Skeletons in the Shed (Blythburgh, Suffolk) | S16E13 | Time Team

a few years ago nick and susan howard and their family moved into their new house here at blythe bra in suffolk they were pottering around in one of their garden sheds looking at one of the innumerable old cupboards and they discovered that a bit alarming certainly a bit scary i think so but not really surprising when you look at the rest of the garden and amongst these trees are some rather unusual pretty impressive garden features look at this isn't it fantastic looks a bit like a little church doesn't it well we know that king henry the first founded a priory somewhere in blithebra in the 12th century and 500 years before that a saxon king was killed on these marshes and buried here could this overgrown garden have been one of the most sacred sites in east anglia time team have got just three days to find out lythbra is a landmark on the coast road between norfolk and suffolk it's a tiny village surrounded on three sides by salt marsh and mud flats and is dominated by a huge church known as the cathedral of the marshes but we're here to investigate another religious site one that may once have been as important and impressive as the church that still stands here today and the remains of our site are tucked away in the garden of our hosts nick a builder and susan who owns a nearby beach cafe it's a fantastic house what's it called it's called the prairie and what's the road called running alongside it prairie road meg do you think there might be some kind of clue there i think it's a bit of a clue isn't it that something goes we know there was a a 12th century august indian priority in blitheborough so it's somewhere in this area you do realize that in order to find out what's going on here we're really going to have to wallop your garden hard yes we understand that and but we'd rather that you didn't know before we start the restoration of the formal gardens formal gardens there's posh those ruins are pretty fantastic aren't they they are but they're pretty enigmatic enigmatic i like that well the best way to start solving that enigma is to look at the bits that are still above ground and for an old chapel head like mick the remains are very informative they are sort of pitched like that yeah in fact you look here the stones because he's spotted that this huge lump of brick and flint dates to the time that we know the priory was built this is what i call herringbone mason because it looks like the bones of a fish and it's a it's a building style that you see in the roman period but you also get it right at the end of the anglo-saxon period into the beginning of the norman period so are you saying that this whole building could be either from just before or just after william the conqueror arrived yeah yeah i mean i think it's probably around about 1100 something like that but round about that norman conquest period this date is our first clue as a 12th century norman priory should follow a basic plan there should be a great hall dormitory for the monks to sleep in and a refectory or dining area forming three sides of a cloister and on the fourth side there should be a church and mick's now confident that's what we have in this garden well this is probably the south wall of the nave so if we come through here we'll be looking down the nave to the west door at the west entrance and then that way we'd be looking up towards the eastern end where the altar would be on the sort of great east window so is this going to be one of these digs where you already know what the shape of the thing is and we just find it well they are quite predictable plans i mean if that is the alignment of the church then the cloister with the buildings around it he's either going to be on that side on the south side or just as likely on the north side going out that way and that's what we're trying to do at the moment he's put some test excavations in to see which way the cloister goes because once we know where the cloister is then we'll be able to predict where all the other buildings are that's right we'll know where the chapter house is the refectory the dormitory it all sort of should slot into place except it's never quite as simple as that when we get to it is it never not once ever so we're putting in a couple of trenches against this wall to test if the cloister is on the southern side of the church and we're getting lots of broken brick and roof tile but unfortunately nothing that immediately screams cloister but on the other side of the wall phil has found foundations that confirm mick was right about these ruins this was a church oh that is cracking stuff it's the floor of the church see it's got this straight edge here well that one's broken but this is a lovely straight edge running across there so that's just literally presumably a panel that goes around the outside the main floor they are bad up and you can see it look we've actually got the wall of the building here look how protected i look lovely smooth surface there show the color about field and the black and the yellow kind of some sort of glazing or yeah these they're they're they're glazed toed so i mean if we get a few more of them i mean it may well be that we can get them into some sort of maybe checkerboard pattern so they would have been black and white yeah oh wow you're gonna dig that away let's try to stop us hey what you could do you own the place [Laughter] well they'll get used to him eventually a quality glazed surface like this would be typical of the floor you'd find in an early monastic church from around the time of