King John's Lost Palace | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

hello welcome to time team and this week we've really got to sort the wood from the trees or the forest to be precise because this is Sherwood Britain's best known forest famous not only for its mighty oaks but also for its legends of bad Kings and popular outlaws and while we can't tackle one of England's most enduring legends in three days we might be able to add something to the story just a couple of miles away on the fringes of Sherwood Forest residents of a nothing immature village believe a ruined building in a farmer's field may have played a part in those ancient tales but some of the villagers believe this could actually have been part of King John's palace seriously could there really be a long-lost palace in this field I've got so many pieces of evidence but buildings that we should be finding on site this is heist a technician quality stuff certainly when I got the King drinking our one of those we could be on the verge of a major discovery three days yeah the odd er you know the score it's gonna be a cracking dig touchwood [Music] for generations these ruins have excited the residents of old clips and village the history books describe these crumbling walls as the remains of a royal hunting lodge but the locals believe it was actually a palace a vast complex of chambers chapels and halls where King John stayed when hunting in Sherwood Forest we're looking for evidence to prove them right or wrong and eager to get on John on the geophysics team are making an early start on their site survey looks like we've got our own bad King John already what are you doing here well we've got such a big site to survive we thought we'd make an early start and have you done pretty good pretty good the magnetics having said that and not that exciting that doesn't look pretty good to me no but look at Jimmy's rider he's done a small-block there's the standing wall yeah behind us and it looks as though we've got a whole range going down the slope their buildings possibly around tower staircase you go and talk to me is what I think we're gonna carry on working I'll get him to agree to put a trench in where you wanted it Nick good morning young sir so good and there's the standing building yeah that's what we've got yeah where do we put the trench in we think we ought to put a trench across that dark line there to see where that's a wall or not we also need to know what these black lines are coming across here are they wall lines are the buttresses we don't you know so a right-angle trench across there will solve that and we'll solve that we can then extend it through this circular plot here is that big enough to be a tower more likely a stair turret to get up to the floor above of the palace well yeah if that's what you want to call it and of course we do but if we dig it we'll find out but it's a bit little for a palace as John and his team spread their net wider looking for the full extent of the complex Phil opens trench one if this ruined building was once the Hall of a royal lodge then evidence for additional grand buildings in Phil's trench could help us prove that it was indeed a palace everyone's hopeful that the strong radar results will translate into solid archaeology under the ground there's ten Coit mortaring down here they certainly change it old clip stone village in the heart of the East Midlands would make an ideal location for King John's hunting lodge it's just 15 miles from his power base of Nottingham in the middle of what was then a far larger Sherwood Forest this field is going to have to turn up some seriously high status fines if mixed to be persuaded that this is anything more than a high-end hunting lodge but an exquisite piece of carved stone found on the site by the landowners looks promising for our Palace theory as Marianne is finding out my husband found this some 20 years ago it had obviously fallen from the ruin it's got marks on made by the stonemasons an absolutely wonderful bit of masonry that Wow's archaeologists the knees turn to jelly when they see this and more than anything this is such a high status piece it proves that the likelihood is that we're looking for a palace Mickey what is it that you want us to do there is a vast complex here and at the moment only three standing walls documentary evidence gives us lists of buildings and chambers for kings and queens it's got to be there so we need to find out what's under the ground we do then it can shred you old it can be list it and it will be made safe even when I'm not here so yes this is what I want no small order three days to find enough of a palace complex to put it on the protected monuments list only then could Mickey be confident it'd be safe from future development trench ones not encouraging though so far I can't see anything for dust we've got this great geophys we've got a potential palace which may well have been owned by one of the most iconic kings in english history except look well we got nothing Mick walking on topsoil virtually what is that bad what's this earth it is demolition rubble of an enormous building but it's so small and crumbly that is that he caved mortar that would have held together the stones of this once magnificent building the radar shows that the stone walls if that's what they are started about half a meter down can go down for half a meter so we're not at that level yet what we don't want to do is use the machine to take this rubble off and reckon least own work or structures within it John's confidence in his radar is still rock-solid it's early days yet I've got another meter to go and further reassurance comes from fines made on this site over fifty years ago I'm instantly drawn to this beautiful headstones not