Tony Robinson and Suzannah Lipscombe Investigate An Old Tudor Mansion | Time Team | Timeline

[Music] on the 8th of May 1773 a butler broke into his master's wine cellar while his boss was abroad in order to steal his finest claret [Music] rumor has it that he was so sloshed he not only set the cellar ablaze but also set fire to his boss's entire home which had stood since Tudor times we've come to magnificent Henan Park near South World in Suffolk with its beautiful parkland well-stocked lake and ancient trees but thanks to the fire no trace of that Tudor mansion the butler fled the scene and was never heard of again but the house which he supposedly burned down is still under here somewhere in its time was it one of the finest Tudor homes in England that's what we're here to find out posh Italian marble oh and we've got three days to do it [Music] [Music] henan Park might be a sedate country estate today but this important site boasts an illustrious dramatic past for more than 500 years it's been owned by the well-connected aristocratic rouse family the Tudor house is long gone but the rouses are still here the latest in the rouse dynasty is Hector and he's not quite what you'd expect of an English country gent how come you've got an Australian accent in another posh English one you know my father was a bit of a wheeler dealer a bit of a wild card he was expelled from Harry when he was 15 he went out to Australia to get some sunshine I think and and it was the land of opportunity then so you know I was born out there he inherited the property in the 80s and you know eight years ago he sent me back to try and fix it swapping a career in banking for one in estate management Hector's the third oldest son and runs the estate on behalf of his baronet father he's transformed Hennings dwindling fortunes by opening it up fathers to enjoy it's a premier league venue for events and festivals like latitude now in its seventh year and a roaring success [Music] but for the next three days we'll be going back to a more gentle period in honam's history Hector will be putting his impresario role on hold to help us delve into the lives of his pommy ancestors he wants to discover what if anything might be left of Hennings Tudor mansion getting to grips with the estate is site director Francis Pryor and time teams Phil Harding who's armed with the earliest known map of Henan and a large estate plan fantastic 3d map this isn't it presumably this is the whole estate it is turn it's huge they're three and a half thousand acres but the center of the whole estate is here ah that's the Tudor house yeah yes that's right which has been blown up I mean it's a huge house I mean it's almost a palace in fact and you look at the detail in the map you look at this whacking great gatehouse and presumably these are the main residential areas it is an entire record of a Tudor stately home which has been burned to a cinder it doesn't matter we could still get some seriously good archaeology in the ground showing what these foundations want that building once looked like this $16.99 map is a big clue as to the layout of Hennings Tudor house before it was burned to the ground it had four blocks of rooms known as ranges built around a central courtyard the Front Range seems the most ornate so that's what we're after first all hinges on time teams intrepid geophys team locating it beneath the ground and there should be no excuse for missing it because John's got a brand new gadget it's the latest in Swedish radar technology and he can't wait to show off to anyone who's prepared to listen basically it's replacing Jimmy really in the past he used to walk up and down with the car that's right with this system we've got eight antenna on the back of the vehicle so it's eight times as efficient and we can go much more quickly it's collecting more data and it gives a far better picture of what's below the ground Jim is every move is tracked by surveillance which tells his on-board computer exactly where he is and enables him to instantly build up a picture of what's under the ground and no doubt John will be taking the credit for whatever it finds that's exploring but I didn't believe the results are going to be so clear I mean that is absolutely stunning how deep are we there and just over a meter they at one point to so we're saying that's the wall of the Tudor building yeah that's the gatehouse there and then the wall continuing you don't need to dig it Francis it really is of course we need to dig this is time team that last Phil's got the green light so he's putting in a trench over what we think is the two-dimensions gatehouse are we gonna go for it dad come on geophysicist acknowledge e has come up trumps as soon as the JCB starts to dig up pops a tudor brick Wow [Music] and then another and one of them looks a tad charred - Blackburn is that the great the great lawyer evidence they're off Bradshaw and Matt are opening a second trench a few meters east of Phil's it's where Jeff is believe the Tudor houses corner tower should be and if they can find it we'll be able to accurately piece together the width of the Tudor building for the first time but apart from scale we want to get a handle on how grand the building once was historian Susie Lipscomb has been doing some digging around herself and has unearthed a late 17th century illustration of the house and this is the real treat we found this in the British Library and I don't think