of it and then we'll find out whether you actually have got a miracle cure back at the waist ground our middle trench has done its job and proved that there are no more Graves here which means that we've got to start thinking about our burials as being just an isolated pit of bodies which might not be connected to the leper Hospital with this in mind Robin has gone to Launceston to visit the town's record archive and can't resist a chance to look at the original 13th Century Charter granting land to the leper hospital I always think this is wonderful that something as old as this has survived so much better than the the stone and mortar out of the Prairie side the water of Kenzie whittlemore to the ditch of Whitmore descending from the river of colvod Lake unto the unto the it's incredible to think that this was written 700 years ago but moving on and Robin thinks he may have found another explanation for our pit of bodies I was going through um Peter's history of Launceston he talks about the the sizes and particularly the Llama societies the August the sizes held in Launceston received for three prisoners pits at Lamas and he goes on at various other points uh when prisoners were executed for burying of prisoners at Lama socizes and each time they talk about the prisoners being buried in pits here here there's six men being buried together and I've come across another one of a hanged woman also and I wonder whether is that this is an explanation for our pit of burials near the Footbridge uh near the leperhos so you're saying really these criminals were not usually buried in consecrated not always by any means I mean apart from anything else we've got references to suicides Crossroads that's right yeah or certainly on waste ground and waste ground can also be beside thoroughfares as this indeed was meanwhile on the outskirts of Launceston our trench in the sewage Works has uncovered evidence of a wall only it's not as old as we'd hoped this is a Victorian War which dates to around the time this photo was taken during the building of the original sewage Works in 1898. so nothing more to do here today other than backfill this trench and put our heads together to work out a strategy for tomorrow and while this is going on I'm going to persuade Phil to try some herbal medicine drink it first good God and then we'll tell you what was it tastes lovely what's it taste like good sweet but honey in it go and take another slope miraculous cure is this well it certainly inhibits your speed get it down here what do you mean leave a bit for me I am you haven't got a cough so what exactly isn't it it had Ginger Ginger and Licorice and honey in it and herbs are good for soothing coughs it actually does taste like a mild version of today's cough mixture I mean it's got no nasty additives though and what is this green stuff this is your ointment that's well try some it's an ointment if you put your fingers in it you'll see it's like an open I didn't eat it though do I no no you put it on your sauce you've got your sauce [Laughter] well it looks like we may have found a cure for Phil's cough and we've now got some headache pills in case the weekend gets any tougher but as far as tomorrow's concerned I think everyone's come to the conclusion that it's now unlikely we'll find any evidence of the leper hospital or is it Nick yeah this is one of these typical time team things I know that we're very stuck but look what Carl has just found see see what you make of this is not handmade 12th and 13th century pottery and it comes from the flower beds of the sewage works with the guy from Southwest yeah no soil was brought in to landscape site so this is all so this this may be all that's left of the leopard it's just what smashed up in the flower Button he's picked that up or you've just no I've just picked it up while walking on the other hand it may not be all that's left Mig but you see the trouble with the sewage Farm is some of it's been dug away some of it's been piled up and when it's piled up it's two meters deep or more we'll never be able to get it but in our generation somebody in future may be able to but this may be an indication of what's there the site might not be destroyed it might be perfect yes but for as far as we're concerned that's just as bad in a sense but on the other hand we've got our first tangible evidence yes occupation so a welcome surprise to end the day and we still have the prospect of new evidence coming to light when this skeleton is lifted tomorrow it's a wonderfully preserved skeleton it's really very nice condition isn't it and I'm quite pleased as well because we can now say with a lot more confidence that it's actually an adult female if you notice the pelvic bones they're they're wide and they're shallow whereas with the male they're much more upright and a narrower pelvic Inlet another thing that's looking really interesting from the leprosy point of view of the hands and I don't know if you if you notice but you can see the the bones in the back of the hand buffing up against to the right armaged yeah you notice that well one of the symptoms of leprosy that results from the paralysis and loss of feeling in the hands is that you actually end up with claw hands so you reckon there could still be a left it might be I mean it's just it's just a clue really because normally in archaeological material as you know the hands are extended that they're out straight and it's very unusual now either the the rest of the fingers are missing all these hands are actually clenched and we won't know the answer to that until tomorrow when we can actually start to lift the material [Music] thank you day three and last night's Pottery finds in the flower beds of the sewage Works have got everyone convinced that this was the location of the leper Hospital the