really my thing I mean that's very obviously a very posh bit of medieval carved stone is it a dog dog dragon wolf I don't know it's with a big pointy teeth something you find in the forest well I suppose it doesn't sing loud you could expect to be representations of hunting dogs or some you know I am a B what else did they find well the sort of thing you'd expect to find on medieval sight really a pottery glass bits of roof tile ledge cough stone you name it really it's all here that's all indicating that this is really elite structure we've got evidence of a posh building certainly I mean we've got the window glass we've got plenty of lead and we've also got this now this is a glazed roof tile as a Ridge tile lovely come cockscombs cuz they've got these cutouts on these so that goes along the top of the wreath exactly yeah that's only the sort of thing you'd find on a posh house in the medieval period it's not the sort of thing that a peasant would have on their house it's some of you expect to see on a manor house or Roland's you know it's that's that's one of the only ceramic object that says anything about status really so this says King John's hunting lodge it says high status building clearly our hunting lodge was top-notch but what are the buildings that stood alongside it were they equally grand film might be getting some clues found some ice missin mice through there you told me there was absolutely nothing here Tony that was you said oh boy was awarded you uh I swore blind there was a really good building here and we've really got the evidence for it now look we've started to get really well constructed masonry here look at this lovely block that's interesting that bit there is my exactly I mean I don't know whether that's part of a door fitting or maybe a take a window mullion maybe where there would have been leaded in but they all good architectural features and then this look that gives you some idea of what the walls must have been like is that plaster absolutely yeah you're gonna see this this lovely thin the skin of plaster right over the surface of the stone but this is our star of piece you've got here these lovely tool marks that go all the way down and then on the edge here a bit of a sham for a beautiful curve all in absolutely but when you come round oh look you've got this beautiful base inspire sort of st. John's cross absolutely yes gorgeous said I mean look how crisp it is ya know whether or not this is coming out of a window or part of a spiral staircase I'm not sure but this is a really nice piece of architecture I know I know Mick was a bit skeptical first thing wasn't he but this is high status oh god this is quality stuff I mean this this stone well is probably being brought in for a considerable distance to make what is a as you say a host Royal hunting lodges were very popular with the kings of medieval England and John was no exception he loved nothing more than to travel between his lodges and palaces to hunt deer and wild boar in the Royal forests justin arrows flight away from our site is sherwood forest where king john and his courtiers would have enjoyed days out hunting deer but the abundant wildlife in the forest also attracted some unwanted attention as alex and marianne are finding out dense that's it there's lots of open spaces and so that's where the one would really do what they needed to do you couldn't just go in there you know you have to have special permission only foresters and verdurous and people like that were allowed to go in there almost 1/3 of England's countryside was designated royal forests and commandeered for the Kings pleasure and as the forest became a playground for the nobility forest law kept peasants out denying them access to woodland that for generations had supplied them with meat firewood and building materials this bred resentment and for some to turn to poaching for survival there were gangs of poachers of course that would move about and of course this is where this this kind of Robin Hood idea well yes and no I mean again Robin Hood is just a single character when there are absolutely hundreds you could pick Robin Hood is just the one that everybody knows about and Robin to the rich and giving to the poor rubbish really rob from the rich and catch him you rob from anybody and kept it himself shameful [Music] I'm assuming that if you were caught poaching the punishments be quite harsh oh yeah they were terrible all kinds of things could happen two hands cut off all your eyes put out ears locking nose put them in split or cut off that's mark of shame I'm assuming you can't ever go back and do it again well yeah I mean you're not gonna be out a drawer of both I've cut one your hands off so yeah it was plenty of incentive than to go vegetarian yeah back on site never mind finding a palace we haven't yet found a single wall from this morning's geophysics results despite its early promise Phil's trench is in danger of turning into a right royal puzzle no not quite not why it sounds on the slide what are we gonna we've got the Lion of the wall that we were looking for this morning but we haven't actually got the wall itself the main structure of the wall is here in the demolition rubble that is all that remains of the wall it's all gone what about my mysterious tower your mysterious tower remains a mystery somewhere down there not obvious yet is it so let's get this right when I said there wasn't anything in this trace this morning and you both were basically I was right you were absolutely wrong totally totally wrong look how about all those wonderful carved stones that I showed you earlier on beautiful pieces are masonry the palace if that's what it is is here it's only how do you think day one's gone it's been a funny old day really isn't it at the