you've seen this before this is a picture of what cannon Hall actually looked like as a Tudor mansion Wow look at this thing amazing isn't it gorgeous staying I definitely haven't seen this before incredible and it gives us what they might find so what do you think we'll be able to get out you know is that we're talking turrets and you know what what parts of the building do you think they'll be able to identify well we can see how magnificent it was we can see these four turrets we can see there's three stories but what they'll probably find I mean look we've got stonework here on stone pointing on the edge of the brick turrets we've got leaded glass which would have blown out in the fire so there might be bits of it there we've got tiles here so they might find some tiles from the roof and look at this ornate door this looks like a frieze of some sort so maybe we'll find some terracotta details within that be wonderful and fantastic hanam Hall was a sumptuous Palace built by one of the most important men in Tudor England Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk not only was he Henry the eighth's best friend he was also married to Henry's sister Mary Tudor former Queen of France Charles and Mary were lovers during her marriage to Louis the 12th when he died in 1515 the pair married in secret normally this would have been seen as treason but thanks to the family connection Henry the eighth's imposed a fine instead of lopping off their heads Henin was sold to the up-and-coming rouse family in 1545 and for the next 250 years it stood as a proud expression of power and influence until its fiery demise luckily it seems that the bottners handiwork hasn't completely obliterated the house back at fills gatehouse trench Tudor material is bursting out of the ground by the minute and John's basking in the glory of his fancy new gadgetry we saw it two hours ago oh please don't spare me the details spare me the details we keep telling you there's no need to dig any more this brickwork clearly indicates a big structure but Phil isn't prepared to give gia fears all the credit especially when there well Jeff is all it tells us at the moment is that what you saw on the geophysics is here what it doesn't say is we are looking at you to Palace the gates to me would have a hell of a deep foundation and I don't know whether yet this is deep and about Oh deep do trace these foundations to well I think they go down to about one metre 60 yeah see I don't know whether that's enough but we've we night might not see the bottom in the radar good old radar it's got all the answers except in the questions you want answers to but while Phil's not yet certain he's got a substantial gatehouse in his trench that rat chars corner tower trench they seem to be bang on the money Hey [Applause] Oh Francis I just heard oh wow look at that it's amazing what have you come what it is we've suddenly come up with this terracotta look at that lovely fine well I think it goes like that cuz there's moulding here which is very similar to it coming through just here oh yes yes I think that yes that goes like that well I think we know what period that came from there well I think so yes it looks very CUDA there's no doubting this is a spectacular find but there's not enough foundation structure exposed in raksha's trench to confirm whether this window piece is from a caller tower or a different bit of the building we're clearly in the right area for a Tudor house but until we identify which bit of it we have in each trench it's impossible to fathom the size and scale of this mansion as the day progresses more and more tantalizing terra cotta comes out of rakshasas trench and there's no holding back Hector after all it's been nearly 250 years since a roust last looked at this stuff I think so that look at that there's your heritage thank you very very kind I didn't give it to you that's from your ancestors Francis what does all this say well it's really classy stuff as you'd expect I mean look at this and there you see look you've got the Tudor Rose so you know it's actually a symbol of loyalty and royalty great stuff and it's just the end of day one my dude the bad news is that this trench here where we've been beavering away all day we still can't make head nor tail of it it's total confusion because Phil's not at all convinced that we do have the gatehouse here after all there's a lot more work to do to prove it either way but as we head for home puzzling over which section of Hector's ancestral pile we've got in the ground we can only hope our new SuperDuper GF is machine can shed some light on the story tomorrow [Music] you you beginning of day two here at Henan Park in Suffolk where we're hoping to find evidence of one of the finest Tudor houses ever built yesterday we put in a trench here and another one over here but quite frankly they were pretty confusing and didn't tell us very much about the layout of the house although last night John you printed out some deer furs didn't you which I think it's very excited it was pretty good but if we step back to yesterday we put this trench in because we thought we might be at the main gateway into the house we expanded the survey and I mean basically we've got this pattern of wall lines this is the inner courtyard and what we suddenly realized is we're not the central gateway we're actually at this corner Tower and so Phil is excavating that corner Tower there yeah so where do