william the conqueror but establishing this is a norman church is only the beginning we now need to find out how big it is what shape it is and so on as well as finding where the cloister and all the other buildings are and we also need to see how the priory we're investigating fits into the wider history of blythebra because stewart believes this place has been a hive of activity for millennia mainly due to it being one of the oldest crossing points across the river but what's puzzling him is how blythebra grew from fairly humble origins into a place that became influential enough in the middle ages to have both the priory church we're digging today as well as the huge parish church that still dominates the landscape it now looks like our church was also once pretty impressive is it really a column or is it a wall with a lot of it weathered away when we arrived i just assumed the priory church would be no more than a small chapel but bob our buildings expert believes there's far more to it this column is now so eroded it looks like something out of death valley but it's actually the remains of a sophisticated piece of architecture it really is a column because if you look high up you can see there's a change in angle and there's a slight indent and it comes in at a higher level it suggests that we're on a triforium so that there's probably another layer of arches running off in the other direction perhaps only for one bay but nonetheless it's part of a pier if this church was built in the shape of a cross with a tower where the two lines meet could this be one of the pillars that supported the tower yeah circumstantial evidence is that the ones that support the tower because they're carrying a much greater weight are bigger they're the ones that last longer so our church is beginning to take on rather grand proportions what with a crossing and pillars supporting a tall central tower but until nick and susan bought this house hardly anyone even knew about the priory ruins as the previous owner wouldn't let anyone in including it turns out one of britain's leading monastic experts our very own professor mick i came here years ago when i was working on monasteries because of the august indian pride that was here and i actually got it completely wrong for blitheborough in what way well i i didn't know about the ruins in the wood down there um and i think i rather assumed that the priory church was the parish church and these had then been taken over and turned into a parish church later on what's the history of this place well we know that um in the seventh century the local saxon king in the area chat with your unlikely name vanna i don't suppose that's how you pronounce it at all he was killed in battle with his son and they brought them here to bury them and that then became a pilgrimage uh site by the 12th century so there should be a saxon site here because sutton who's just up the road well that's right anna's related to redwold who was buried in the ship down at sutton who so there is a connection there but does that mean that we could have a saxon boat burial here just as there is at sutton who i wouldn't have thought that was very likely i'd have thought that anna was probably buried in probably a burial mound a barrow or more likely actually in a church and of course the real question is was that site under the parish church or was he buried in a predecessor to the priory in which case we've got quite a good chance of finding it and that would be a fantastic thing to get something like that christianity is becoming part of the establishment and for sam newton our anglo-saxon expert the whole king anna story is massive offering all sorts of intriguing possibilities for the site we're digging what we have is this priceless reference in the 12th century book of ely and it specifically refers to the the death at burial at a place called blythe bro so we're talking about a clearly a very important royal shrine recognized and almost certainly invested in by elite for its upkeep and maintenance and indeed the founding of the priory may relate to that shrine but that's extremely interesting isn't it if anna if anna's bones are still here in the 12th century they could potentially have be here to this day that's right we know he's here somewhere in blackburn and what's going on here in the 12th century why does king henry make this great gesture and encourage this this great priory to be founded or he's it a refoundation of the early royal minster that's the fascinating possibility so this this could really be one of the great discoveries of all time sam believes there's a chance that when king henry the first founded the priory in blythebra he built it on the site of the earlier saxon church and it shrined to king anna or ana but unfortunately we've got to sort out the norman priory layout first before we can deal with whatever else might be here and frustratingly john's now wandered off into next door's garden determined to find out how far the priory church stretches away to the west and we've also opened a trench to the north of the church just in case the cloister we've so far failed to find is actually up here but all we've got so far is a big hollow full of stuff that doesn't make sense it looks like a toe bone but whether it's but although it seems to be not much more than a rubbish dump there are little nuggets of information in amongst the mishmash of broken window glass and pottery that's a bit medieval yep that's a little bit medieval coursework it's kind of a bog standard sort of east suffolk of course where i suppose sort of 13th 