King Offa's Royal Palace | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

[Music] i'm at frein's court in herefordshire near the border between england and wales in 1990 an aerial photographer took this picture of a field in the valley down there look at these incredible patch marks but what got the locals really excited was that 1200 years ago this whole area was ruled by offer the greatest king in britain he gave his name to office dyke which was built to keep the welsh out of his ancient kingdom of mercia and he was rumored to have a palace near here so could this be the remains of office palace time team have got just three days to find out [Music] why do we think the offer might have had a palace here right well towards the end of the eighth century three years before the end of office reign he's an old man we know he comes to a royal ville or palace site in herefordshire in a place called sutton and saturn's where we are now sutton is where we are but it's now between hereford and leinster this presumably is the field where they found these patch marks yeah we've just come through that gate there and we're wandering across into the middle john have you managed to do a fizz anything here we've not tony but the the lab from english heritage have and they've got some superb results i mean i just wish they were ours i mean you can see here this multi-celled building that's really clearly well if this really is offers palace it's a major site isn't it well we only know of about a dozen anglo-saxon palace sites offer was a major european king so it'd be an extremely important site uh we've given it legal protection as a scheduled ancient monument for that reason if it's legally protected how do we work out where we're gonna dig well we've done a project design for english heritage and in that project design we propose to put a trench over where people are standing over here so that building that they're standing at is that one there that's right with these posts the patch mark dots on the aerial photograph for the remains of a second building keith believes they mark the stone foundations of a huge isled hall and then the building over this way is oriented north south and so there's a sort of east wall on the west wall what we've decided to do is try and put a trench in on the back wall of that the west wall that's what you've been calling the multi-celled that's what we've been called the multi-cell building because you can see at least three separate parts of it and then we've also suggested putting a trench over along the line of this bank here which we think subdivides a larger enclosure and we want to get on with it anyways the geophysics results may look great can't ask for a better plot than that can you but there's a problem with them the survey was carried out eight years ago and since then the grid reference for it's been lost until we can re-establish the exact position of the geophysics we can't dig there's the buildings traced off that's the multi-cell building in the incident room bernard's trying to figure out the answer so you see we've traced all the archaeology off there's the building um positioning the trenches that's right so i can if the patch mark dots can be transposed from the aerial photograph onto a modern map we can put our trench on the geophysics and get started but fixing the correct position could take a while our problem trench is the one we want to put into our so-called isled building where we want to locate and uncover the source of two of the patch marked dots everyone's being roped into the hunt so where are we gonna go then in case bernard can't sort it out geophysics are also trying to help but they're not having much luck either part of our problem john is that with this grass being wet we're getting some uh funny readings just as we put it into the in the ground you can't you can't keep prodding about here all morning we've got we got to make it we have two choices one is we put on a grid and we probably take some measurements and in 20 minutes time we can tell you exactly where to go otherwise we simply just say right with grid we've put in is approximately right based on the the earlier results yeah and you just simply go with the best fit and you can do that now it's already halfway through the first morning and our only trench is the one across the earthwork bank but there's a problem here as well because this is an ancient monument we're not allowed to use machines the turf and topsoil have got to be lifted by hand all 17 tons of it yeah there he is yeah that's that's showing this on the side of the isle building phil and keith still haven't started the trench over the patch marked darts so where is it john i think if you go four meters that way four meters that way and three millimeters [Music] at last after three frustrating hours phil can finally open the trench our english heritage inspector paul stamper is determined to keep it nice and tidy i just hope we have more than a stripy lawn by the end of day three we've also got going with a third trench over the multi-celled building and karen's is already uncovering remains but proving that saxon's going to be very hard there's little dating evidence like coins or pottery from this period but elsewhere in britain archaeologists have uncovered remains of saxon buildings which probably look like this the question is can we prove ours are the same the plans of all these buildings have similarities and anglo-saxon historian john blair believes that's an important clue looking for a building of of the right sort of date we might look at monastic buildings there's what's probably a monastic hall at northampton of about 800. now a palace of the same date could have looked very much like that so we wouldn't necessarily expect something in timber then it could