you think the main entrance is well the main entrance is actually going to be here so we've got to do a bit more and I mean you then want to put a trench in I do yes and the spoil heaps in the way so we've put the spoiler deep across the entrance to the entire building over the main so the bad news is because we started digging without the full GFS picture we've spent a whole day looking for the Tudor gatehouse in the wrong place Jeff is now think the whole house is six meters further east that means rat chars trench isn't part of the house at all that could be a ditch where demolition rubble was dumped extraordinarily we now think Phil's trench is the corner Tower which puts the gatehouse under the spoil heap pan Tracey's been charged with finding it [Music] but this is on the alignment of the wall where Phil was okay but I'm hoping we're going to come down here on the central gateway okay fingers crossed the GF is right this time their results a key to cracking the mystery of the Tudor houses sighs and grand whatever it's like one thing's for sure it would have be more imposing than the current rouse residence where Hector's showing Susie a priceless heirloom an 18th century scroll showing the rouse family tree this is one of the best historical artifacts we've got there's pedigree wrong Wow how far back does it go in legend has it that we can trace it back to the Norman Conquest so what we're looking for is the person who actually bought henan Hall ah here we go Sir Anthony rouse bought henan Hall in Suffolk in 1545 and married Agnes so what about the guy who was around when it was burnt to the ground I'm running out of tables is this it this is him isn't it Sir John rouse baronet only son heir Meredith's 1788 and the house burned down in 1773 oh that's him mr. Biswas we caught him so this is a period we're interested in stretching from this guy to a way to this guy people were living here in that wonderful Tudor mansion that we're hoping to find here at Henin Hall the scroll reinforces the importance of this family who for centuries rubbed shoulders with royalty commanded troops against Napoleon and even had islands in Australia named after them and to find out if we've uncovered any more of their pad in our trenches I've hitched a ride over to Phil's trench with our very own hairless biker pottery expert Paul blinken when I left fill in this trace yesterday it was like a labyrinth of archeology and you were pretty confused when you you still confused now not at all absolutely 100 percent clear what's going on it is the corner tower of the Tudor mansion I mean actually if you look at it on the drawing you can see exactly what's going on here is the foundation of this tower now that wall there is the front wall of the building so this is the long main wall of the whole building absolutely if I wanted to get into the tower I'd go in through there somewhere that's it absolutely Tony it is it is very very clear what about fines ah well crucially in the bottom of the foundation trench we got that yeah well that is a piece of I suppose what we call in the trade like Essex red where it's a 15th 16th century and unless I'm very much mistaken it's either a mug or a drinking jug which is the sort thing you'd expect to see you've got people building for doing hot heavy work they're drinking lots trust field to stumble across the first connection with beer drinking on the site but it's an important find slap bang in the middle of the Tudor period the question of what this estate might have looked like when they were knocking back the real ale is something landscape archaeologist Stewart Ainsworth and time team surveyor Emma wood are grappling with they're overlaying aerial photos onto the 1699 map to see if they can identify anything Tudor in the modern landscape and Stewart looks like he spotted something wasting no time he's grabbed hectare for a jaunt through hennas 3,500 acres in search of a driveway that shows up on the historic map and in the modern photographs today only part of the tracks visible Stewart wants to find the rest of it and the entrance to the driveway you see we're in this big wide hollow here it's about ten meters wide yes you can see the profile down the side going back at that side hater this isn't this isn't a wide ditch this is the the old brother sir Road would be in here in the medieval period it's a classic medieval sunken hollow way it sort of warned of a hundreds and hundreds of years and you wouldn't see the house at all over that completely hidden and past the idea of how these landscapes work is that when you arrive at the house right it's a it's a reveal you know it's unleashing itself on you visually so you're not intended to see it until you get quite close to it and what this map shows the 1699 one is that the root is dead straight and it's got like an avenue line of trees one side double line of trees on the other side I was looking at that very large oak through there yes I think that could be one of these Avenue trees down here this discovery paints a vivid picture of Tudor Henin 500 years ago visitors would have approached the house along this magnificent Avenue of fine English Oaks [Music] and that Avenue would have led straight to Tracy's trench if she's found the main gate house in it yes why do you say that give me proof once we had a chance that she cleaned down the trench and trowel it off you can see behind you there this substantial area brickwork