14th century maybe 12th yeah or something like that so nicely that's our first bit of medieval portrait oh splendid i mean it's out of it's just out of the top soil there but we've got lots of reused roman pantile with water on it excellent so we've now got more evidence of how the church was built using recycled materials but we may also be getting to grips with how big a building it was so look that's the south wall of the chapel in front of us that's it because john thinks he's found how far west the church extended now look the wall continues through yeah and it basically comes through here yep comes back and then turns a right angle at this point i think we've probably got the west end of the chapel at this point the whole west end of the building so could there be a doorway or something well there may be i mean does anything show on that there's nothing on that i mean that's as far as we get i couldn't actually see an entrance because we only managed to get up to this edge of vegetation but i think if you put an l-shaped trench coming down here getting that south wall and turning this way and getting the west end here and you'll see if there's an entrance right stuart nick and susan are searching for the ancient river crossing that stuart thinks would have attracted people to blythera for thousands of years a place that would have been imbued with mystery and magic interestingly at low water you can actually cross the river where the bridges so would that have been a historical route it's quite probable the key thing is where you cross the marsh and where you arrive at becomes a very special place in a prehistoric landscape and i think that's where traditions build up of of burials being there from prehistory it's why you might have got quinana brought to this place to be buried why you've got a priory on the same spot that continuity of importance right back to to prehistory just on on that little lump that is blythe bro stewart's sure blytheboro would have been a sacred or religious refuge for centuries before king anna died his burial would almost certainly have attracted pilgrims for hundreds of years after but would it have been to our site i feel really perplexed about this john well it would help if we could work out exactly what we have here we're certain we have a priory church the problem is the geophys doesn't really have much evidence for the rest of the priory i mean clearly they're showing something they're either showing whether you say walls there might be robber pits whatever well look they're definitely walls the resistance there that's the wall in phase trench there's no doubt about that so if that's a war there's no reason why these shouldn't be wolves that would leave us with such a small cloister if that's what's being indicated there that i just wonder whether either the cloister is on the other side of the church on the north side of the church over here or that we're looking for a much more unconventionally regular plan than we were expecting well mick did warn me it wasn't going to be easy but really our geophys isn't working for us and i'm not sure our trenches have told us that much either surely it doesn't have to be quite so confusing mick it is a church isn't it i'm pretty sure it's the church and i think we're probably under the crossing here this is probably the southwest pillar that's the north west pillar so that might be either the west wall or the east yes all right thank you very much mick calm down i hope you understood more of that than i did what i do know is that if this is a church and that's the west end then that must be the east end the important end and that's where anything like a shrine would be yeah if anna was buried in here and if there's a shrine or two it's going to be at that end of the church somewhere anna our mysterious anglo-saxon king if we're going to find any evidence of him then that's where it'll be that's right but that's for tomorrow beginning of day two here at blythe brewer in suffolk where we're surrounded by this incredibly evocative architecture which even cynical mick admits is pretty enigmatic the question of course is what is it how old is it which way does it face yesterday evening you said you were pretty sure it's a church yeah i think it's the monastic church yeah and this is the east end somewhere over this way is the east end exactly every time i ask you you wave your hand vaguely in that direction well we don't actually know where the east end is because we don't have the end wall so it may be robbed away there may be a lot of it gone here so what's your trench strategy going to be well it needs to go from the known air of the church which is sort of here right out that way until we hit either a wall or the robber trench or that we see it is actually dug away and we're never going to find it so it's going to be a pretty long trench it's going to be a long one going that direction and we may find absolutely nothing yeah yeah yesterday evening you were winding me up with all these stories about an anglo-saxon king and shrines and you're all winding yourself up about that it was you i just responded to what you said you are such a tease nothing like an easy sight john's got it in one and behind that calm exterior i think makes really panicking why well because none of us can understand this place and it should be so simple if we get rid of that tree there we've already got all these trenches open looking for church walls other buildings and the priory cloisters but mick wants more including one trench in the middle of a hedge hang on hang on hang on hang on you're