question is can we find more evidence to prove it while on the other side of the road Phil has only to remove one more obstacle another damaged skull before we can begin lifting the complete skeleton well first of all I'll try and get rid of this skull you can see the inside of the cranium this is all very very smashed and decayed so it's not really going to tell us very much so once I've got that out the way then I'll be able to block out around the feet and with a bit of luck lift those both those feet in one goal Margaret are there any particular bits of the skeleton that that you require or are you just going to take up the whole thing well we obviously ultimately want to take up the whole thing but the three crucial areas of the feet the hands in particular and then the skull because what we want to do is to remove all the soil from the inside of that skull and see if there are any facial fragments that impacted in with that soil which might again address the leprosy issue that we were dealing with yesterday although we think the sewage Works has been built on top of the leper Hospital what we're hoping is that we might be able to identify areas which haven't been disturbed by the building work one potential area to investigate is the garden of the lodge a privately owned house which backs onto the sewage works then this is the only bit that isn't disturbed by the sewage farm and interestingly it's got a huge you tree in the corner of it which you know we spotted and wondered whether that was of any significance because they had them in church yards a lot in the Middle Ages I think they've got dogs and why do they have these new trees in the church they haven't been church-eyed because they've got poisonous berries yeah and you don't want the cattle eating them but also they use the the leaves for a substitute for Palms on Palm Sunday but perhaps more importantly it's the source of longbows why do they need longbows in churches they didn't in church it but they had to have bows everybody else because it was poisonous that tends to be an enclosed Church yard it doesn't look terrible I thought it was much bigger than these but it's not like it says unfortunately for us the garden of the lodge like the sewage Works has been radically altered over the years and doesn't seem to have anything to offer in the way of original land surfaces that appears natural there's a ditch along the boundary I mean so much has been disturbed by the sewage fire around here you know if we could find one bit that was wrong that would be very useful uh Mickey there this is Nick what's that was that me yeah uh it's Mick here who's that over [Applause] there I just got in front of me the 1946 Aero photographs and also the ones for 1975 of the Waterworks and we found an area which is uh apparently clear of all development over good that's good that's that's great news Nick um uh yeah we we've got somebody with a CAT scan looking for the live live uh services but we've also got geophys here looking for uh any anomalies but in the meanwhile we're gonna lay out a trench as close to the road as possible as close to the entrance to see what we can find over this is one of the photos which has prompted all the activity Nick Johnson has spotted that this small area around these Porter cabins has remained undisturbed despite the many periods of building work over the years so with no time to waste our last trench of the weekend to get started here close to the old road and just a short distance from our pit of bodies which luckily for Mick means that he hasn't got far to run if he wants to keep an eye on both our excavations this afternoon all right it's pulling through it isn't it take it steady that's because she'll be almost out of Courts have to pull the route through it oh it's coming through can you slow down slow the thing underneath there you go thanks terrible isn't it but I'm not very optimistic we're going to be able to tell whether any of these bones were leprous or not yeah um it's going to be very difficult it's falling apart as you as you're speaking we don't seem to be having much luck with the critical bits of this skeleton first the skull damage now the feet falling apart even though the rest of it seems to be in Fairly good condition hopefully an examination of the so-called claw hands and the fragments inside the skull could still help us resolve the leprosy question over at the lodge Mr Hill doesn't seem at all surprised to find his garden filling up with experts such as Barrick Morley who's visiting us for the day the critical question is how much of the leper Hospital might we expect to have survived what do you think the buildings would have been made of well it I've come to that either the local shillet and some of the larger bits of Australia yeah that's right which is a um a slatey sort of stone or cop or Justice yes there's lots of cob building around because that would rot down once once the top comes off absolutely yes yes and you can knock it down and it'll be humps and bumps of clay material if it was Stone it's so close to the road and a main route way at that but a source of stone after they put the prick there becomes redundant is easy accessible and can be carted away elsewhere oh it would have been wrong if it were decent Stone but the sort of shillet that is that is used for building around here just go and look at the walls isn't the sort of stone that recovers well so I so either way there might not be the the the residue left if it's cob or if it's Stone I think that's right yes if the buildings were made of Cobb a mixture of the local mud and straw then we'd have little chance of finding any structures but at the moment things seem to be looking quite hopeful yes because I mean if we got some pottery from it that'd be the first time we've got