The 5,000 Year Old Road To A Lost Roman Battle Site | Ancient Tracks | Odyssey

[Music] britain is crisscrossed by an amazing network of ancient trackways these remarkable routes are our oldest roads and have been traveled for more than 5 000 an years place walked by pilgrims and traders hunters and invaders celts romans saxons and vikings each track is bound up in myth mystery and legend this is it it's quite a strange looking monument [Music] but what's the truth behind all these megaliths and burial sites and lay lines and hidden caves along these pathways and why were there mystic origins such an attraction for later generations i'm going to explore these tracks to connect the clues they've left hidden in the british landscape isn't this just about the best cave you've ever seen wow her name is majesty what other name could she have [Music] this week i'm in kent to explore the north downs way once trodden by caesar's armies and medieval pilgrims i want to know what this journey can tell me about the history and legend of ancient britain through the secret monuments and sacred places along its track these are the paths our ancestors would have followed the ancient trackways that we can still walk today this is castle hill in kent on the south coast of england and it's where i'm starting my walk over here is eurostar and the beginning of the big tunnel under the water this is folkston beyond it is the english channel and beyond that the start of the eu quite a long way away now and here is the beginning of the north downs way great chalk escarpment you can see a chalk cliff just there this place has always been where traders travelers pilgrims meet up and for thousands of years if you wanted to get further inland then you went along that pathway [Music] the north towns way is thought to be one of the main highways that ancient travelers arriving in britain would have used from folkestone i'm going to follow it inland through kent i'll take the old pilgrim road to canterbury before finishing my journey a down house in the wild beauty of the rolling kent downs along the way i'll discover one of britain's oldest oak trees she is lovely i'll make a pilgrimage to the shrine of thomas a beckett uncoverer lost battle sight of julius caesar and marvel at the great discoveries of charles darwin i think that's really exciting all of which will reveal to me how this ancient track was once used on the coast at folkestone my first stop is a 3 000 year old archaeological find precariously balanced on a cliff edge and in a race against time [Music] this is the very very beginning of the north downs way you can see the sea just there and as you can imagine it's eroding these cliffs really fast which is why you've got this spoil heap here and over here an archaeological site because if this stuff isn't dug up pretty soon it's going to end up at the bottom of the sea but it turns out to be a really really interesting sight andrew andrew can i follow you just for a moment yeah sure andrew there's a lot of these curved things here curved stone things can you explain to me what they are these are late iron age rotary coin stones that's grinding stones for corn yeah for grinding corn into flour to make make bread absolutely essential to a daily life for everybody in the iron age really but there must be more than one household i would have thought you've got well how many have you got here must be at least a dozen at least a dozen but actually from this site we've probably recovered uh three or four hundred over the years yeah so if you found so many and so many that are broken it sounds as though they're actually making them here yeah this is and this is a really special thing about this site this is the production site from what i know about archaeology i would have thought that evidence of large-scale iron age production was pretty rare it is this is probably the only quern production site that we've actually excavated so this is the modern day one this is the replica it's fascinating that 3 000 years ago our ancestors were manufacturing these essential tools on an industrial scale and then distributing them throughout the country and beyond let's start grinding it down i'll lift it up and let's see because i i think i can see some white there oh fantastic starting to happen but it's it's quite hard quite hard work yeah but we can see it does work it does work but what about the north towns way is there any evidence that they use that as a trading room well i think most of the crohn's producer went out by sea but we do find them in land in kent and and you can't you can't get by boat to ashford the only really you know big long distance strategic way we know of at that time was the north towns way so this is really exciting iron age entrepreneurs were trading out of this busy site dealing directly with europe across the sea but also taking their business inland along the north down's way [Music] a lot of people say that folkston got its name from the fact that of all the places around here that was the area where the folk got their stone it's certainly a notion that would have appealed