in the fat the the uh all the evie's caught up in the fence but there is method in this madness as phil's new trench should locate the east end of the church to go with matt's west end this is the north wall here running all right west so we're right up so far all he's hit are some human remains we've only got a little bit of the body and everything we've got an arm of pelvis and stuff i'm not sure whether it's worth extending this trench too much we're still looking for the west entrance yeah over there which is going to be a pretty big job funnily enough this is good news as monks were buried outside consecrated walls suggesting this is part of the church but we're still waiting for matt to find the west end as we don't know how long this part of the church but it's the whereabouts of the cloisters the square of buildings that housed the dormitory refectory and great hall that's really got us stumped some of us thought it should be on the south side of the church and so we opened a couple of trenches which haven't produced anything of note yet if you look at the line of that ones it comes up here yeah but others notably stuart think the cloisters must be on the northern side of the church that is very interesting that big piece of water it looks like the back edge of a building or a range well if there's a building range going out on the north side what's it doing it's too far from the church really to be part of the church it is isn't it and if it's a dormitory on this side something is going on that would make the cloistering that hollow down there it's a good theory it's just a pity none of our trenches on this side have found anything either so realistically after a day and a half of digging we've got a priory church but no priory the only thing we've succeeded in is transforming this once elegant garden into something much less picturesque it's a building site now let's be honest we've got what two trenches there now three there's one down the bottom there as well yeah all right three we've got one just round the corner there and one over the fence in the next garden all right uh come through here a minute come on we got one there yeah that's finished that one one around the corner there and that's finished little one there yeah that doesn't count i'll just listen right we got one here that's finished yeah it's more like a pick and mix counter than what i think of as an archaeological dig how can you learn anything when the trenches are so random well they're random in relation to what we think the plan of the priory is yeah so that those on that side over there are working on the basis that the cloister might be on the north side and therefore we should be crossing the church or the cloister alley into the cloister and the range beyond that yeah these on this side are working on the bases the cloisters on this side and we should hit similar features so we haven't finished we're going to put more in well we're doing one right at the east end at the moment and i've got an idea for another one over on the south there yeah you see i don't think you're being quite honest i think you're actually more anxious than you're putting out oh i am but i do worry about it all the time and i keep an eye on it all the time so i share your worries that's fair enough i can breathe easier now carefully you don't fall down one of those little holes there we are quite confident that's a male that's all we seem to have had so far is evidence for males one thing mick knows is that there should be loads even hundreds of burials at the foot of these consecrated walls which isn't that surprising given that blythe priory was lived in for 400 years before henry viii dissolved it he found them and we all kind of finished it and as susan and her family found out their remains can turn up in the most unexpected places we've got three different skulls have you got enough to know whether they might be male or female well this one here is definitely male because you've got this this new enormous nuclear crest sticking out here that's that's the bit right at the back of the skull here and that's where you get the big muscles of the neck attaching and in chaps they tend to be fairly strong because males tend to have much thicker heavier muscles anyway now whether that's that mandible goes with it or not i don't know but that again is a very masculine looking mandible we're quite broad across here it's quite flared at the back of the back of the mandible and it's fairly squared at the front which again looks like a masculine one whenever we've talked about a priory over the last couple of days you've said that it's an augustinian priority yeah what does that mean it's one of the religious groups in the middle ages it's a group that are following the rule of sunday augustine so they're monks no they're not actually they're cannons which means that they're they're priests they're able to carry out the sacraments but they're living in a community in a monastery unlike monks they go out into the community they mix with the local people amongst them into being closed and separated off so why were there so many around here what tends to happen is that in the 12th and 13th century in particular aristocratic families want to be sure that they won't spend time in purgatory or hell so they they like having their own group of priests they've found a monastery it's somewhere they could be buried in the sort of family mausoleum and so what's the cheapest way of doing that what's the cheapest insurance policy found a little augustinian group you know get buried in their churches and of