Medieval Dining Hall | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

stuck in the middle of a sandal in housing estate is this like some graffiti covered medieval version of the TARDIS but is this tower all there was to it when it was first built or is this just the tip of some archeological iceberg [Music] [Music] it's covered in concrete well the windows are anyway and it's all sort of black and grubby why have you invited you say I'm disappointed well it's not very romantic is it I know time team was about you know extracting these beautiful bits of architecture out of the ground this is stuck up on the surface already looks pretty grim hey you don't mind me saying that thing well what we're showing you now is what we've got at the moment and what we're hoping to do is actually invite you back just in a few years time and show you what we're going to develop this into but before we can start to develop it we need to know something if it's past the hall of the story is if we don't develop it we'll just end up with a pile of rubble yeah so before we can develop it we need an archaeological surveyor on the site so you want us to look at what's here so that when you come to develop it you don't put a car parking over something or yeah that's it or whatever I mean it is to us it's very special it might not look much to Tony but this is that what our castle it's the people's castle and we want to preserve it as best we can yeah we've already started doing some work Danny wants some geophysical work all around the building and beyond as much as we can get done which will give us a lot of information about what's under the grass we've also going to do an earthwork survey because all these bumps and lumps that are everywhere we hope we'll make some sort of sense yeah and then fairly quickly we think we might put some trial trenches in so that we can see what state the archaeology is on the ground [Music] so the local community want to restore Hilton castle to a working building and design a new Park round it a brief in just three days is to provide the archaeological information which will help them do that in keeping with its past quite Lots already known about the castle itself English heritage have done some restoration work to the building they took over the castle when it fell into disuse in the 1950s we've lots of pictures which show us how the building has been radically altered over the centuries the buildings of 1846 it's been all shapes and sizes from a massive Georgian mansion to a tarted-up Victorian villa which is the frontage we're left with today but we don't have any pictures of how it was when it was first built around 1400 AD this weekend we want to fill that gap and produce a picture of what it was like originally was this gatehouse all there was to it or is there more of the castle waiting to be found the geophysics survey of the area close to the castle is the first step to finding out these slides here unavoidably can't go to school today so they volunteers to help you now John's in charge of the geophysics can you explain to them what it is yeah basically what they've asked us to do is try and find the early remains that are buried below the ground so we've got this instrument which is sending electric currents and where you've got the Buried walls the currents find it difficult to pass through the walls that's it so we get high readings on the instrument and it's all stored inside we feed it into a computer and it comes out in a plot and hopefully it gives us the walls that are buried below the ground simple as that so when it works what can they do for you 29 so you're probably going onto a wall now you do another reading see if it goes into the 30s oh it's dropped down so it could be that we've got a wall at that point that gave us the 29 when you were here you've got 22 high over the wall because the current couldn't go through the wall now you're back down to 24 so you've passed over the wall and continued the people who live around here obviously don't want to be sticking tennis courts on top of ancient buildings and the geophysics work this weekend will help avoid doing just that Bernard and Stuart's job over the next three days is to produce an earthwork survey of the entire site and by recording the lumps and bumps in the landscape they may be able to trace gardens and other features important to the history of the castle the Hilton Deane area is about four miles from the center of Sunderland and within a stone's throw the river where it's more or less in the middle of nine communities will hopefully all benefit from the improvements made here as part of the government City Challenge scheme it's easy to see why it's so important to them it's the only green area for miles around the geophysics team have got our first results they've done a quick survey of an area to the east of the castle already they've discovered a kind of horseshoe shaped building possibly a courtyard with crosses at one end that could be buttresses so that's suggested in fact that there are ranges of buildings coming along the slope apps along the top of that Bank that we can see out there I mean this is a big area 40 by 40 meters and and obviously the time we've got we could only do a small sample across that where is this in relation to where we're standing there it's beyond the fence here inside this earthwork we're somewhere over here it's basically the area up to the Suzuki and we're Nadia's walking across now she's actually just walked across that main building and Louie who's probing is actually in this area so we're talking about the big buildings where are these buttressing things that's where Nadia is working at the moment yeah um the one on this side and Louie where he's probing is at this find of the building so it could be a building almost