beginning of the day everyone's going there's a palace here there's a palace here that gif is is fantastic we put it in the first trench and by mid-afternoon what have we got one fairly monkey robbed out wall oh hang on we've had years and years of really high status fines coming out of this field there's got to be a palace here we've got two days more we'll find it tomorrow there's a palace in this field we are Robin Hood and Maid Marian we never give up tomorrow we find the palace I hope beginning of day to hearing nothing but sure right vibe Sherwood Forest where we're trying to find out whether this wall belongs to a palace and not just any palace a palace belonging to bad King John yesterday afternoon Phil thought he'd found an extension to this wall in his trench here but looking at it in the cold light of day we seem to have a little platform and a few desert tree stones and then nothing there's not much here anymore there is a wall here Tony when they built the wall on particularly on this sand they would have probably needed to put down a solid concrete base if you like this would be the base to support the wall the ground level would probably have been at least up to here you've probably got nearly two meters of foundation this bit has all been eroded away proud away and is down the slope these would be very very substantial foundations and what about these dental three stones behind you what was the word Nestle trained yeah I must look that up these are dazzle tree stones as you put them could actually I mean they are all lying together it looks like they've probably broken in situ it may actually still be part of the war it really might be you can't help but admire Phil's doggedness but on the evidence of his trench it will the palace has simply disappeared lost under a sea of rubble but maybe we're looking in the wrong place Mick's got a new plan it's relatively flat up here rather been on the edge of the hill and I'm even wondering whether this surviving wall acted as a bit of a dam so that what would normally have got washed off this hilltop didn't so we're radar in this to see what there is there I mean if it looks as if there is more here we shall do an evaluation here as well leaving Phil scratching his head in trench one geophysics tends the hunt behind the standing wall while Matt opens a fresh trench across a strong feature that showed up on the radar survey this could be an intact section of medieval war everyone's hoping that this time we'll find more of the royal complex than just demolition one bit of pottery one bit of bone that's really clean but I suppose if it was a real site you wouldn't have great festering piles of rubbish everywhere 210 pounds no less was spent on building the pond 210 pounds yes that is a sizable amount of money it's a very large pond Marianne's having more success revealing the palace complex by digging in the royal records with local historian David crook the next thing that happens in 1234 the King's Chamber was rebuilt this time it cost 130 pounds with a hundred and thirty quid then worth nearly a hundred grand today there must have been more than just a hunting lodge here King's Chamber Queen's Hall a new chat police Gloucester and built passageways that join those two buildings yes so that's definitely stuff that should have left an archaeological imprint and one very obvious imprint the standing remains in the middle of our site we've all been staring at them for the past day but how do they fit into the wider complex if you come through this gap look which is almost certainly one of the original doorways is we're in a basement and undercroft for storage so we can see the full length of it and that's the full width of it we're as high above you can see there are gaps where there would have been windows some of these platforms like that of their yeah where the Timbers went into the wall to support the floor above and you've probably got to it by going up an external staircase through a door into the hall what do you think it would have looked like on the inside it would have been very very ornate and gaudy we think how tasteless it was and we know they've painted them up with with blues and reds and so on and also gold of course oh really really Nath I don't think they did live here this is a ceremonial hall for feasting for the King to meet officials and ambassadors and things like that it's not where people live they live in buildings attached to it Marianne's making progress on the documentary history of clip stone for over two centuries Royals entertained and relaxed here so plenty of evidence should have survived what's all this fiction then we click my timeline I've been chatting to David the historian and we've put down the key points from the archives it's very impressive isn't it I've got so many pieces of evidence but buildings that we should be finding on site look a house a great dam a great pond and a mill yeah King's chambers all under Henry the third and then Edward kicks it off to a whole new level four hundred pounds two chambers and a chapel yeah staple for two hundred horses we're going to find some of these buildings aren't we what we probably have already the difficulty is narrowing a particular bit of archaeology down to either the period or the function that's very difficult [Music] this disparity between paper record and archaeology is proving frustrating there may once have been halls kitchens chambers and chapels in this field but we're just not finding them after the disappointment of Phil's barren trench I'm hoping for evidence of buildings in Matt's new ones this could be another one of these trenches that promises a lot and we find absolutely nothing except a bit of compacted mortar I don't think so I think you've turned up just the