course east anglia is the most densely populated part of medieval england you never think of that do you always think of norfolk and suffolk as being quite sparsely populated yeah you think of birmingham manchester city centers but in in the middle ages it was norfolk suffolk the whole east alien region so it's where you'd expect most of these early little monasteries to be i tell it it's really clean over in his new super trench feels busy looking for the east end of the church where the altar would have been and maybe even a royal shrine well there's a damn great older look look at it see looking at the era in i think there might be some sort of a feature here or something like that yeah phil can i come and have a look yeah wow you don't think that's just roots or something no i don't think it is because look here it's sandy here nice and clean sandy and gravelly and there's actually a bit of a line through here if you can see it but then you get here and it goes like a dirty brownie gray stuff with all these bits of chalk in so i don't think that's natural and this hole here is within that area that i don't think it's natural it's intriguing that can't put my hand in all the way yeah well what do you think i don't get bit there ain't nobody in there is it i don't know yet i don't know that's incredible yeah you don't want to go in about in there too much because if there's something in there that is undisturbed it's a sobering thought if phil's going to find a vault or shrine associated with king anna then this is the place that's very exciting there is one wonderful archaeological finds just a straightforward and there is some compelling evidence for a high status saxon site here a whalebone writing tablet was discovered in the priory garden 100 years ago and sam's got hold of a brilliant photographic replica [Music] what sort of date judging by this rather nice interlaced uh design seventh eighth century and it's what you would expect of a if we've got a royal burial it's a royal minister it's a major early christian center of authority a minster means what minster is an early uh an early monastery so and a center of learning a focus um an early spiritual power station is the current metaphor we're using and part of that of course would involve a school for teaching literacy so it's significant because in a way it's a bit like a laptop or something it is one student called it a phylo wax if only we could find something this classy in our trenches it would be the proof we need that our site was formerly a royal monastery unfortunately we're still stuck trying to find the 12th century cloister that's a nice bit of masonry there faye it is isn't it it's beautiful and shock horror it actually looks like we may have found it and it's sort of where mick thought it was all along well looking at the alignment of it it's it's sort of right angles to the church building over there isn't it yeah i mean i suppose you could argue that it is the cloister on the south side would also mean of course that this would be the cloister alley here i think probably ought to add a couple of meters on to that and see if you've got the other side okay sorry and it would seem that you fizz agrees yesterday we were looking at the rares yeah we said we didn't understand what was going on it didn't make sense no that's right can we ignore that for the moment okay and concentrate on jimmy's radar because it's giving a different picture right now this is phase trench you can see this wall line clearly ah yes the wall goes through to the join there well that looks much more like a big range on the side of the cloister doesn't it yeah and there's a shadow on the inside and that is the walkway and that matches up perfectly with the gap so that's the yeah the walking to the church isn't it that that's brilliant well that that that reinforces the idea that we should extend that gosh so occasionally i get something right at last it seems as if we're learning a little more about this extremely complex and frustrating site if this is a cloister there should be lots of human remains scattered around but if there aren't then we've stumbled upon something else entirely we're walking up to what i think is the kind of historic core of wise brother away from the madness of the trenches stewart and the historians have gone walkabout looking for the precinct or boundary of the augustinian priory i'm standing here effectively it's a crossroads we've got a lane going down there under those trees we've got the road disappearing down that direction and the church in the corner were effectively right at the core of the historic village from the crossroads stewart's now beginning to think that the original boundary around the priory reflected the importance of our site and it would have stretched well beyond nick and susan's garden but although the story of blyther is taking shape the archaeology is once again causing all sorts of headaches at the west end matt still hasn't found a wall big enough to hold up a church while at the east end phil's finding more holes and they don't look much like a saxon shrine there's another valley great void in there i wonder whether we ain't got just big burrows whether that end was creating our big hole down there this is more like watership down than time team and phil's probably got layers of demolition rubble to shift before he gets to any foundations whoever looted the stone from this old priory did a pretty thorough job [Applause] the charters tell us that in around about 1300 there was no infirmary there and with an infirmary you would have an infirmary