actually be in stone or have stone features well it's clearly not impossible i mean we don't have any royal palaces of stone of this day but an important palace of offer who knows it's certainly not impossible at all in the eighth century offers kingdom of mercier was the biggest in britain and dwarfed its neighbors offer even compared himself to charlemagne who ruled a huge chunk of mainland europe at the same time but offer was also a ruthless operator prepared to murder his fellow kings to stay in power according to records from the 12th century such a murder actually took place here at the palace of saturn in 794. the main character is in fact king ethelbert of east anglia by about 1100 there was a very colorful legend that he came here to the royal palace of sutton to marry off his daughter but offer let his wicked wife persuade him to murder ethel bert so he then became a martyr and regarded as a saint later on according to this legend offer had the body thrown into a marsh by the river lug which is where we are now and the next thing that happens is the miraculous column of light appears and marks where the body's hidden and some local people find it and they have a vision which tells them to dig it up and take it into hereford and bury it the story goes on to describe exactly where they crossed the river the route they took towards hereford and even a strange incident at a place called lower lied farm you got a picture of the the cart there's two ox cart with the body on it trundling down this road and of course remember that the head's detached from the body why well because offer chopped it off yeah so at this point the head rolls off and it gets lost in the undergrowth but then there's a miracle as there always is in these stories because a blind beggar comes along of course he does yes and and he trips over the head and immediately recovers his side so he understands it's a miracle and he rushes along down the track after the cart and catches up with it at the next village sheldwick and then what happens well then they take the body onto hereford and it's buried there and that according to the legend that's the origins of hereford okay that's the story although possibly with a bit of dramatic gloss added by the author yeah and it was written 300 years after offer died does it help us to locate the story of offer in this landscape i think we can't take it as a reliable history but we can take it as evidence that people locally believed legends to do with ethel bert which were very much rooted in the landscape these are real places that are referred to so i think we can take it as evidence of beliefs going a long way back about the royal palace at sutton and its neighborhood we can't say for certain that he died here but we do know that 300 years later people thought that he'd been around that's right the medieval manuscript may contain a germ of anglo-saxon truth let's hope that if we dig deep enough we'll find archaeological evidence of offers palace [Music] in the isle building phil thinks he's found the source of the parchmark dots maybe this is one of the foundation stones of the saxon building we're hoping to find look at this it's an absolutely enormous lump of rock look at it now would this be what we've been calling the post pad well it ought to be yeah it's still going yeah look there it goes we need to see how big it is oh there it goes is it going in the bulk as well get your fingers out of the way and leave it alone are you getting there look at that it it's still good but still hey look at that it still doesn't look big enough to feel really much bigger look at that it much bigger is it still what would it have been for then well it's to support a big post of the aisle imagine like a church with oils down the side and the posts stand on stones so they don't press into the ground you know so is this the kind of technique that the anglo-saxons tended to use when they were building their palaces no it isn't really it's a bit of a worry that i mean what they would have done would be to dig a big pit and put a big post in it you know ram it and that would support the roof this is the sort of technique that comes along a bit later but could it have been built within where an anglo-saxon was yeah because what we get on so many of these places is that the the palace side goes on being used i mean at cheddar for example it goes on right till the 13th century so the last phase is a big uh medieval halls but the the anglo-saxon ones are amongst them so there might be something underneath mick thinks that what we've got so far is largely medieval and with good reason okay these maps are absolutely beautiful karen has been looking at an 18th century estate map which shows the field we're digging and next to it a medieval manor house called frein's court we'll have to identify any medieval buildings we find to eliminate them from our hunt for anglo-saxon remains out in the field stuart's been looking at the same area stuart talk about lumps and bumps this must be heaven for an archaeological surveyor sheer paradise it makes a nice change to have lots to work with and that there is a fantastic amount of information in the earthworks on this site so so what can you see that we've got so far well at the moment we're stood in a fish pond this thing that's like a a big stadium that's it this would have been wet and if you run up that way be running up onto the bank around the edge the edge of the fish pond that's it yeah and you see beyond you there's a channel down here if you're in that channel yeah the water channel will go that way curve around the corner and head towards the moat that was around frein's court the old manor house that's right yeah if you went that way you see that big flat area ahead of you yeah that's a former lake it's a