right moment Tony because you can see that promise is it have you any idea what the extent of it is yeah I mean I think you've got the edge coming up now that is huge and you can see this hasn't got any nice facing stones on it there is mortar there there's these lumps of rock and that says it's a wall core it's not we haven't got the outside of it yet so we're talking about something Rich's it at least that wide I would say yeah it may be a little trench but it's a damn sight better than Phil's bezel three trench yeah you got that yeah he's got a good French over here mate can't believe that proper wall dazzle tree someone blew your hat off there is a God we're digging for King John's hunting palace on the edge of Sherwood Forest and despite some very promising geophys we found little more than a couple of lumps of masonry under a mountain of demolition rubble in our trenches we've done loads of archeology on that side of this wall and none at all on this which is why Mick asked John to do some geo fears around here because this area is so flat he thinks any archaeology underneath will have been protected from the hill wash which is likely to have damaged some of the archaeology on this slope here have we done up here well don't hold your breath I mean there's very little showing on the flat area there I mean hardly anything so mixed thoughts are we want to look further afield yeah we want to try and find the extent of the complex with the archaeology close to the ruins so badly trashed the net is spread wider and two more trenches are added based on the geophysics results the first takes in a strong radar feature on the southern edge of society and the second transects would could be a boundary ditch to the west maybe just maybe the archaeology will be better preserved at the side edges we've got this fantastic standing archeology so much promise yeah yeah I don't know about you but I'm starting to feel a bit fazed by this whole thing if I can do you to slice through it but I think's going on here's the original ground surface there's one of the medieval walls survived into quite a height and you start to knock that down and recycle the stonework you're going to end up with a lot of plaster more to stuff around the bottom of it so what you'll end up with is perhaps the base of the wall but all around it the demolition debris they have knocked off the wall but I suppose it becomes more and more work because actually the more you're hacking away the more you're surrounded by debris absolutely yeah so that you're you're sort of burying the site that went with the wall under the debris as you dismantle the wall yeah so that if we really wanted to understand the site we'd have to take all the demolition debris away off the whole site you know sort of hundreds of square meters which were not 30 years laughs she wouldn't but that would be the way that we would get the plan of the original building and in the trenches that we've already got get rid of all that demolish material and hopefully see some of these little bits sticking out up until now we found plenty of dust and rubble but very few blocks of cut stone our next task is to work out where all the stone went and Alex has a so doesn't seem like you're getting too much in here then Phil it's not as though they've just robbed out the walls they've robbed out the foundations as well they've had everything well I've got some historical information which might give us some clues as to where this stones gone and the Duke of Portland okay in a desperate attempt to try and improve the meadows round here he instigated the drainage scheme and we're actually down here on the site down here and just up the morn Valley you can see depicted here this vast extensive irrigation system that would have required a lot of stones so as a maze of of improving his water meadows he had a look round they thought ah oh you know where I can get some good stone funnily enough actually in a directory entry for 1844 the work was commissioned and lots of people were it says here there was much spoliation was made on the venerable walls though it is said his grace had given strict orders to the contrary in fact he said don't lump it out show you a really sort of a take a big digger to it so but mercifully they left this brass do we know where the where the drainage works on well I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna head out and see if I can find some of these drainage works and see if I can find some of the stone if not foundation stone then some of the decorated stone a bit crack and if you could but well I'll let you know I get on [Music] and sure enough the water meadows are joining the site are littered with work stone after careful examination alex is happy that it's other type that matches the few remaining blocks on site and it probably wasn't just the irrigation works that reused this medieval stone so alex is looking for further traces of its in old clip stone village Mickey Bradley leading the way he's investigating the back gardens bordering our dig site this is a lovely piece here now I like this you know you can actually see really that we've got the chisel marks here made whether Mason or almost 800 years ago and that may be because that's the part of the stone that was concealed or it's been picked like this so that it can take a plaster but that's a lovely that's a lovely bit of stone there given how much of this stone was pinched from the palace Matt's turning up trumps in his trench that's some of the best stonework who see this really nice and you can see we've got three sides to it now right and they're two there that's about one meter eighty rare and on that side into the side of the trench 150 so if it's square if this stone is a stone square pedestal the