here setting to sand the atutor bricks the shape of the structure looks right so we're definitely in the gatehouse there's no doubt where this is the pseudo gatehouse which is really exciting so well is the gatehouse what you would be coming through in the middle here pretty much just for your city and some fines Danny yeah we've got a really nice little copper farthing of Charles the second and so that dates between 1660 to 16 X 5 so that's when the Tudor house was still there before it burned down that's right yeah yeah and we this is just come up this lovely little it's very fragile-looking banked so this is come from probably something like a casket or one of those big books that you see that are bound very nicely and you can see there's four little rivets here and then right in the center is a keyhole work they probably would've locked the book or the casket so it's a really nice object what about the tree this is really cool so you've got base here and you can just see the finger marks the finger imprints of the pot of it made it and this is a bit of beer jug that dates from the 1516 century so we've got drinking going on on-site Tracey's discovery of the gatehouse is a significant breakthrough because we know that Phil's trench has a corner Tower in it we can now work out the entire width of the Tudor house very high-quality standing buildings expert Richard K Morris has been doing some calculations how big is it it's about 40 meters square so if an Olympic runner was running past you but only taken four seconds yeah it's not huge it's not massive so it's not up there with the Audley and the champion course but it's got a very similar design motif and quality of construction to that what was its function I think it was more it wasn't the main house of the the Duke of Suffolk it was more of a secondary home for the weekend retreat but it was a house that was built for a queen of France after all if it's not as big as somewhere like Hampton Court does it look similar it looks similar to parts of Hampton Court but it looks similar also to houses of kind of high aristocratic style in East Anglia like this one this is ox pura so it's got similar thing here central gate house big tall brick and long ranges either side of it in courtyards we now know the house was 40 meters wide smaller than we'd imagined from the illustrations but we still don't know its depth and we need more evidence of real splendour even so this was no country cottage it was a holiday home fit for a queen but mere metres away from our main dig is a massive piece of building we'd all been ignoring for a day and a half but it's finally come to Francis's attention oh there was a Georgian mansion okay it was the successor to the Tudor house he was torn down in the 1950s actually demolished so we know it was there and there are photographs of it so John is geophys dead haven't it we've done magnetics over it yeah and I think we've pretty confident where it is we can see five rooms at the front of the mansion so we had one grand building now looks like we've got to have we bitten off more than we can chew well these two don't seem to think so but then they felt that before they're not always right you afternoon day two at Henan Park in Suffolk where we're steadily piecing together a forgotten Tudor mansion while Phil and Tracy crack on with the all-night front of the building francis has deployed John on a renegade mission the Georgian building when the tudor pile burnt down the rouse is replaced it with a great Georgian mansion and John's rediscovering where it once stood although to be fair he did have a working great clue staring him in the face built in 1785 by Sir John rouse it echoed the classical fashions of the age with its ionic scrolled columns and pastoral friezes people were living in here for 200 years and we've actually got this picture this is from the 1880s of this extraordinary staff that were here I mean look at this it's just wonderful chaps with their little partings here and I love this bloke here I want these lamb chops they look fantastic and these women have tiny little waist look at those horses after the Second World War it became increasingly difficult to maintain a House and staff of this size and Hector's great-uncle demolished it heartbreaking but that's not the end of the story either because you're about to build in the same area pretty much here we've got permission for a hotel and apartment building so we could share the park and share the property in do keep an eye on your staff though you don't want someone coming down in the middle of the night a bit tiddly looking for some booze and you just start the whole horrible cycle all over again smoke alarms and locks on the cellar perfect because geophysicist plotted such a clear picture Francis believes there's no need to excavate the Georgian house he wants to focus on Tudor trenches including a new one but time teams Rob hedges digging it's quite substantial isn't it that is a solid piece of masonry the trench was opened over some exposed garden wall that Francis thought might hide Tudor remains but while Tudor bricks and mortar are eluding us there are definite clues the Tudors were here fantastic that's brilliant a silver hammered coin hammer I think it was hammered they made it like that stamps it's beautifully thin isn't it and I can see on the back of it there's what we call a square topped shield so that's Elizabethan okay just the top