white hat got you this whole thing is a complex of ornamental lakes and fish ponds all to do with the manor house it's a big memorial complex what sort of period i think we can be anywhere from about the 14th century right through to the 18th century so have you seen anything here yet which seems to you anglo-saxon nothing nothing everybody goes this episode of time everything looks classically medieval as it stands at the moment i mean the trench where we dig in just there was thought to be a subdivision of this saxon palace enclosure yeah that's the dam that holds back this lake here stuart doesn't know what might be underneath the earthworks but he's right about the bank the trench across it hasn't produced a single find our saxon palace is assuming mythical proportions on a saxon site in northampton archaeologists recently discovered the remains of a 1200 year old machine for mixing building mortar with the help of a sketch from victor and two woodworking experts phil's going to try and build a working replica oh i see this is like an enormous food mixer i mean how does it actually work well this part rotates and you can see the people are pushing it round and there's those paddles that run down into the lime and sand mix and stir it up underneath so what's this bit here that's the central post it's about a foot in diameter and we're making it out of this piece of wood over here right with a spindle at the top we've already started to reduce it whilst it was one whole log which is suitable all right so that's going to taper in like that yeah and then this bit is made out of this log here which i'm going to split in half and we'll use the offcuts from the other half to make the paddles out of and then you literally just push it round and round and round so where are we going to put this thing it's going to go over there oh i see around here that's right we've got to do some wattle work to hold the mortar in because this one's going to be set on the ground some were actually dug into the ground i'm going to start with a small mouth just to get the first task is to split the log in half to make the rotating cross beam richard's using just wooden wedges and a saxon mallet to split the tree trunk along the grain of the wood have you got absolute control over which way this thing is going to split well you've got to rely on the tree if you if you use wooden wedges then they tend to run along the grain oh oh look at that and you can hear it still hear it too if they drive the wedges in too fast there's a danger the log won't split cleanly down the middle this isn't going to be a quick job well this has come on a lot doesn't he too it looks if you got tile and stuff in it we found a lot of other roofing materials as well we've got a stone there that's the stone one with that yes with the hole in there's bits of slate in the trench over the multi-celled building we've got some fines at last later so i think what we've got is a lot of building rubble from several different phases of building but i think that's spread across the wall underneath here and i think some of this is wall rubble and tomorrow katie's just planning at the moment once that's done tomorrow probably will take all this loose stone off and hopefully find the wall underneath so that's the good news i mean what day do you think it is well that's the bad news yes nearly all the fines we've had have been post medieval we've got everything from sort of you know bits of willow pattern certainly not saxon palace yet then not yet not yet i'll cut across this bit if i that's incredible yes one half of this will become the rotating part of the mortar mixer tomorrow's big challenge will be to set up the other log as the center post on which it'll turn that was all right then wasn't it it went very well yeah yeah sure you know please just punch about this trench what is it i think it's a really nice piece of british archaeology very very typical of what we find all over the country but what is it that we can see well we've got a laid surface here running right the way across it's possibly laid over rubble over here one of those post pads that we were talking about possibly another one under the bulk back in there then there could this could be the fragmentary remains of another one in here and then we talked about this uh being an isle building and outside it we can see just the traces possibly of a wall coming through into there any idea of a period well this is this is rubble um we've got no dating evidence so far um it could be post-medieval even at this stage or medieval or medieval or saxon well that's the more difficult how do we find out well one way we can find out is by taking a a quarter of the trench out tomorrow going down through the surface into the underlying rubble remove some of that and see if we've got post holes in that kind of feature stuart when i last saw you you said that you were going to try and work out the medieval landscape around the fish ponds have you done i think we've had a certain amount of success actually what we seem to have is a series of fish ponds on that alignment which are replaced by further yeah ponds over here this this lake the whole thing looks like a menorah medieval monorail complex to me with these fish ponds and gardens that's right and something else interesting has emerged in that if you look at the 1720 map and 19th century northern survey maps we put the whole lot together yeah and match these two up if you can see just there there's a building shown on that alignment just outside the mode on the 1720 map yeah it matches perfectly with the end of this parchment here so it looks as though we know what the medieval landscape here was like but the question is was there anything here earlier tomorrow we're going to get underneath these features to try and