other side should be bearish is you're not more likely to be a buttress on the edge of a building well the geophysics shows this to be very isolated down here right there's no walls coming out associated with it or around it so if you stand here I mean it doesn't quite line up with the standing walls over there oh yes better scoot reason this yeah hopefully though if we get the other side we'll know a bit more about it but it makes a lot of sense to extend doesn't it yeah we're gonna have to do that okay okay that's very good don't it please do that so we could now have a building buttress but we still don't have a single wall guided by Mickey and local here say a determined Alex shifts from back garden to back room archaeology yes I do okay what do you know about this woman that wall as I believe is stone my father had it plastered decades ago now you've somewhat foolishly allowed us to come in here to pick away at some of this this lime plaster but where do you want me to start behind the piano please well is there a logic to that there is because if what we find is not nice we can just you've had several skins on here that's Tony tell him I'm gonna be a few more hours I keep being drawn back to trench one the trench that Phil and I have been bickering about since the beginning of the dig the traits that I call the the trench of the desultory stones you can still see them down there but it does seem to have developed since I was last here Phil what's happening here now ah well we're making leaps and bounds in this trench Tony it's really really coming on and what about our wall here ah well the wall I must confess I've been forced to rethink it's no wall I don't think it is you were practically screaming in my face this morning yes but I had every reason to screaming in your face the evidence was very clear to me it just meant that I have had to readjust the evidence a little bit so there's no wall yeah there is oh there is a wall where I think the wall is is not there but there but what is really exciting what really pushes our story back in terms of date is in that corner of the trench where Matt is we've got a cluster of big sherds of broken pottery that actually join together that refit there in that tray at your feet these ones here you've got some sort of date for them Roman roamin absolutely but the sheer fact that we've got so much of it and that they do refit back together means that there is no question that feature and that layer must be Roman well a bit of a triumph and a hundred yards away over in the cottage hallux has made another breakthrough Wow well if you got well I'm pretty optimistic here that we've got a medieval wall and there's a number of reasons for that if you look at the cottage the other three walls of the cottage are all built with brick they're built up against this wall and they kick out into the road as well which is important okay so this is a primary feature the great thing here is we've got really good clean lines of coursing okay so that's the first indicator if we were reusing stone you know it'd be much more higgledy-piggledy you'd have little stones being sort of all over the place in quite random courses but these nice straight lines are telling us that it's well bedded in and possibly an original feature and this is all stone that we know is being quarried in the medieval period as well why have we got a medieval wall in a cottage the thing with this wall is that it sits beautifully on the alignment of the outside boundary of the whole site so I'm pretty certain that this is a perimeter wall and how do you feel Joanie about having a medieval wall here in your cottage wonderful Alex I'm just waiting for you to come back every weekend until you can ship the lot off so at last we've got something solid that ties in with our Palace theory even if it is little more than a posh garden wall well the weather's been getting better and better all day but you can't really say the same thing for the archaeology real misery about this last two days we haven't found anything we don't know we don't know what our building is we don't know what extent is we don't know what the phasing is we don't know what the dating is we know a darn sight more now than we did yesterday salute oh you're really saying is we've been let down by geophysics that's what we say that where are we job that's the standing walls all right so we're just off the end of it this is where I stood with you earlier well we've subsequently expanded the survey and you don't get it much clearer than that what's the alignment of it just off east-west so thoughts of chapels or you'd like a Roman villa wouldn't you Wow we've got a pottery I don't care what it is look at last we've got something to dig you say that but if it's a 19th century cowshed you won't work I'd be happy I'd dig the cowshed that's what we're digging tomorrow and let's hope it's a palace beginning of day three and after - let's face it pretty frustrating days suddenly bang we're on the money look at that gorgeous piece of Geo fees what's that rectangular thing could it be an anglo-saxon haul a medieval Chapel a Roman villa no idea but at last we've got something to dig in take it away my son [Music] laughs if it turned out to be a coach I [Music] think this is really the last throw the dice is now it is really we wouldn't have time to open anything else so we're very very hopeful we're on eating what's your first reaction then Phil well this has got very very compacted there's a lot of plaster in it and is this here look they've actually got part of a surface on it you can actually see the war face so could be Roman villa could be medieval well that's how the anglo-saxon abit beginning oh no no what was that I'm sure I did that's exactly what that is window oh