actually if you look there just at the top of that shield you can see the date 1575 it's yet another find that ties in with Hennings Tudor heyday but the rouses spent a bit more than a pretty penny on Henin Hall back at the incident room Susie's uncovered a 17th century inventory the paints a vivid picture of a lavish lifestyle and it describes all the rooms that were here there were 45 rooms so we've got the hall and we've got the parlor we've got the great dining chamber the gallery and on it goes and what's best about this is it tells us amazing detail of the inside of what was actually there so for example in the hall we've got a hawk perk I'm sorry they had a hawk in the dining room it just shows how into hunting they were extraordinary and also we've got things that show their great wealth so we've got chairs that are covered with velvet and embroidered and also down here we've got feather beds with covers of silk so this is really sumptuous and we also know they enjoyed themselves because here we've got playing tables and we've got descriptions of them keeping instruments here so two violins and an oar fearian which is a type of instrument so they're so they're making music so there's there's gambling there's hunting this Hawking and there's music making so this is a place to have a lot of fun few of the rouses possessions survived the Tudor houses fire the records tell of one treasured family heirloom being grabbed from the burning house a wassail Bowl and dipping cup used to celebrate special rouse family occasions unfortunately it's since vanished so time team is Matt Williams has volunteered to try his hand at some wild whittling so we can leave Hector with a brand new dipping Cup so what we've got here then is this one of the wassail bowls this is a modern copy of a wassail Bowl and certainly in Tudor times they would be using the bowl like that set at the top of the table so the lord of the manor can keep an eye on it and then the hoi polloi would be drinking out of a little cup like this right and that is what I'm going to attempt to turn here by all means so keeps you fit feet on the treadle here I'm sure you're aware you only turn on the downstroke right okay that's just about where the stem of the goblet is going so you know you take off as much material there as you want I'll tell you what I'll take it because I know you're on three days in time team but this has to be finished by the end anyway they're carving the cup from Sycamore using a traditional pole lathe for skilled expert it takes less than an hour to transform rough log into smooth cup raksasa Danny raksha's trench is uncovering a ditch stuffed with Tudor demolition rubble but among the broken bricks she's also getting hints of the sophistication of Henin's previous occupants we've got this which i think is a book CASP Wow this tiny scrap of metal is actually a strap end that would have fitted onto the end of a thin leather belt for strength and decoration made from two flat pieces of copper alloy the strap end has tiny V shapes hammered into it tarnished after years in the ground originally it would have been eye-catching these shiny this everyday object could have been worn by a man or a woman do we have a semi-date well I'll see if I can find any parallels for it to dating more closely but I would have a guess it being probably about fourteen fifties no that's amazing this isn't just another pretty find this one small piece of metal predates the Tudor house and it's not alone in Tracy's gatehouse trench she's finding pottery that's definitely not Tudor it's lured over Francis and got Paul our pottery experts positively ruling very well thank you what's up it's a piece of a such a long story show it's but if that would work it's very typical of the big storage shells they used in the late Saxon paid and they crept into the early medieval periods this is I know are we getting more yeah we've got this nice little collection of pottery nice bit of a 13th century glaze Jurgen varies a bowl of about the same date with glaze on the inside and a nice early medieval jar rim so sort of late 11th to 13th century and it's consistent we're getting this in all the trenches now at this end there's people living here in the light level to 13th the must be that's fantastic news I'll be getting anything else what we do have that's come out of this trench which is medieval is that half of a little bell you can see there the hanging loop on the top now you continue imagine that as a complete circle with a little ball bearing or something like that inside maybe to make as noise I mean that is lovely and I've not seen another one I mean that's really nice there yeah and it's about the same day as the pottery but this huge background scattered right across society mmm and we've got several dozen sheds of this now I mean yeah you can't argue with that and there was a substantial early medieval presence here that's completely unexpected I really wasn't expecting that and well honest I'm over the moon he might be over the moon but these points mean Francis now has to rethink his entire strategy there a surprising new clue that these trenches aren't just hiding a big Tudor house but possibly something just as substantial and much much earlier but this brand-new evidence has emerged with just one day left to go Matt for one has much more pressing things on his mind back in the walled garden his wassail cup is as a critical stage it's almost