anything else Pottery as well this is below the Pea grit which this stuff's coming from and this the definite genuine article so this is the first stuff we've had that's sort of not from garden beds really that sort of vaguely associated with something archaeological pull that back a bit late that's looking a bit more encouraging over in the pipe trench our men in the white suits Phil and Gary and making progress Excavating the clawed hands yeah that's it there's a scaffold there a what scaffold I wish you would use these technical terms fingers thank you although some of the hand bones are well preserved all the important bits the tips of the fingers are in too bad a condition to be able to tell if this person was a leper however Margaret's examination of the skull has turned up something unexpected what we've got so these sort of striations that are cuts into the bone here and here do you think that might be a weapon or something well they're cut marks um I can say with some confidence that they're not post-mortem but they're either done before death um or maybe even at the time of death we don't I mean it's impossible to say but they're definitely not postmortem and in fact if they were situated up here yeah and if we were in North America we would say it was a scalping they're very characteristic of the sorts of cuts you get when somebody's been sculpt but they're in the wrong place yeah and we're in the wrong place this may not have been what we were hoping to find but it's certainly an extraordinary surprise Margaret will now check that there are no bits of facial bone inside the skull but it looks unlikely that we're going to find any evidence of leprosy in this skeleton however at the sewage works and is only too pleased to see that what we are uncovering here is part of a structure and not only that but the discovery of these pieces of pottery in between the stones means that we can date it to the 13th century these pieces are too small to be sure about the shape of the pot but bigger pieces like this should be much easier for Sue to reconstruct we can get the diameter from the curvature and also it shows the decoration which of these slash lines and there's the springing for a handle where a handle would have attached and so from this we're actually able to get a good representation of what the whole pots would have looked like and I can use that for reconstructing the pot on the computer yeah that's really helpful thanks I'll get them While most of our work this weekend has been concentrated around the burial pit Stewart has spent a lot of his time investigating the area to the north of the sewage works and believes he has found the site of an artificial Lake yeah I mean the evidence is all around us here the you see that shadow scalp over there yes that will be the far edge of the lake up to the Hedge which is the boundary mentioned in the charter which we've been following and up to that hedge line over there and I think it was originally retained in this Bank you see in front of us here right and it's silted up quite a lot in the middle I think so my theory is that it was land liable to flood that's what this natural scarf is defining originally the artificial Lake would have looked something like this and could be the colvod lake mentioned in the charter one of the things I found in the um in a hedge line coming up is a little area where you get a lot of what looked like fresh water mussels oh yes so it's quite probable that they may have been cool so this might have been a fish pond or something like that yeah helping helping to support the colony right so as we approached the end of the final day have we done it have we managed to find the leper hospital we all diggers seem pretty happy what have we actually got well it's modest but we are happy what we've got here is uh the very bottom part of a wall and the possible remains of a wall here and a cobbled surface you can see the cobbles here we think it's an entrance going out that way perhaps towards the Ford and the rest of it has gone in this 19th century field drain now you say you describe these things incredibly quickly and we all nod just which bit is the cobbles right this is the surface this is the these are the cobbles yeah these are Stones squashed into the natural all of that is natural and being beaten around by all the rest so when you say cobbles it's more sort of large Stones pushed into it's an earth path in order to keep it relatively stable absolutely yeah and and the reason why we're happy is because what has come out of here uh is pottery and roughly this is the 13th century this is the middle in the 15th 16th century and that's the uh 17th century which is the end so we're really very pleased with that you see so what's the story Mick well I think you know we we've gone around the place we're fairly certain it's on this side of the road Hospital most of it you know we felt was smashed by the development of the sewage Farm but uh it looks if there might just be little patches left of which this is you know almost the last remnants really so what do you think that this pathway might actually be there was no reason why it can't be going out to the Ford down there is there because the river's just literally through the Hedge there I mean let's go wild let's just say this is the Wicket gate out of the enclosure and down to the Ford to say can I have arms quick before they go yeah it it it just may be that and what then would be the relationship between this and the little stack of bodies on the other side none at all probably but we won't know that we've got a radio carbon date out of those so after a weekend of doggedly testing one Theory after another it looks like we might just have done it we found evidence for a cobbled entrance which we think could have led into a