find out join us after the break it's the beginning of day two yesterday we found lots of evidence of a medieval manor house but nothing even remotely like a saxon palace but while everyone else carries on from where they left off mick and keith ray suddenly decide to head off on a completely new tack mix turned his attention to a small null quarter of a mile from the main site yesterday we were excavating for office palace down the bottom of that hill which is what i thought we were going to continue to do today but suddenly lock stock and barrel we all seem to have moved into this potato field what's going on so we've got this aerial photograph with this crop mark on it so we always intended to come up and look at this yeah i think we really need to be looking at one or two other locations in the landscape the question is what are the clues for that now this enclosure is one of those clues it's quite unlike the iron age and roman enclosures that we've got in this area it's very elongated so have we geoff is this area yet yeah look at the results clear as anything i can't see anything at all you can just see the hints of maybe two ditches in fact and then returning at that point there so how are we going to get at whatever's here well i think we'll need to open up quite a big area when you say quite a big area how big about 30 meters by 20 meters 30 meters could be one of the biggest ears we've ever dug but it's the only way to get at these ephemeral features really does this mean that actually we're jacking in the site down the bottom of the hill not at all no no we i mean we've got a lot of cleaning and sorting out to do there before we go down into it we should carry on down there meanwhile we dig this 30 meter trench yeah yeah the enclosure on the knoll is over 300 meters away from our other trenches but keith thinks the settlement here might go back more than a thousand years there's only one way to find out back on the main site our trench across the earth worked bank has come up with nothing stewart was right it had more to do with fish ponds than fortifications ian is there any reason we shouldn't shut this trench down um no i think we've nearly finished okay you happy about that yeah i am i think uh this has quite efficiently characterized what we've got here particularly tying it in with what stuart's discovering yeah the lack of any medieval or earlier evidence in this trench is disappointing but in the trench over the isle hall things are looking more promising phil you got something for me oh say we have tony have a look at this beautiful shirt of medieval joke look at the size of it look at those edges isn't that a marvelous piece and the important thing is where it comes from it comes from there by the label 203 in that soil now then look at these stones those stones go into the soil so the soil is lapping up against it so it looks as though the stones went in first the soil is lapped up against them and then the cobbles which is what we're taking off is again lapped up against these stones are protruding up through so if these cobbles are post medieval and this is underneath it is underneath with this in and this could well be medieval oh that's good isn't it fragments of pottery may be our best chance of dating these buildings accurately if there's one person who can tell us exactly when and where each piece was made it's local pottery expert alan vince this one that is actually slightly earlier than uh the ones we've just been looking at and that's from the marvin chase now looking at that how can you possibly tell that that's from the melbourne chase well uh there's a little white grit there and there's a much bigger one there let's see if we can lock it under the microscope that's granite and you don't get granite anywhere in this part of the world except along the central spine of the marvins and do we know that there was a pottery there yes yes it's uh well documented up until the 1620s and after that the chase that supplied the fuel was enclosed and they couldn't use the the wood anymore and so the part we've just folded what about the medieval piece that phil was so excited about you island okay well it's a jug which is a standard medieval form uh it's thrown on a wheel and in this part of the world that means it's at least the middle of the 13th century or later it's got quite a lot of sand in it but it doesn't look like it's quartz we'll have a look see what we can tell ah that's the sandstone sand and there's only one place you get that around here and that's the lug valley which is just up the road so this is a locally made medieval pot and i would say it probably dates to the end of the 13th or 14th century the medieval jug would have looked like this in our trench over the multi-celled building carrenza's making pretty good progress too hello corenzie oh hi pulp you've got a wall yes isn't it lovely it's very nice indeed we're really pleased about that because when we came here this morning all we had was this rubble spread all over the place it didn't really look like anything we started to take it down and it still didn't look like anything we've only just come up with this line comes along here and i mean it's it's very big it's well built that's all one stone man massive it's 50 centimeters or yeah at least at least half a meter i think we're looking at something quite big and quite well built we've not had many fines and we're up let's have a look um and what we're getting is it's a broken glass clay pipe yeah this this is very diagnostic isn't it it's the handle of a jug or a pitcher 17th or 18th century isn't it that's quite cool it's all posted at the moment but of course this is the destruction levels you're going through isn't it when the building was demolished yes and these massively well-built stone buildings