ready for drinking but as you know the original washout Bowl which is no loss of the ruse family had an inscription which we do have a latin copy there and the tall as you can see is pretty hot you've had to go everything else would you like to have a go at this in Tudor times engraving would have been done using a red hot wire heated in a charcoal burner and hung there at the end of day two the team of all very reluctantly down tools for a hard-earned tipple with no pub around Hector's improvising with his own alfresco tavern and is open for business and thanks to Matt we've also got something to drink out of we're christening his work of art Tudor style - The Sound of Music the rouse family would have heard when they first bought this house nearly 500 years ago Phil if you could be master of ceremonies and do the honors please absolute great honour I will with my great pleasure dip it in and of course we've still got the copy of the original Latin inscription or not much of a good of a Latin inscription man no but basically a summary of it says my bowl is so clean my liquor so pure joyful ye be but none of your jaw [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the tutor building in this park we've got a Georgian one as well but there was a third building which we hope to find which might be much earlier and it's that bad you beginning of day three here ahead and park in Suffolk where we're looking for the family seat or should I say the family seats of the rouse family but we've only got one day left it's already nine o'clock and for some reason I can't quite fathom Francis has just put in a trench here around the back of the Tudor mansion why I don't understand this is because I thought you said that once we decorated that Tudor range we would have learnt all we needed to know about the tudor buildings no you'll know most of what we need to know about that range the thing is there are four ranges okay now when you look at the bird's eye view map you can see was this range of buildings here doesn't look like the rest of it and what I think you've got here if you look at it very closely is the remains of a medieval horn so the medieval people might have built this bit and then the Tudors came along and tacked on the other three sides to make it look like a modern building absolutely that did happen elsewhere so it wouldn't be unique finds from our other trenches proved there were people living here in the medieval period Francis thinks the back range of the house might be a much earlier medieval structure that was later absorbed into the Tudor mansion and that's what Phil's looking for in his new trench if he can find it we'll be pushing back the history of this site by several hundred years almost immediately they're onto something that drags us right back to that bingeing bonfire causing Butler seriously like a mug more evidence of the fire but worryingly we don't know if that inferno has obliterated all trace of medieval foundations Phil's got some serious digging to get on with but over in rakshasas trench alongside the front of the Tudor house she's got more than a hint of Henin's medieval past digging deeper she's found a series of ancient ditches one run straight through the Tudor house so must predate it she's called in reinforcements in the shape of landscape archaeologist Stuart we seem to have come across this monster coming all the way through here and we haven't even got the other side yet and for what you're saying this is a big wide ditch it's opened over a long period of time lots of material being dumped in it over a long period of time I mean I mean it cries out monster to you it cries out moat to me a big wide possibly wet ditch which would define an enclosure around a medieval Hall this could be it you up your monster could be a very very important monster I'll leave you with a moat or monster it's certainly got Stuart's imagination running riot he's got a hunch that these ditches might just be the remains of a moat that would have encircled a medieval house he just needs to prove it but time waits for no man not even Phil Harding he's only got a few hours left to uncover solid medieval remains so this is the trench that we put in to try and ascertain whether or not there was a medieval version isn't it have we done on that at the moment is impossible to say Tony I mean what we do have is masses and masses of demolition but whether it's a demolition of a medieval building or a Tudor building I really can't say so how would you describe what we've got here then I describe it as a cellar now that we've actually got it all stripped back you can see upon the step there you can see that Browns oily stuff right against the edge of the trench that is the natural soil level you can see down there it is nothing else but brickwork and it is demolition rubble we still haven't got to the bottom of it that is a massive Oh a massive hole in a building is a cellar point ah well it's an absolute storehouse of of finds which actually tell us so much about what was going on in this building posh Italian marble world and that is that's not usual your average sort of kitchen chopping board I'll tell you that is an internal fixture and fitting that is seriously posh but these are our star finds some pretty heavy fine they are absolutely this is all molten load oh yeah molten lead that has seriously been fire effective and if you really want an indication of just how intense this fire