the same size as this one yes I think it's certainly as large always assuming that is a building I mean that's what the trench will find is fine I mean we've been cautious again so in terms of the date of all this we've got a castle call it what you will of the late 14th century according to the heraldry on it but we've also got an ancient site with which the Hilton's were associated from 1157 or even earlier and so we may be picking up earlier structures as well from whatever timber or even a stone Hall that they had before they built this castle so you don't read a few books about it we want to get on and dig it so the plan for the day is to dig two trenches it's our fill and local archaeologist Steve speak to test if the walls we've located under the ground belong to the original 15th century castle or a part of something much more recent Victor's gone off to some Peter's Church in Monk we're mouths to produce a drawing of the effigy of the man who built the castle Baron William Hilton areas without his legs which would chopped off in the last century by the churchwarden now time for a chat with Robin in our mock medieval incident tent what else do we know about Baron William we've got quite a lot of information about him as a as a chap and he seems to be in something of a professional soldier we've got a reference to him accompanying the Bishop of Norwich on his crusade to Flanders in 1383 agreeing to serve the king in 1386 for 50 marks a year with 20-minute arms and 20 archers but he also had a nastier side to him I got an account for instance that he was with others responsible for for pirating to Scottish ships in 1381 he was also declared an outlaw in London in 1403 so there was a nasty side also to Hilton rather unpleasant bloke well he was a man of his time and over mighty Lord would probably there was a best way to something up what evidence have we got of what this place would have been like at that time well fortunately when when he when he finally kicked the bucket in 1435 we have what's called an inquisition post mortem which describes the place it says there are in the same manner that's Hilton a Hall four chambers a chapel two bombs a kitchen and a house constructed of stone called the gatehouse so you're talking about a succession of outbuildings possibly a separate Hall which is conceivably where we've been digging today so both the documentary evidence and the geophysics plan seem to suggest that there should be remains of medieval buildings here but how much of the building that we can still see above the ground can be traced back to medieval times berrak molly is an expert on buildings of this period and can help us to identify the surviving bits of the original castle we're fortunate in that when the Victorian house and indeed the Georgian houses that were here that this was converted into before yeah were laid out they left their floor level where my hands are up here right that's a turret above the precise they ripped out all the innards down to that level rah and took away all the medieval walls inside the shell down to that level we've subsequently dug them out and what you're looking at here these low walls are the base of the medieval partition walls within the castle so you wouldn't have seen this in in Victorian times you wouldn't now you can against and you've got the gate presumably a hinge hinge is there two leaves opening inwards and this is Mayor doorway into the gate passage to drive straight through there and out the other side through that blocked wall so you you could this is actually the beginnings of the Gateway well it's the beginning of the Gateway it's the doorway itself but it's not quite the beginnings because if you step back a bit you'll see it's logs on there and one the other side yeah that's the portcullis which came down from 30 feet above in fact right so 600 years ago this would have been the ground floor of Baron William's castle with rooms for servants and guards and up above it his family's main living area oh it's really quite the did you notice coming up it's a left-handed spiral so that if I'm defending I can swing my sword easily with you with my riser disadvantage endlessly ah yes all right so this is where we get our view over the hall this is the doorway straight into the Great Hall this is where the high table and so on high table sat somewhere in here rice but this would have meant that the portcullis would have to come up across those windows yes across windows that size not the three windows there which are the Victorian ones but if you look above them you'll see the head of what was the original window here but you're absolutely right the portcullis did come up over it and he did in other castles - it's not unique and that was thought to be acceptable that you had your posh room with the pork polished from noon through it was accepted a castle was a mix of it being a fighting machine yeah and it being a posh house all of this information will help Victor build up a reconstruction of how the castle might have looked in Baron Williams day but how are our excavations going we now have two trenches what have they found so far isn't this where there was supposed to be a buttress from your printer yes I don't think we've gone deep enough yet I'm sure it's there may not be a buttress there's definitely wooly or stone coming in at this angle on two bare earth on that side I'm convinced when we take off some of this rubble we're going to see a wall coming through on this sort of alignment it's really clear on the geophysics I mean this rubble this looks like it's a structure to me or something there's nowhere on it it's also it's just falling stone it's all we talked about it being a buttress in which we had a linear coming through on this line and something coming off at right angles this is