could have lifespans of many hundreds of years as we know the medieval barns that still stand today we would expect to find a trench that was dug to allow the wall to be precisely the foundation and i can't see it though yet right well we'll carry on anyhow we've only just started to find this side of that wall and obviously we'd like to find the other side of it i think the best thing i can do is leave you alone to get on with it all right then okay see you okay but to get a conclusive date for the building karenda needs to find the bottom of the wall and next to it some dating evidence to make it easier to work if you do a series of little notches in along like that first yesterday philando woodworkers richard and guy started making a saxon machine for mixing mortar they've already made the rotating cross beam now richard's carving a spindle on one end of the center post to support it this is a midsection tx this is the kind of axe they use for hewing flat surfaces on wood and they use a much narrow bladed axe for felling trees he's got to shape it into a perfect cylinder so the cross beam will spin smoothly on top once the center post is in place they'll build a wattle fence around it to hold the mortar back on the null our 20 by 30 meter trench has started off as a more modest 20 by five meters but we think we found part of a double ditch geophysics spotted earlier we've got another ditch running through which we'll hope to find when we actually extend the trench jules is in here now trying to find the edges of that ditch well it looks in in the section face here as if there's some indication of the cuts of the archaeological features they're really quite shallow but you can see them coming along here and down here the archaeology here is fragile and we risk damaging it but paul and mick the dig decide to extend the trench in the hope of finding evidence to date this settlement see this looks a much smaller church mick and anglo-saxon historian john blair are also widening the search to include the local parish church we know from historical documents that in 794 king ethel bert of kent was murdered at sutton by offer ethelbert later became a saint which is why john and mick are looking here for saxon remains it's a great big 13th century arch and it's coming westwards out of the night so is it coming into a tower well it could be a tower but there's no sign of that i just wonder whether it could be a further western compartment well in which case it would go this way wouldn't it and would end up coming through into this field it would make a much bigger church well there's a lot of earthworks in here there are and it looks to me as there's a kind of bank coming across there the best way to examine the earthworks thoroughly will be from the air in the late afternoon light the medieval features at frein's court are clearly visible you can see the the fish ponds and the islands the darker green is where the water was yeah and the the bits in between are raised islands and walkways part of gardens and allowing them to maintain the fish ponds you can see this is a really nice piece of medieval water management less than half a mile from frein's court is sutton church where mick and john blair spotted the earthworks earlier you know it's a typical little medieval church really probably norman this ground is actually quite high yeah and close to the river it'd be dry it wouldn't flood and i think that's the kind of ground that the the saxon palace would have been placed on well certainly these areas of earthworks rounded to a possibility i think if we get time we should go and look at that i think we ought to this field here you see that big ditch going right down towards the river and at this end of it just adjacent to the churchyard is a raised platform now i i just wonder if this is the sort of clues we might that might give away where there might be a possible saxon palace the size of the ditch and platform suggests this was once a substantial settlement but we'll have to wait till tomorrow to investigate on the ground our search is expanding further just below the trench on the knoll geophysics are surveying the field where frein's court manor house once stood maybe this was the site of office palace and our saxon mortar mixers starting to take shape phil and guy are making the wattle fence around the center post that's that one then eventually this will form a giant basket to hold the mortar meanwhile richard's working on the rotating cross beam richard what are you doing we've already got one hole in there well we're making the holes for the paddles to go in oh you remember that's the hole for the central spindle right and we've got this plan here of course the central hole here the circular central hole for the pivot and then we've got these holes so that's what we where they go right the way through yeah god this has come on a lot since yesterday we seem to be messing with 19th century cobbles then yeah well the 19th century cobbles are still there yeah 18th century this is good isn't it yeah it's fantastic isn't it this morning it looked well this morning the trench looked like that side of it still does and um we found first of all we found that side of the wall and then this side and this is fantastic we've got three courses of it as well it looks as almost as we've we've got a narrow course there and then a much wider course here and then possibly another narrow one down there which is nicely made and have you got any idea of data or how it fits in at all well most of the material that's come out is 18th 19th century landscape engineering to level the site flat and i don't be the person who did the work because it's been a hell of a job digging it out so do you think you're going to be able to get down to that early layer there then chris it