orchard but although we're struggling with the archaeology we're still building up a fascinating picture of our priory we also have an inventory taken when the priory was dissolved and it mentions a number of buildings first of all we have the religious ones we've we've got the vestry mentioned we've got the choir we've got a chapel but then we get mentioned of the kitchen we get mentioned of the pantry we get mentioned of the hall we get mentioned the parlor these are the domestic activities of the priory and then we get mentioned by brewhouse now brewhouse will be really really fab because i would like to brew why are you so interested in brewing it's a bit of a family tradition my father makes wonderful things out of the fruits and stuff which grow in his garden and i would like to follow that so you could recreate the infirmary orchard and then you could recreate the brew house as well exactly wouldn't it that's all part of susan's grand plan sadly our grand plan is falling apart we've got so many trenches open and none of them are making a great deal of sense apart from our long trench on the north wall of the church side so that lines lines up pretty well we've confirmed the north wall of the norman church and the trench is producing a jumble of roof tile medieval window glass and the church floor but if there was an anglo-saxon monastery here you'd have thought we'd have also found some anglo-saxon stuff with a hole this deep unfortunately there's not a hint not a smidge so far at least there's progress at the east end where phil's uncovered big foundations as well as human remains yeah that's a bit of pelvis there there's a bit of rib there and then in here look now we've got whacking great leg bone i think yeah i mean it's not articulated it's just a jumble of bones but as far as we can see going on what you've got there we're straight outside the east wall of the abbey and you see what they've done they've gone through here and they've bumped into human bones straight away this is more like it although there's plenty to be done before we can tell conclusively that this was the east end of the church but we've lost the light so it's time to catch up with what on earth's been happening or in some cases to drown our sorrows it's been a really strange day today on the one hand we've got this fantastic church we've got medieval glass we've got those pointed windows we think we know where the cloisters are but on the other hand the archaeologists seem really uneasy we found two bodies but they say there should be a lot more we've got anglo-saxon pottery great news no they say they should be shed loads more what's going on what's the matter with them we'll find out tomorrow it's the beginning of day three here in blythe in suffolk where we're in a back garden that's totally dominated by the remains of a magnificent 12th century norman priory church but that's about all we can say in spite of spending two days peppering this site with something like 10 trenches considering we thought this would be an easy investigation we're completely bewildered morning matt for example matt's been in this trench since day one and he still hasn't found the great west wall of the church although he has uncovered a layer cake of mysterious floor levels and possibly evidence of an earlier building i mean if you look here can you see in the ground around here it looks like there's a burnt out post hole there and that's below this early floor layer oh wow that's very useful isn't it because that's i mean that's pre the church so we're presumably talking about something that's either anglo-saxon or even earlier than that yeah you need some fines don't you really this glimpse of a potential anglo-saxon building could be the breakthrough we've been praying for we suspect that the shrine of anna the heroic anglo-saxon king of east anglia could be under our priory church but we've been so busy sorting out the norman ruins that we've not had a chance to probe any further but for once we're in luck as some evidence is now beginning to emerge these bones here are sat in this light sandy colored material right at the base of here on which this wall appears to stand which means these bones are potentially earlier than the construction of the primary itself because they're under the rubble platform which was used to construct the priority exactly what strikes me as interesting about this is that last night the archaeologists were getting really grim faced and saying oh we don't think this could have been the site of the original minster church associated with king anna because we haven't got enough bodies we haven't got enough skulls if you're finding anglo-saxons skulls here the minster's back in the frame isn't it it certainly is well that's a turn up for the books as it would certainly seem that this site was viewed as holy ground before the norman priory was built but the priory continues to baffle us yesterday we were confident we'd found the eastern range of the cloister this morning it's a bit more confusing as we can still only find one wall of it when we'd expect to find at least two we're going to put another trench in not another one but mick's not daunted and he's now searching for the cloisters southern range when you talk about ranges i know this is a different priory but you get the church there like that don't you there's the cloister and you have these these are the ranges aren't they all around it like that that's right so where's that in our let me ruin and let me draw you at a drawing look we know we're pretty sure we've got the east range which feign