the something coming off at right angles okay so it may not be a buttress but I'm still convinced under there we've got a linear wall the foundation let's go see what you need you got in the other trench it's amazing the way they can always decide almost straightaway which bits are at actual archaeology and what's just rubble it all well now that's not level is it this is something what you read even you can see good edge stuff on it to the wall I can feel that obviously it must be man-made because that straight edge front edge is there a need mortar or anything but what this yellow stuff is so success we found a medieval wall it's difficult to say in this damage but judging by its size and position this just could be one of the buildings Baron William built as part of his home we're nearly at the end of day one but carrenza has noticed a series of faint lines in the grass which may outline a bigger range of buildings yeah this trench others exactly no rectilinear you can see that by coming right back to where they picked up that feature with help from the local kids carrenza starting to map the parch marks as they're called which may mark the position of more buried woods lictors now finished his restoration of the effigy of Baron William so we now have a picture of the man who built the original castle [Music] but what else have we achieved on day one I'm getting worried that we're all a bit complacent because Robin read me out an inventory which has got about nine or ten different rooms in it all from the medieval period and at the moment it seems to me we've got evidence of one little l-shaped corner and a little bit of wall we've only got another two days are we actually going to produce for Denny a picture of what this area was like during the medieval period if we find out what if anything these parchments represent I mean that they are we've only seen them from one angle from very bleak and or from in the tower I think if we put a trench across those find out what they are then we'll have a much clearer idea I mean if they turn up that they are walls and they look as if for structural then yes if they don't know they're not know if they're not there's something just they may be garden features from that 150 years of the country house period beds have one sort of series of beds of different periods paths of different periods we may have a wonderful bit of garden archaeology there but as far as as the invent ristic concerned and there are two of them describing ranges of buildings separate from the keep itself the geophysics backed up now by those big walls that we found only little trenches but we we now know that those that there is something real archaeology in the assess that we do actually have big enough walls that look to all intents and purposes to be medieval they've got bits of medieval rubble in the backfill of their destruction sitting behind the castle it looks as if the inventories are right as we were as we had hoped for that the gatehouse leads somewhere leads into a courtyard round which the buildings the whole the chambers the kitchen the bombs that are mentioned in the inventories actually exists detailed plan yet maybe we won't in two days but to know that there there is a great step forward tonne you've done wonders for under I think tallest bottles gone yeah because Tony criticized they were piddling little castle this morning too much straws Nonie is trying to be awkward everybody is doing well yeah he's sitting there nitpicking [Laughter] [Music] day to Saturday and already we've got a lot going on we've brought in Graciela Ainsworth our stone cleaning expert to work on some of the heraldry on the east face of the castle the geophysics team are extending their survey to see if carrenza sparsh marks really are walls and in the incident tent Victor and barrack have now finished a reconstruction which shows how the original West face of the castle looked in 1400 AD but we now know that this isn't a complete picture of the whole castle because we've found the remains of other stone buildings that went with it when our trenches produce further evidence of what these buildings were like it's Flemish 15 mid 16th century these different things here you see the little hole where you hold ever called nail holes and this is how those tiles actually shaped because they've put on a square hole and with four males hung up and the wet clay was put on when the nails held the clay in situ or they went round the outside cutting its shape with a knife didn't anybody else do know only of the finish use this particular technique would this be contemporary with our Barron Hilton then building the castle it's about same date just about yes the late 14th century imported Flemish tiles into rather smaller four or five inches square as either 8 9 inches square which would suggest that their first part of the 15th century so at least that's fantastic we found our first solid piece of archeological evidence that this building is contemporary with the castle the expensive floor tiles were finding tell us that we're dealing with a high status building Flemish tiles like these would have originally been colored and been laid out in this sort of pattern on the floor of a prestigious medieval building but these aren't the only finds to come out of trench 2 and we were just remarking well there aren't any roofing tiles and fill comes up with this which is a stone you know roofing tile with a nice hole jewels for the top to hold it on so would this be round about contemporary with Sir William well we don't know about this but the stuff that is coming out with is it's all about sort of 1413 82 14 22nd is coming out with it so we've got what was probably William's roof yeah and we've got his floor yeah well what happened to the bits in between oh well they