looks very hopeful i mean the material that we're just coming down to seems to be a fairly flat surface yeah with charcoal in its burnt grain we found a small piece of light um so i think tomorrow morning when we come back and we'll get this cleaned up and we should be able to see the floor surface and it already looks as though we've got we might put a post hole perhaps there oh yeah it's very reddish clay here and then gravel in the middle and it's very different to the different sort of um oakley coloured clay that we've got at the edge here well that's all very encouraging you better carry on because we've got very limited light aren't we going to stop you've improved no i'm interrupting you now but yeah i'll catch up with you in the morning so where have you been all day well i've been looking at churches and flying in the helicopter so you've no idea what's happening in our wonderful trend yeah i mean there's another post pad here look from the big timber out of nowhere underneath all the the rubble and so on and then all this air has been cleaned and phil's got some fantastic stuff out this hole haven't you we are really really chuffed tony we've actually pushed the story back in this trench what several hundred years out with that hole we've got pottery 1150 to 1200 excellent and we're getting pieces of masonry this is high status stuff this is not farmyard stuff it might even be part of a window surround and that's come out of here as well and then from up on the top of the hill there yeah there's a piece of um 11th century pottery this is sort of time of the norman conquest from from that trench up on the top excellent so yesterday all we got evidence of was the 18th century now we're back to the doomsday book join us after the break and see how much further back we can get it's the third day of our hunt for offers palace and we've yet to find a single piece of saxon evidence but we've got the new geophysics results from frein's court stuart wants to examine the earthworks behind sutton church there are a lot of options but little time so mick's gonna have to choose what you got there chris well this is the magnetic response from friends court in fact we've got an absolute wealth of archaeology in there it's stuffed so can we dig there no i'm afraid you can't hello that's pretty definite wasn't it it's within the scheduled area and so not without prior permission so does that mean we're just going to be able to work on the parts of frein's court we've already been in well we're going to carry on there but we've got another option just up the road where the church is where stuart and i saw these fantastic earth works from the air yesterday so i think we might have a look at that just to warrant you there's friends caught there you can see the earth works that's the iron age hill fort on top of the hill and the church is just there now what we saw from the air is a large ditch coming down here and also a big high platform here i'm not saying it is an anglo-saxon palace what i'm saying is we've got a complex of earthworks here which i think we ought to examine in the context of looking for saxon palace keith we've only got one day left do you really think this is where we should be putting our resources or isn't it wandering rather aimlessly around the country in fact quite the opposite and what stewart has done is identified this enclosure which may indeed be another saxon site and in fact what we really are opening up here is potentially a landscape of science and we really need to try and take a look at that as quickly as we can so what exactly is it that you want us to do well i think we should start by do a visit that area uh with the view perhaps to dig in a machine cut trench across the big ditch at the side of the site a trench pool can we dig a trench there no problem with that you're well clear of the scheduled area so it's your fizzing yeah can we can we get to hear that chris what today well we've got one day left let's get on with it on the main site the work goes on in the trench across the isle building phil's still digging the pit where yesterday he found a piece of 12th century pottery [Music] on the null we've opened a series of smaller test pits inside our giant trench one of these has produced our earliest fragment of pottery so far from an 11th century bowl i think she's in the kitchen but before we can investigate the field behind sutton church we need permission from the owner i think so yeah hello mrs harper yes am i right in saying that you own that field out there yes i do we're from the time team and uh we were wondering whether we might put a trench in we've always known there's been some medieval uh interest down in that field and we're not allowed to develop it so you can go and find out for us what's going on there i would be interested we'll come back and tell you oh certainly would that be all right absolutely delighted thank you thank you very much thank you next to the church geophysics survey the platform but we open up a new trench straight away across the boundary ditch nearby the ditch may be another medieval feature but it could be a lot older we'll see back at frein's court carrenza's finally got some dating evidence for the multi-celled building we are starting to make just a little bit of progress on that at last um we uh have gone down we've gone down both sides of the wall here and you can see it's showing up quite nicely it's still going to go down further because these clay layers here are still butting up against it there's no foundation cut for that wall visible this is where we looked last night that's right yes and then one of these floors when we cleared cleared it down from just about down here stuck between two of the brick or the stone courses in this wall we have found a piece of pottery which