you can actually see where the individual panes there would be one piece of glass in there another piece in there you can see the slot on this side here where the other piece of glass would have gone big yeah come over look at this babe oh that's good what's that then Oh slid I have a window window came something like that and we've got look we've got bits of wall plaster as well all right yeah well that's looking a bit more Chapel like that really what do you mean you can tell from just two objects that it's a chapel I'm not sure I'd expect this in the domestic buildings until much later on but you would get it in a chapel but it's early day still very very early days but very very promising yeah Hey well done if mix right this could be our best chance of identifying part of King John's 12th century palace the chapel if that is what we're now glimpsing would have been central to that complex Matt's building must also have been pretty grand but hard to identify with so much of the stone carted off looks like you've just about finished here Matt yeah it's great isn't it what have you got well yesterday when you came we've just come down to this really nice rubble mortar call here and I mentioned with possible facing stones around the outside but he's absolutely beautiful very well-made blocks coming all the way down here and they go right down into the foundation there so it's a very very well made building yes with a palace theory you've only got half the buttress now yeah yeah when we push the trench out this way see if we get the other side of this plinth for buttress and as you can see what it's giant rubber cut coming straight across here show me the rubber cut when it comes through here chops the masonry carries off along that way and they would have been a massive wall here they've come and they've taken it all away you can see they've left the bottom in there well you couldn't be bothered to take the stuff out the very bottom what I like about this trench so much is it's the first piece of archaeology which gives us a hint as to what the building would have look like I've got a couple of things here for you to look at that's nice it's Roman our seam is it oh sure it is a Roman one yeah and you can see the interesting thing it's been pierced but used as a pendant yeah that's coin I've seen a lot of these from early anglo-saxon graves the early I know Saxons are quite fond of getting Roman coins piercing them and working as pendants on our sign is early saxon of course they've got about them there anytime but no but it isn't it is an interesting link that when you see a pierced Roman coin the first thing that kind of lodges in your mind is ah might be yeah you know no eerie summit that you will build out nice yeah excellent apart from the Rome and that's the earliest bit of pottery I've seen from this site more or less that's what they call Nottingham splash glaze were when you say urn Lee it's basically it's early to mid 12th century that would be yeah I mean that's gone by the end of the 12th century there's stuff it's just so nice to at something which was here when the soap began yeah well that must have been yeah definitely spot-on so we've now got pottery from the time of King John but surely we must be able to identify at least one of the buildings we know made up his royal complex with time running out bills new trench is now showing evidence of a proper structure foundation trench edges here really nice and straight straight that's in line with yours is exactly there finally what we're finding in the ground reflects what we can see on the geophysics Paul meanwhile thinks he may have cracked the mystery of the 15th and 16th century pottery that's been turning up in the demolition rubble across the site it's quite interesting cuz all this stuff is all mixed in with the rubble and I've been I'm gonna quit look at it it's all pottery associated with drink and all these little bits of black pottery or all this drinking cups there's no pottery associated with the cooking and eating of food so what I think is going on here this is actually the workmen who were coming in and dismantling the place and carting the stone away it's hot heavy work your lumping stone onto carzy and digging out foundations you're carrying stuff around you've got to drink a lot of liquids especially if it's a hot day you know and they've just dropped their cups yeah basically I mean you know it wasn't unusual for people in medieval times over the course of day to drink a gallon of beer yeah yeah but it's exactly what I'd expect to see from a medieval industrial site not a medieval domestic occupation site so I think this dates the actual demolition and dismantling of the place really tightly from about I don't know 1470 to about maybe fifteen twenty fifteen thirty something like that so the builders rubbish is our our it's builders rubbish it's kind of a lyrical like okay so now we've got an end date for our royal complex but we still haven't quite proved it was a palace Alex and Mick though can now attribute a certain majesty to the site thanks to their detective work what I've actually found is a reference here in an account from 1348 right and it really describes repair work and new builds up there to all sorts of chambers you know all sorts of things are on stables as well it also mentions the great gates okay so we've also got a gatehouse later somewhere in that that stretch there and funnily enough this building here and the 18th century was the gate in what about this big lake down the bottom here unfortunately I think all we've got left of this little pond is that tiny little dip down there this beer in front of but I mean this would have been a monumental feature in front of the the Palace site wouldn't it and certainly from