would have been robbed out in succeeding centuries I mean once the place has fallen to bits like this was clearly doing it becomes a big quarry everybody to help themselves so the the thousands of tons of stone or something on a site like this get carted away our excavations are going really well and so is the earthworks survey which is attempting to cover the whole Park at the moment Stuart's working in an area to the south of the castle and it's here that he's finding evidence in the landscape which seems to relate to more than just one period in the castles history we have yeah I think we've got something really quite quite interesting developing here I just wanted to show su how much sort of further beyond the castle the whole historic site is right down a long way from it now yeah it is quite interesting as we look as if we're right at the edge of the the landscape gardening I suspect that because we've got over this side we've got a whole series of what's called Richmond furrow it's a plowing technique which which may be medieval in this case of very broad ridges which go up this slows and you can see them over this direction that the stripes of the hill you just see someone coming along the vehicles across there yeah yeah oh they must be in a hurry team I just rated quite well that doesn't it so you've got you've got plow lands out this side arable fields crops growing that sort of thing possibly even for the medieval period onwards an earthwork survey is just as much a part of the archaeological investigation as the holes dug in the ground it looks to be the same at both ends doesn't it can you see how we're in a big game big do you think it would have been if it was a long channel or if it was a road rating like that yeah it wouldn't be sharp ended like it is right I think we ought to really go and check the ends to make sure it is that's what it feels like it looks more like um sort of a lizard part of an Elizabethan water garden or features where the weight sits the symmetry of all the the terraces it looks we're finding dramatic evidence of extensive gardens designed at least 150 years after Baron William built the original Castle elaborate hillside gardens of the Elizabethan period looked something like these gardens at dirham in Gloucestershire typically they were laid out in an intricate geometric design and were made of raised walks with fish ponds and orchards which included cherry plum pear apricot and apple trees but a garden like this doesn't make sense positioned here to the south of the castle the castles views to the east and west so what's going on our garden expert Rob Bell thinks he may have the answer what I think is happening is that on the Long Terrace the one we're on now quite a lot of this was actually occupied by buildings yeah that initially at the the western end of the terrace where they're digging now but that relates to the 15th century house yeah and then you've got some extra building which appears to be totally undocumented but is there in yeah which is extended along the terrace yeah now in terms of date we may be able to find out as the excavations progress yeah but my guess at the moment is that this dates to round about 1600 you're thinking of another big house or part of it coming out bolted on to the east of the Medivh of the castle and south facing which could explain all your terraces so you're thinking of something across perhaps between here and the chapel looking that way down over there I mean Dee you've done all the work stories a new story it's great when I saw this plan yesterday I was the gardens doing over there yeah this gives us the answer Rob's theory is that there may have been a large building here built about 200 years after the castle around 1600 ad and positioned to enjoy the gardens to the south could this be what the parch marks are showing what does the geophysics make of it you don't say any so you got anything really strong for I haven't got a rectangular building shown on the pole there and I've got some high readings that match one of the walls so further excavations are needed to prove these buried walls are really there if so will we be looking at buildings contemporary with the original castle or could they represent the outline of a later Jacobean range of buildings from about 1600 ad buildings all the way along this tourist northern likely that dudes me extensible I can set up a building piercing no funny thing is the funny thing is that once this lot is not down that the main axis of the house then goes back facing east it's all getting very complicated as I suppose we might expect given that there have been Hilton's living here since goodness knows when and there's still one thing I'm not clear about from yesterday how do we really know that the castle was built around 1400 all those shields that you can see up there represent the the the rather wealthy illustrious marriages that the Hilton's made to accumulate their lands sort of architectural bragging absolutely I couldn't put him better mr. right over the top is the the banner of the King of England of the time which has the arms of France depicted as three fleur-de-lis and they only started putting the French arms on in that form in about fourteen oh five six so it couldn't have been built before that's right that was when Henry the fourth Great Seal showing that came in but a more accurate idea of the the building of the castle we can get from a badge on the other side so come off never look come on come on good old Baron William obviously believed in slapping a whole range of decorative bits and pieces on his house this stag dates to the reign of richard ii proving that the building must have been built before he was deposed in 1399 but I must admit a much more interested in the strange sculpture that graziella's cleaning