alan vince has had a look at and dated to the early 12th century oh right so we're looking at something around about 1100 then that's right yep is that another [ __ ] you're getting katie there yeah oh gosh that's nice it's got a room or something on there yes that that yes that should be fairly accurately dated that's come from the clay has it yeah i mean the other possibility is that if this has just come from the clay layer and it's the same date as that but that suggests that that might come from the same clay layer and has actually got pushed in between the stones of the wall after it was built in which case it must have been built before 1100 which might push the date of our wall back even further which would be very interesting because i think in phil's trench they haven't got anything earlier than that at the moment no but they've got stuff for the same sort of date so it looks if the site's you know going right the way between the two the wall must have been built before the floor in which we found the bit of pottery was laid a date for the pot would therefore tell us the latest construction date for the building that's if our pottery expert alan vince can identify one of the shirds right anything else yes well it's this bit as well which is rather nice yeah now this is more like it this we can do something with this um just so happened to have my book with me and number two number two there is precisely what you've got and that dates to the early years of the 12th century they've recently had an exquisition at hereford cathedral and there they were turning up in a group of about 1103. oh wow gosh so it looks as if our building went up before 1103 that's tantalizingly close to the end of the saxon period in 1066. john gators got the geophysics results from the field behind sutton church yes is it good well look at this this is the resistance plot black is walls so i mean it looks like a nice building there i mean when you actually process the data a bit more have we got some sort of courtyard it's not entirely surprising there are structures here the key thing of course is going to be what date they are well we'll only know that if we decide in the remaining time we've got to put something in this and have a look which would at least tell us perhaps the condition of what's here and more importantly the date of it perhaps we just put in a four by two with half a day to go we're opening our sixth trench an enclosure this side all right you left in our grunt that sounds good phil and our saxon woodworkers guy and richard have completed the wattle lined pit for our saxon mortar mixer it's time to fit the crossbeam that's it lovely job i'm impressed it's good isn't it oh excellent i mean is that going to need lubrication well we're going to try it without first but i've got some mutton fat if we do need lubrication the final stage is making the paddles to stir the mortar cool yeah well there's he's nice and taut is that uh is that a big piece of pottery gonna come out in our trench over the isle building we've hit a layer of burnt material including more fragments of pottery [Music] sieving this charcoal has revealed burnt seeds and cereal grains which we can send off for radiocarbon dating [Music] our trench on the knoll hasn't produced any more pottery so we shut it down but from our earlier finds we know there was a settlement here nearly a thousand years ago in carrenza's trench the piece of pottery from 1103 has prompted a radical rethink about the age of the multi-celled building when we started if you remember we've got two basic models for a building of this shape the cellular structure one was middle saxon royal palace in stone the other was perhaps 12th 13th century memorial complex well now that we've got clear dating for this wall and that is that it's earlier than 1100 it means the medieval option the memorial complex disappears but chris just because it's earlier than 1100 why does it have to be as early as mid-sex oh it doesn't have to be but that's that the one model we've got is a as a building of similar shape a large hall in northampton which has been excavated and that is an 8th century mercian large powerful person's hall it's either a royal site or or a monastery isn't it so basically we haven't got anything that looks like this between the eighth ninth century and the early middle ages that's correct apart from churches so does that mean that we can say that this wall is anglo-saxon well no why not no no i i think that with the evidence we've got now we can be the highest probability is that this is a saxon wall but what we'd really ideally like to find to prove it beyond any doubt is the foundation trench that was dug when this wall was built and at the bottom of it to find a lovely bit of anglo-saxon pottery or metal work to be absolutely certain next to sutton church the two trenches we opened this morning have produced mixed results so how is this trench going because to be quite honest i can't see anything in it the trench on the platform revealed traces of the foundations of timber buildings but we've no idea what date they are we're going to leave you with a conundrum here that you've got to come back to at some stage yeah it's certainly a puzzle i mean these these stitches are probably defining areas where there might have been buildings but at what date we just don't know as yet but the trench across the enclosure ditch has shown that the original earthworks were much bigger than we'd imagined gosh that's enormous i mean i was the way i'm seeing it at the moment it's from here beyond the digger that's right yeah yeah we can just see traces of an outer bank probably there and they're in the center where they're shoveling is the middle of the ditch we've had to cut it to this step a plan for safety reasons a ditch of