was look at a window glass you don't need some heat to bend it like that wouldn't that he's buckled and twisted window glass it is quite incredible this is so great I don't remember the last time there was a time team where I told a historic story at the beginning of an episode and by the end we found the location where that happened well we can't prove it a hundred percent but the story was about a butler in a cellar that caught fire and here's the cellar and it caught fire the two defines are fantastic but with the clock ticking down there's still no sign of our elusive medieval hole in the trench but driven by the discovery of early pottery and the historic map Francis isn't giving up just yet he's convinced a big medieval building was once here so Stuart needs to find a moat that would have once surrounded it what a level girl the level is sixty two point four eight seven the ditch contains a layer of silt that proves there was once water here he and Emma and measuring its level they tracked the moat across the park this water level here and finding wet stuff is surely a good omen if the water level here matches the silt in raksha's trench then it's possible they were once part of one connecting moat system but they're not the only medieval search party on site our historic standing buildings expert Richard has gone back to the mat and thinks he can at least imagine the layout of the medieval Hall if we get a bird's-eye view well essentially you've got one long single story building under a huge roof and we're at the low end of it we're above the the buttery and the pantry end of the building what happened in the pantry and battery so that's for the storage of food so they may have been preparing food there as well but the fact that they're storing food means that they're very wealthy that they can afford to do that and have the space to do that then what happens here beyond that you've got a screens passage that's your entrance into the hall from a porch and that divides that the service end if you like at the low end of the hall from the Great Hall itself which should be one massive debate open to the roof with the family at the far end what happened in the in the Great Hall the Great Hall was really the heart of the medieval manor house so it's where everything went on so everybody was in there they were eating they were sleeping so you have to imagine the floor covered with rushes strewn with grass and basically that's where people would have slept and in the time up until the 13th century the Lord and Lady are actually there as well sleeping amongst everyone else all great stuff but so far nobody's got hard evidence of a medieval house here in henan Francis's last hopes hinge on Stuart and his quest for a moat and what we found was that a leveling bottom of rachel's trench exactly matches the level within that much of the current water level here so engineering-wise no problem having a moat on that site under that well I think that makes of sense because a house like henna would have almost been obliged to have hadn't made you know everybody had them they were a symbol of power authority and and there are thousands in East Anglia thousands of motive sites so yes I'm sure there must have been one this feature here might be the biggest single remnant of that medieval landscape that we can we can still see on the surface it's been there from the date of this map still here today well that's good enough for me one medieval mote means that somewhere in Phil's trench there was once a medieval Hall and it's very likely that it was largely wooden which explains why the fire annihilated all trace of it but Phil's trench has been a triumph it contains enough fines to prove that this was where the bat range once stood which means we can finally work out the entire dimensions of the whole Tudor house at the center of the front elevation we unearth the foundations of two brick towers which study the side of an elegant gateway we've dug up its finest terracotta LED and glass from its many windows we also discovered one of its two corner towers built to enhance its imposing nobility although it was smaller than we originally envisaged and not one of Tudor England finest it was no humble abode but one built with style and pizzazz by Charles Brandon Henry the eighth's best friend I think it's been a terrific success Tony I mean just for a start we've shoved the history of this place back a thousand years I mean it quite extraordinary what we've revealed if anything about it I'm staggered by what you guys have done in only three short days it's absolutely amazing you know to get this history about 480 years of my own family had a real colour you know for myself so I'm very impressed thank you very much in an enormous park like this has got to be quite a good result to find two is very good to find three it's got to be an absolute triumph isn't it and I know that it's made one Australian born landowner with building plans of his own very happy and maybe in five hundred or so years time when another troop of archaeologists comes here they will be able to excavate not just a Tudor mansion not just a Georgian one and a medieval one but the remains of Hector's house [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 239,284

Rating: 4.9183893 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history

Id: JSPhf1etz7g

Length: 46min 46sec (2806 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020