it's called the hilton achievement of arms and apparently Baron William could have had this Lodge on his head when he went into battle it's going really well actually it's um I'm just slowly removing the very top layer of sulfation leaving just a small amount left on the stone so that the stone can actually continue to breathe which it hasn't been doing for several hundreds of years and I'm being able to find the very large cracks and fissures in the actual stonework so it's actually proving really interesting removing the black sulfation to see the condition of the stone it is actually a fairly silly looking figure in there well obviously you'll be a modern eye to this Tony try and throw yourself back enthusiastically into the 15th century and think what it would look like I'm scared now really good the geophysics team have got a massive job on their hands to try and provide the community with a geophysics survey of as large an area as possible student burners are busy producing a map which will pull all this new information together meanwhile our new trenches are beginning to produce results well you've got something was it Wow it's pretty smart yeah maybe was saying earlier that he didn't think I was excited enough but romantic type fine where is it exactly well we're at use a small as well more silver coin and these it looks a pretty certainly silver and the other side you can see there's a cross yeah oh sitting as the coat-of-arms cross going right across it's not been quit how does it help us in so far as dating is concerned it's come out so it doesn't really take us a lot further so but I mean it is it is a noise it is a noise fine yeah see that cross there to stop its people slicing the silver off the edges of this silver coin is actually one of three which have now been found in this trench their Elizabethan and they all dates to the mid 16th century so they fit with the gardens which have been found to the south but in terms of answering the parch mark question our new trenches are producing results which are inconclusive we found this wall which was marked by a parchment us it is possible that some of the parts marks represent later archaeology such as garden features and these are confusing the plan it's going to take longer than a weekend to sort out this knot but we do have our medieval success story we're finding further bits of Baron Williams 15th century home and the white company have arrived we can find medieval buildings but they can show us what the who lived here got up to the white company are here to bring home some of the realities of many of them No so what have we got to do tomorrow what's our priorities I want to finish off one of my my trenches which will show us exactly the sequence of events inside the the major building that we've got we've got a lot of strategically in there I hope you've got a lot of dating evidence in there that's what I'm going to be concentrating on tonight what about the geophysics though John we've forgot because you've been bashing away steadily all day yeah I mean basically we've got a series of features walls paths series of garden features that are all on the same alignment as a castle I seem to stop where the tent is and from there on we've got things aligned with the medieval Ridge infer so we seem to have a limit to it now on the plan tomorrow we're going to go and look at some of the lower ten terraces see if we can get some more things of interest there and we're going to continue looking for your tunnels yeah I was just going to say that last night we finished off and the plan was because you told me never to believe these archaeologists because they always come up with new ideas new plans but the last plan last night was the tunnels you were gonna explore the tunnels well what's happening with the toilet we've started this afternoon we've spent an hour or so on the west of the castle from the known point where they're meant to start and it's too early yet to say it's the end of day two Danny and I I think are going to go off to a local pub fairly soon yeah we're beginning to get something of the medieval experience as you can see by my streaming eyes and we're going to have some semi hot smoked mackerel and some beans when they've boiled up and and then the Boozer yeah we get all about this food [Laughter] day three and the white company prepare for what's going to be a busy day with an authentic breakfast of chordal a kind of medieval porridge made of oats honey and wine I wouldn't be surprised if half the estate turns out today and I must confess I'm a bit worried do we know enough about what's in our trenches to get the locals really interested in the archaeology as long as we've got something that can catch the people you see down in this wall here yeah it's not just a single wall its core is a different color it's about that face and this face the two faces aren't parallel so we've got a wall which has been reface at one phase or another that's the outside of the building but over here we've got some really exciting material and we've got a line along here certainly a wall plaster yes remember this is the inside face of the builders brilliant is so clear this is pretty fragile stuff you say and yet this depth below ground level it's perfectly presumed you've got colored floor tiles here and here in the destruction deposit oh yeah the Chinese know yeah so and what's this is a posthole pretty well presumably yeah this rubble was already here when this process all was cut so it's got nothing to do with the construction of the Builder it's just a later thing it's a later fish yeah it's too small a trench to tie into anything else but it's cut through this rubble in other words we've got quite a considerably embellished building here it's not the thing you keep goats in it's just what you'd