hospital which looked like this with a gate house and Cottages built around a small Chapel but it's equally possible according to Beric that the sewage works here is sitting on top of the remains of a hospital which looked more like this essentially just one much larger and more elaborate building Steve's been working on a 3D graphic to show this version which would have been purpose built by The Priory with enough room to accommodate about 30 lepers at one end with an area for worship at the other so having found the location of the labor Hospital what finally can Margaret tell us about the bones discovered by Andy well what's happened this afternoon is we've actually she's aged about five years we've actually realized that the what we thought was the missing wisdom tooth is actually the missing seven so we push her up to about 30 now and her dental health looks very good she hasn't got any bad teeth but what she has got is bad gums the gums have actually the bone has resolved back see that eventually her teeth would have fallen out so what color was that lack of oral hygiene stop squidgy refined diet can often cause fat are you saying that because of this soft squidgy diet these could be leper bones there's no other indication that they left us there's any evidence of leprosy at all in the skeleton the only thing we have got is we've got a bit of periostitis on the lower limb bones which you see as this rough rainy appearance to the Bone now that's present on nearly all of the lower lymphones we've got and it's something that you do see in leprosy but you also see a tremendous amount in medieval bone it's very very common now what is what happens when you actually knock your shins um you break the skin infection gets in and if it doesn't heal up quickly it gets into the bone and eventually if it gets really bad you'll get abscesses which is the infection tractor right into the bone which would be nasty Oozy and smelly things what about those scratches on the bones yes Margaret that you showed me earlier well they've become really really interesting because Juliet's been looking at books on medieval surgery and medicine and has actually found a nice illustration to show somebody a doctor treating somebody with sores or abscesses on the side of their head and the sorts of weapons they're using are very similar to these over the weekends these are actually medical instruments they are very similar to the medical instruments Tony owner in the text but these are just the ones we use for eating but actually it's just as sharp and the same similar shape and a silver construction to a medieval scalpel so the cups might have been that she got someone Margaret's suggesting that it's possible that if she had a sore or anything any a soul caused by anything but conceivably happening in somebody with Leprosy that the medieval sergers and Barbers did know that if you were operating on somebody with a soul you had to scrape out all of the sore material you couldn't leave any saw material at all and if I was operating when somebody was sore on the head and I was medieval and I'm scraping with my knife to be sure I got all the stuff out and might well have scored the bone in a similar way if I hold him side by side that is amazingly similar yeah that's very good isn't it this is the one you did yeah so with an oozing saw on the side of her head evidence of gum disease which could have been caused by a soft diet and sores on her shins could this mean that she was a leper well Margaret would have to say we can't prove it the critical areas for diagnosing leprosy were damaged or in poor condition and complaints like these could have been suffered by anyone living on a poor diet in medieval times until we get a radiocarbon date we don't even know how old these bones are and all we can do is speculate about who she was sorry I don't think it would have been flag burials because they're too shallow and I think everyone would have known that you would have buried people who died of infectious diseases and deep Graves so the man takes us down to two possible in fact she's female must lessen the Civil War I would say yes yes the the female bit does lessen the Civil War bid so that leaves us with the possibility of the possibility of execution victims after launched in the sizes which I've got in the late 16th and early 17th centuries we've arranged for all the bones excavated from the pipe trench to be reburied at Saint Thomas's Church which stands beside the ruins of The Priory this ironically means that the remains of the woman we've been Excavating will now lie in the grounds of the mother Church to the leper Hospital which if she was a leper would have been a privilege not granted in her day but when was that well I'm now in a position to tell you because some of the rib bones kept for radiocarbon dating tell us that she wasn't an execution victim in the 17th century but that she lived much earlier at some point between 1106 and 1286 which means that she could have been around in the early days of the leper Hospital I think there's a good chance that she was a leper perhaps buried just after the hospital had moved from Launceston and before a proper graveyard had been established [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 37,415

Keywords: British Isles history, British history, Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries, Hastings battle, History Hit documentaries, Secret history, Suzannah Lipscomb, archaeology findings, documentary series, historical mysteries, leprosy history, leprosy traces, medieval Eastern Europe, medieval Scotland, medieval Spain, medieval Wales, medieval art, medieval battles, medieval culture, medieval warfare, sewage works impact

Id: 0MnectkHFgs

Length: 51min 3sec (3063 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023