this size is something you'd imagine with a big palace site something enormous yeah high status yeah yes it certainly is it is really the size of a town ditch and it's very interesting that offer is the first king to be associated clearly with planned towns with defenses including in fact hereford so this is very much like the sorts of ditches that office towns have the size of the area bounded by the ditch also suggests it was once a substantial settlement and we've got some fines from it there's a certain amount of bone and a few iron objects mainly large nails that's actually quite interesting because if this were an anglo-saxon feature that's exactly the sort of group one might expect since they weren't using pottery very much at all in this area so it could be that this is our one real major saxon feature wow that's exciting yes we did find one interesting find uh this was right from the bottom of the ditch it's not been cleaned yet and we're not quite clear what it is the guess i'm making on the spur of the moment is that it's a miniature anvil possibly from a metal workers set for fitting into a bench i see the anvil would have been used for delicate metal working sadly there's no way of telling when it was made well shall we yeah yep i'll push the other way has anyone ever done this experiment before no one has ever as far as we know tried this experiment before so this is a world first since about the year 900 exactly so i'm going to show you if you shove all the sand in here we got it we'll start turning and i'm going to add some lime not madly convinced by the lime in the plastic buckets well it is the traditional unslated lime oh so it's really the car they have used well it's certainly pushing it about isn't it yes well that's right and i mean if you can use it and if it works i mean it's going to be such a labor-saving device isn't it i think it's mixed it great let's stop have a look it is definitely mixing it look look at this sand in here at the butt near the thing look that is unmixed sand yeah it's it's very red well it's not working though yeah but look at that look at that white stuff in it yeah that is the up you can feel it look oh look that's pretty good look it glues together look yeah yeah look that's not mixed is it no no no what about this mixed yeah yeah definitely definitely gonna come and help come on right half of you on that end here well then right okay and here christmas cake that's exactly it oh it's getting really stiff now you're doing well another 20 laps to do it's getting near the end of day three i'll leave them down at the very end of day three the trench across the post pad building revealed the charred remains of a wooden floor at one end radiocarbon dating confirmed it was nearly a thousand years old similar in age to the pottery we found inside it but it was bernard who produced the biggest shock he carried on checking the position of the geophysics for the patch mark dots until late on day three when he concluded that the patch marks hadn't been made by the stones that feel uncovered after all you may remember on day one we had difficulty fixing the trench over two of the dots on the aerial photograph so where are we gonna go then well it seems that although we were close the trench didn't go quite where we'd intended phil quickly found a large stone which he assumed was a post pad and the source of one of the patch marks but mick wasn't sure look at that it still doesn't look big enough to feel really much bigger look at that i i would have expected something about twice the size mick was worried that this method of construction wasn't saxon i think all the buildings we know of that that have been said to be saxon palaces are actually the the the timbers go into big post pits big sockets in the ground this sort of idea doesn't come along until later in the last hour of digging bernard proved that the patch marks had been made by collections of much larger stones piled into much bigger post holes just as mick had suggested originally these holes were giant sockets for timber uprights sunk two meters into the ground unlike the post pads this method of construction is typical of saxon buildings we can't be sure how they looked but we do know that all the buildings here were constructed on a grand scale and that many of them were in use at roughly the same time so it seems to us we've definitely got a very strong candidate for offers palace which is a fantastic start for archaeologists in the future who hopefully one day will be able to prove it [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 268,243

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, Mercia, Anglo-Saxon England, Eowa, Hwicce, Kingdom of Kent, Mercian Supremacy, East Anglia, Jænberht, Archbishop of Canterbury, Archdiocese Of Lichfield

Id: EZxJ0Z_fgTo

Length: 49min 33sec (2973 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AJA126]

I do, I loved that show. I'm a patreon subscriber to bring back TT. You can also buy a bunch of episodes from Amazon Prime.

[u/FirmTheory]

Great show. I’ve been through all 20 seasons and the specials multiple times

[u/tiredpiratess]

Never heard of this but super excited to try it!

[u/AlbinoBeefalo]

So I can think of is how miserable he was in the tanner episode

[u/Boring-Can3123]

Love how Tony Robinson always has to ask permission to enter an excavation. That and you can see the archeologist getting annoyed with him. I wonder how many time he's been told to f****off Baldrick! An amazing show which provides access to unique slices of British History.

[u/zoetropo]

Time Team are, I think, almost right about the site of the Battle of Hastings. Where they, and most commentators, go wrong is in underestimating the size of the battlefield and how far Harold was driven from his original position.