expect that isn't it I mean you come through the gate house over there into some sort of courtyard and then facing you would release big hall that's right so that you come through the gates and opposite you would be you know this great feasting and banqueting-hall which would be very impressive as you came through the door late this is presumably what we've got here so might there be like a big outer wall encompassing all the stuff yes in here yeah so what you gonna do now well there's a lot of recording to do isn't the first because it's a destructive process archaeology or do you things away all the time you've got to have an adequate record of what you've taken away the best analogies that is the trifle you know we've done with the layers in it right you've got you know you sherry at the bottom and your biscuits and all that sort of stuff and unless you take that apart careful and record whether you're jelly comes on the top of your bill Monge you don't understand how the thing was put together you know if you just sort of dig it away and eat it you've lost it you don't know watch how an archaeologist eats a trifle usually could have sectioned through and you know see where the chocolate is thank you for that Mick thanks for sharing that's the whole sweep we now know enough for Victor to add to our reconstruction of Baron Williams 15th century castle the geophysics team are continuing their work to trace the tunnels while I catch up with carrenza to find out if the earthworks survey will be useful to the locals in their plans for the park so it's gone really well I think we're really pleased it's enabled us look beyond just beyond just the castle and actually see it within its it's whole landscape and to see that it's not a purely defensive thing it's a it's opulence it's showing off it's on the log but I want someone nice to live so we've got the furrows original furrow there we've got the terraces there with the castes are there and this stuff is what well this this I think is another phase of the gun it shows how these things change and develop and increasingly become more ornamental in Fazekas castles and lordly residents go on you've got more terracing cutting here there's a pond here a lovely pond down there which you can actually see from up here it's just in the trees they see the sort of sudden change in the long grass from light to dark that's the pond there and at the back of it that's his flat bank that you could walked along the top of it's very hard it would have been a hard surface so you could walk down the castle round the pawns and up again this this Terrace here might have carried summerhouse is something like that what's really nice as well talk about the defensive position Vikas will rather the lack of it's about that the castle isn't on top of the hill as we said but when you get down here it's on the horizon so you walk down through the beautiful ornamental gardens around the pond with water plague and looked up and seen the castle on the horizon dominating the whole of this beautiful landscape all of which was completely artificial so they wanted to make ornamental gardens here maybe we should be suggesting to them that they should try and breathe life back into these ornamental gardens I think so I think so if they could get all of this they to work in a similar way maybe get the pond reinstated the walkway along it I think that would be wonderful and will be completely in keeping with what we've recorded the white company often demonstrate techniques from the past here they're showing the local kids how decorations would have been made for a medieval belt so you carve the cuttlefish mold and I'm gonna make a make it look like a nice little flower now if you're a medieval jeweler or somebody's making pilgrim bad is anything out very a cheap based metals like lead and tin if you use all LED then it comes out on a sort of a reasonable gray gunmetal color but if you put stop putting lots of all tin in it eventually gets so much Tynan it starts looking like silver so if you're clever enough you could probably sell a LED Tim badge it doesn't cost a lot to make and you can sell it off of pass it off as silver if you're lucky and the other half of the mold has also got a channel in like that and we meet the two together so got that hole there okay get the leg which has been melting on the fire and you can do this with gold or silver all right hold the mold nice and tightly and there we are it takes a little while to dry so it's not molten anymore right tap the mold ever so slightly which will help the ash to come out and we're very lucky hey presto we have a belt stunner in the shape of the flower demonstrations like this and the evidence being produced by our trenches all help us get a picture of how life was lived here in the past and make the hole in the center of it for instance this is a 15th century jug handle and here's Victor's reconstruction of how it would have looked just the kind of thing Baron William would have used to his ale or wine as a jaw in the end before the road teeth in it was gonna be oh is that so that's that's probably you're a full school at a skull yeah what's a sheep then is it you see that there's a lot of piece of skull or something more bone there yeah chop through there look you're looking at all the sort of sceptre inside the bone you mother Julia yeah I mean it's looking like a great butchery Lions me you know you've chopped all you've cut all the meat off and you've chopped all the bones and to one side so maybe we were looking at this sort of domestic yeah and really you know so if we've got our all across here right perhaps between the service buildings at the back over here working the trenches will continue for as long as possible today but we're beginning to run out of time and people are