put a trench cross we're fairly happy about that and what we're actually looking for is the south range in that position there what would have happened inside that range well this is an important building and really quite a big building because it's where the refectory the dining hall is so it's a big building rather like the church on the other side of the cloister i'll bow to mix much greater experience and instinct on this but he's got his work cut out if he's to prove his theory by the end of the day started off with a big church with an aisle and it's not the only problem that needs solving in the next few hours we're still trying to work out the size of the priory church for a start there's the width of the building and whether this massive column is the corner of the crossing or an internal pillar supporting an isle outside the nave but this little lump of stone at the foot of the imposing stack of rubble might hold the answer it looks like dressed stone and if it matches the posh pillar on the other side we should be able to get an answer meanwhile we're still trying to lock down the east end of the church and while phil ponders what he has in his trench john's found some surprising results even further out look if the radar results are right then this is the east end of the church and what i've sprayed on the ground is the middle of the wall right which comes down here and then turns and goes back this church is potentially massive a much longer east end than we expected so you mean that this side of the crossing that effectively the chancel if it was a parish church is the same length same size with sand length as the nave the other side of the crossing i think that's all right because it's a it's a monastic church and this end is the most important as long as it's no big deal but is it the priory church or the anglo-saxon church i'm not sure if helen and john have got the same target in mind since we arrived helen's always been convinced that king anna's here somewhere yeah so what would we like you to get here well we're going to have the east wall the altar and between the altar and the east wall is the classic place for shrines so if we have king anna here in the 12th century no no because he could have been bear with me if we if we have king anna here in the 12th century he's likely to be here through the whole of the medieval period so this is the place that he's most likely to be look i'm going to be happy if we get the east wall the church back inside the church kerry's cleaned up the foot of the pillar and it confirms this was an internal column proving bob's theory that the priory church had an isle outside the nave a couple of days ago you said that they couldn't be columns because they'd be the size of chuuksbury abbey or something monstrously enormous it's big it's a special building it really is it must be the best bit of 13th century in the region fantastic well that's good news unfortunately it doesn't help us with the east end where phil's resorted to extending his trench outwards to find it while john starts moving in but not everyone's convinced that john's new trench is in the right place all i'm saying is that if we're on the central axis i wouldn't expect the central chapel to be any wider than that this is our last chance to pin down the east end and there's less than four hours to go [Music] at least stewart's detective work has paid off we can now see how much land king henry the first gave the augustinians to found the priory i've tried to get outside it to try and understand the precinct and there was rather more to it than the ruins in nick and susan's back garden we've in fact only got a relatively small part of the site which is protected at the moment pretty much just the core and we're trying to really work out what the special archaeological interest of of society well if i overlay my little colored drawing over the top of the the modern layout of the village from the old roads and boundaries we can see how the priory site dominated the village and didn't include the parish church which came later there's the church in the village and that's where the priorities are two separate sites the pattern of roads all focusing on the church over here but the roads actually going round the edge of this big space with the river forming one side i mean to me that's almost sort of classic precinct definition anyway so what we've got in effect is a precinct which is all that area in there that's fantastic the augustinians clearly had a large and powerful establishment here in blytheborough and stuart suspects it could be situated on an earlier royal minster and we've now found signs of earlier possibly saxon occupation in both jackies and matt's trenches in fact matt's got proof of several earlier buildings on this site well just behind me there i've got a glazed tile which is identical to the one we've got next to that wall so i know i've got that floor level yeah but behind me in the victorian cut we've got the same level and below that i've got an earlier floor really substantial and below that an early post hole as well so i've got stuff going down pretty deep so the post hole is sealed by two floor levels yes all right this structure could potentially be the earliest settlement on the site and with the stretch of the imagination even the place where king anna might have been brought after his death on the marshes [Music] sadly john's hopes of finding the east end of the church seem to be fading what are these just natural lumps of chalk yeah i think it's potentially the uh the underlying mother rock solid