to the late 19th early 20th century writer hillar belluck who in a sense was the man who rediscovered that pathway [Music] in 1904 bellock penned the old road to describe an ancient trackway across the north downs born in france but raised in england he was a prolific writer a politician and a devout catholic but he's also a poet i remember fondly from my childhood he was an oddly charming and quite humorous man who wrote a book of kids poems called the cautionary tales and i used to recite one of the poems from it which started the chief defect of henry king was chewing little bits of string at last he swallowed some which tied itself in ugly knots inside but more to the point he wrote this book the old road in which he argued that our pathway is actually a natural chalk ridge that runs all the way from farnham to dover you may say that nature herself laid down the platform of a perfectly defined ridge from which a man going west could hardly deviate even if there were no path to guide him bellat walked this path himself and said it was the route that the medieval pilgrims took the legendary pilgrims way and some pilgrims still come down here to this very day the pilgrims way is an ancient path thought to have been taken by medieval pilgrims to canterbury for several miles it follows the same route to the cathedral city as the even older north downs way pilgrimages have always been journeys of spiritual significance a connective link between holy places and even today modern pilgrims still travel this path to seek their own sacred places on route [Music] hello traveler where you going well i'm on pilgrimage a real pilgrimage tony robinson yeah how do you too nice to meet you this is nettle hello nettle hello darling this is for you your pilgrim staff thank you very much because i believe we're going to make a pilgrimage together now excellent yeah excellent come on little again come and go will is part of a new movement set up to revitalize the tradition of pilgrimage in britain but these pilgrims welcome people of all faiths and no faiths side by side so tony there's something rather special to show you here right because pilgrimage isn't just about churches cathedrals chapels or the built environment but the natural world as well and what i'm going to show you now is very much a holy place is it this trip couldn't could it be anything else no i don't think so it is extraordinary it is like it's like a tree out of tolkien isn't it absolutely wow her name is majesty what other name could she have and this is the largest virgin unpollarded oak in britain and some people say the world wow do we have any idea how old she is estimates between 800 and thousand years yeah god it's really sensual going in this way isn't it yeah yeah blimey and one of the key things in pilgrimage is to go slowly and to stop often yeah in places like this you may not pass this way again tony what does being a pilgrim mean to you it means connecting to places like this to things that are bigger than me and doing it through a journey on foot it is lovely touching something alive that has been alive for the best part of a thousand years there's one more thing i like to do at a place like this tony which is to give a gift and i i've brought one for you actually this is 925 british silver 100 years old and there's a hole on the other side of the tree and we could just fling in our coin as some sort of gesture of humanity to non-humanity yeah and that's the sort of absurd gesture that pilgrimage is all about got a thrones for you there you go don't spend it all at once it is absurd but it's very nice in a very gentle way back on the track i enter king's wood an infamous place that offered perfect cover for the thieves and robbers that preyed upon pilgrims on the road but very quickly the trees clear relief for the pilgrims i imagine as they emerged over the brow of the hill [Music] there it is the pilgrims very first site of their final destination canterbury cathedral [Music] [Laughter] for devoted medieval pilgrims on their long lonely journey across england the beckoning call of the cathedral city of canterbury was irresistible in his book the old road hillar bellock called canterbury the rallying point of all the roads from the coast like many of the pilgrims i'm following the track from the west through the north downs [Music] the magnificent cathedral at canterbury is the oldest church in britain still in use in 595 a.d the pope in rome sent a benedictine monk augustine to bring christianity to the pagan anglo-saxon kingdom of kent augustine established a church and became the first archbishop of canterbury [Music] christianity took root in england over the next 500 years but it wasn't until the death of archbishop thomas beckett in 1170 that the tradition of pilgrimage would take hold [Music] today the 7th of july is a special day in honor of saint thomas a becket that's why these candles are lit they mark his shrine he was an archbishop of canterbury and he had a row with king henley ii whose supporters murdered him [Music] and thomas became a saint and it was to pay homage to him that all the