starting to arrive keen to know what we found in their Park Graciela thinks she'll finish in time and the geophysics team are busy processing their survey of the castle grounds what they found is evidence of a further series of buildings running along the terrace some buildings seem to be connected with the medieval plowing on one structure begin out to be a large house could just fit in with the 16th or 17th century gardens unfortunately we don't have time to act on this information but it does provide the local people with a plan of the archaeology of the site essential information before any work can begin here know it because we're not actually because we've we do fight in practice with each other we don't want to rush didn't see it it's blunt but in reality that sword would have been fairly sharp all the way down and then the last sort of six inches or so would have been razor-sharp would have been very sharp indeed funny watching the white company in action really does give you a reminder of the kind of world but Baron William lived in 600 years ago [Music] doesn't seem like it would be particularly practical to use in a battle when do these myths about brought up by the Victorians a wandering knight beyond winced under horses and not being able to good always sort of thing but it's you know it's all complete nonsense really I mean the white company are really getting people interested in discovering what we've been doing here this weekend and there's plenty for people to see visitors to the incident tent will be able to get a really good look at grassy Anna's efforts in cleaning the achievement of arms they'll also be able to compare it with how it looked before she started work as well as getting an idea of how the original 15th century version looks complete with fancy collars so on to other business before we get to grips with the archaeology what news do we have for the locals about the tunnels well the good news is we found the entrance to the tunnel and the bad news is it's covered in concrete I think what happened was that a few years ago somebody must have filled it up to stop the kids getting hurt down there and so we can't get in but the geophysics people have managed to map the way the tunnel goes it might just be a drain or something I mean you know we all get dead romantic about what these tunnels are but presumably they had to do the sort of business that we do up in the castle and they had to go somewhere but it goes off in this direction and they're going to give you a map of of the route that it takes and then hopefully when you've got a bit more money you can dig this stuff out and exploiting it it's not really the answer that I wanted to give you but well we'll know something's there look and follow it up in the fields you can't leave oh well you can't win them all but we can get excited about the discoveries in trench 2 very little the castle guide for over 18 years is certainly going to have to readjust his ideas the more we look at this I mean the bigger the better you know prestigious in because we've learnt in three days more out of this one trench there are 10 years in a different story to what war mean it's this thing this building probably carries at least as far as the next trench it does it does run off in that direction by the time we get out towards where the red and white tent is yeah it looks if the buildings have stopped by then yes but it means that between the gate arason up there and you'll get a move would mean there would have been a lot of buildings yeah but that's probably the one used by the family I say whereas this one would be a much bigger more splendid one for functions where the the hilter's were trying to mimic people yeah I must admit I didn't really think we'd find the medieval buildings this weekend I thought they'd have been obliterated by later construction on the site but we have we've produced in just three days real evidence of the buildings which were part of the castle 600 years ago and there's still so much more to find today for instance this trench has revealed some of the flemish floor tiles in their original position on the floor of the Great Hall amazing that the preservation is so good so we've now reached the stage where we've produced enough new information to allow us to picture how Baron Williams home appeared when it was first built in 1400 AD this is Victor's reconstruction based on the geophysics plan backed up by the evidence from our trenches and the inventory of 1435 Victor's now able to show the locals just what it might have been like for Baron William because he walked into the gatehouse and stopped briefly in the guard room before continuing towards our newly discovered guest hall very nice indeed but this weekend's also produced new information about another period in the castles history there's evidence to suggest that there was another large building on this Terrace built around 1600 which faced south and was positioned to enjoy a whole series of fantasy gardens as Phil calls them and this is Victor's impression of how they might have looked just produced so much information I'm not quite sure what you're gonna do next that's bring brilliant auntie Anne you've seen the unit rest well it's generally that it hasn't been advertised or anything know that all the people is aware of what we're doing this will go forward no we can't let anybody do I mean with phone so many things that the archaeologists are really pleased with the paper really plays with let's hope little snouted get the shoe on the road [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 178,309

Rating: 4.9274073 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, medieval, medieval history, sunderland

Id: 34qeBgEfNDY

Length: 47min 5sec (2825 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019