challenger yep yep much of the team thinks this is natural material but john's not giving up i ain't gonna fall in yeah you've got a spade there yeah and it would seem that his determination may have paid off pull it up i'll be eating my words that has to be dressed stone doesn't it i don't know what is it it depends on in glacial terms you get striations too flat planes occur how many archaeologists does it take to look at a piece of stone they look very much like axe marks to me there and they they're crossing yeah you've got them running at diagonals i think john's won this one well a result i'd say but a bit more of this foundation stone would strengthen john's case for an east end here but over in phase trench on the potential southern cloister there's a corner of a building and plenty of pottery and this also well it all looks fairly sort of typical high medieval it looks like grimstone where they're making up in norfolk near king's lane um that's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to see used on the tables nice green glaze nice sort of decoration on it i mean yeah that fits perfectly could this be evidence of the refectory or dining room mick suspected was here you know usage more refractive well probably not one pot doesn't make a refectory yes there was a building here but not the one we're looking for if it had been part of the cloister range there would have been hundreds even thousands of bodies laid to rest around here so after three days of searching mick has conceded that the cloister must have been on the north side it's most likely to be either roman or saxon and after a huge amount of work john's mission to find the east end of the church has come to nothing we couldn't recover enough material to be sure it was from the priory church or for that matter the earlier saxon church it's an unusual stone type it's not the same stone that we've got in the priory but without digging here we wouldn't have found this large well-preserved male skeleton it was buried with this amazing broach which dates the body to the late 13th century when the priory was probably at its zenith at the height of its power the priory must have been an awe-inspiring place a wealthy royal foundation and a focal point for pilgrims for hundreds of years but by the time the monasteries were dissolved in the 16th century it had already fallen into disrepair it's a rather sad story in the kitchen broken pots you come into the pantry a plain old tablecloth there's no evidence of great wealth there you come down they had one horse and an old broken cart oh my god it's a very sad picture you get for the priory in its last days do you mean yeah is there any sign of that the western wall yet it doesn't look like it this water floor just keeps carrying on and on this way there's a similar downbeat ending for matt's search for the great west end of the church although he must have been very close we now suspect the wall has very probably been chopped away by later landscaping we have to follow that and then i guess when the floor runs out when the floor finishes it must be where the wall is but phil has saved the day and time team can live to dig another trench this is where the huge east window was and who knows the shrine of anna the first christian king of east anglia well i haven't got the east walnut but i know where it was i mean you can see here look look how the level of the sand drops really really rapidly down here like this and all this is actually filled up with demolition rubble the amazing thing is it's actually on this fence line it's it's actually respecting the property on an old property boundary absolutely and i'll tell you something else about it too this is a posh end of the church look at these beautiful pieces of work this is posh flint work for the real expensive part of the church and that is what you'd expect at the east end that's very good like the prison parish church [Music] and there was more good news really good news radiocarbon analysis suggests the burials in phil's trench date to 9 30 a.d that means this man was buried 200 years before henry the first priory was built on top of him and in jackie's trench at the foot of the church the bones date much further back to the mid 7th century that's around the time that king anna was killed so we can safely say that we've looked the saxons in the face it looks as if their church was here on this site even though it could have been destroyed in later viking raids as for the whereabouts of king anna's tomb that still remains a mystery so even after this hugely frustrating dig with all its puzzles and dead ends we can show nick and susan that an impressive augustinian church ran across more than the full width of their garden with a great tower held up by pillars towards the east end and a cloister to the north nick you've been glued to this for ages now i haven't yet i bet when we came here you never thought you'd see all this no no it's been mind-blowing mind-blowing because at the first time i didn't realize just how big the church was i just had no concept whatsoever you didn't even really know you got a church well i didn't i had no idea whatsoever it doesn't bother you that we found all these skeletons no no i've got a sneaking suspicion susan absolutely adores it she does that [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 213,985

Rating: 4.9222169 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, Blythburgh, Suffolk, Saxon Kings, Anglo Saxon History, Sam Newton

Id: vgRPeJWfjJk

Length: 47min 23sec (2843 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021