where we're sitting a way to your left is this great body of water yeah and the polish is up on the hill it will look impressive anyway but a lot of the time it would be reflected in the water as well medieval hunting sites mean feasting and great rituals were attached to the butchery of deer notably the unmaking in which the dead animal was systematically divided up Maryann's getting a hands dirty to find out which of the hunters got the lion's share of the venison [Music] so now we've got it and skimmed it what do we do next well we've got over a quarter he's called the on making of the deer the whole thing is called the on making of the deer various cuts will go to various people that pelvis goes back to the kill site there's an offering to the core visible crows that's pretty ritualistic very much so very much so yeah but it was just something they did it's something they carried on doing the the left foreleg would go to the Huntsman the Forester the right long duty to assisted the whole tooth these are the prized possessions this is what ends up on the nobles take over you fantastic that's going on Barbie but this act of preparation can leave clues for archaeologists so what do the bones we've found on our side tell us we've got you know the normal sorts of things that I'd be expecting from medieval sight we've got cattle sheep pig even bits of horse there are some nice horse teeth in here but what we also have is quite a lot of deer the really interesting thing about deer in the medieval period is that there are all of these unmaking rituals which I think you've already heard about of course and the bows that we've got really do you conform to those this is a foot bone is from the right hand side of the body here's another one also from the right hand side this here is an astragalus part of the ankle bone from the right the humerus here is from the right hand side of the body as is this scapula here the left hand side of deer would go off to the Parker or the Forester is his fever sort of supporting the hunt the right hand side would go to the best hunter now normally we tend to find these right hand sides of the shoulders found on village sites because most of the hunters were living in villages to find them on an elite site is quite unusual but I think because it's a royal site it is sort of suggesting that the king is the best hunter and they're all here you don't normally find these parts on on high status sites so the mardi King had to be the best hunter as well I would look that way fantastic even if we haven't got the haunch bone which would mean we were digging under the Kings table has fill now found the link that will confirm the site as King John's Palace Phil you've done very well in such a short time absolutely the big question is have you found our Chapel yeah reckon we have Tony I mean what we've actually found is this Boulder filled foundation trench and it's bang online where where the geophysics said it would it goes literally right through the middle of our trench so that's what the geophysical picking out all those big black lines where these boulders absolutely what they've done is they've dug this massive trench or over a metre deep and I think to stabilize it in the sand around here they've poured in a load of cobbles and there are bits of broken stone working amongst it as well literally to form a firm base to put the chapel on on the top we've got some dating evidence for it the latest evidence we've got is about 13th century it's a little bit later than we hope this is more like Henry the 3rd well yes but it's not the first stone built building on the site because if you can see just where Tracy is look you can see there's that orange coloured rubble that is demolition rubble of a stone built building and the foundation trench of our Chapel cuts through that this is great news something was obviously knocked down to make way for a 13th century chapel built on the same spot could it possibly have been an earlier chapel for the chapel of King John the proof may have turned up in the demolition rubble of that building we've got this rather nice stone carving it's it's of a hand and you can see here here's the thumb and on this side the fingers they're all rather join together but look they're probably part of a a window moulding or something like that and it's this hand that is that is grasping this this column it's a lovely piece of architecture and just the sort of thing you'd get an ecclesiastical building like a chapel must be 13th century or earlier so that could be from the time of King John King John may well have seen this hand yeah by the skin of our teeth gentlemen I think we've made it our host and landowner Mickey Bradley can now rest assured that this site will be preserved for posterity Mickey I've had a long chat with the rest of the team and they're pretty convinced that we've got so much evidence now that your ruin will be properly scheduled and it will be safe for the nation Tony thank you so much we worked so hard for this time and time team have made it as made them it's rather good isn't it we started out with King John's palace and after three really quite difficult days we've also found King John's Chapel anyone fancy a deer burger girl field you have the first word on where [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 313,519

Rating: 4.898324 out of 5

Keywords: Team Team, Archaeology, History, Education, Educational, British TV, British History, Tony Robinson, Phil Harding, John Gater, Stewart Ainsworth, Mick Aston, archeological dig, Channel 4, Time Team Full Episodes, Full Episode, Robin Hood, Bad King John, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, Sheriff of Nottingham

Id: XPwD5eE_SbU

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020