pilgrims came here and you can see how many there must have been look you see this sort of rumble here that's tiles that have been eroded by the knees of all the pilgrims who've knelt in front of some thomas there must have been thousands and thousands of them and thousands of pilgrims making donations for the privilege of visiting the shrine meant good news for the church incredibly even though it's almost a thousand years ago every penny was accounted for here we have accounts for the year 1200 to 1201 and they detail the monies received as offerings at the various shrines and places in the cathedral what sort of money were they making well for the tomb itself we've got the figure here of 431 pounds so assuming and a donation of one penny per pilgrim um that is over a hundred thousand pilgrims and that's just to the tomb it's a very rough way of estimating yeah yeah but i suppose some wealthy people would have come here and flashed the cash around and given far more than simply a penny of course this is a donation made by louis vii king of france when he visited the cathedral in the year 1179 which is recorded in the charter so louis vii came to pray at thomas's tomb for the recovery of his son who was gravely ill his son recovered and as a thank offering louis issued this charter and the charter grants the monks of the cathedral a large quantity of good french wine i bet they were happy about that i think they were delighted yes whether a humble worshiper or a visiting dignitary one way or another this was a spiritual tax on the faithful traveler i'm back on the road out of canterbury at the village of hubble down for centuries this was the only road to london and i can imagine paupers pilgrims and princes all passing this way and all happily buying into the cult of thomas a becket [Music] this hatch is brilliant inside it in the middle ages there was a holy relic the shoe of saint thomas beckett which apparently he'd left in a nearby well and if you were a pilgrim and you were walking past and if you knocked on the hatch it would open and a leper's hand would come out holding the shoe and if you kissed it then your life would be full of blessings provided you gave the leper a few bob of course the hatch is on the outside wall of a medieval leper hospital where weary pilgrims would have passed it's strange that a place like this would have been a resting point for travellers but i've been told that there's something even more curious in the grounds i'm looking for a watering hole in this wood that apparently has royal connections why you'd have a watering hole in the wood i've got absolutely no idea at all [Music] oh darth vader wasn't in there at all look it's here oh i could have gone around the side and up that concrete path never mind i love little things like this it's a surprising little place in the corner of a field you see those three feathers there on that headstone that is the symbol of the prince of wales and that is the well of the very first prince of wales the black prince who's a bit like our prince william only slightly more butch edward of woodstock aka the black prince was a gallant hero of the hundred years war with the french his legend born from the iconic black armor he wore into battle he was also very devout and would make a pilgrimage before any military campaigns offering penance for those his army were about to kill the story goes that towards the end of his life he had this really bad eye affliction and he was coming past this place which was already a popular drinking place for the pilgrims on their way to canterbury and he dipped his hands into the water and pressed his fingers onto his eyes [Music] and they were miraculously cured [Music] back on the north downs way a few miles further on i'm traveling far back in time and to a fabled site of hidden history [Music] [Applause] fifteen hundred years before the black prince's army rode through here and 600 years before augustine established christianity in britain it wasn't canterbury that dominated this landscape it was the celtic stronghold at bigbury and by following the north down's way into the heart of this woodland i'm walking on the warpath of one of rome's most famous sons julius caesar in the late summer of 55 bc the legions of caesar's expeditionary force were the first romans to set foot in britain lured back the following year by tales of an island rich in pearls lead and gold caesar landed a deal in kent and is said to have launched his first attack at a fort near canterbury there's no physical evidence of caesar in britain but he wrote an account of the campaign and it's traditionally thought that the big battle took place just up there and i think you'll see why [Music] caesar had a fearsome reputation in britain and the celts knew they'd have little chance against the impressively equipped roman army unless their defense was carefully planned this place is called bigbury and you see that slope up there that's a defensive earthwork and this is what caesar said about the battle in his conquest of gaul a night march of about 12 miles brought caesar he always refers to himself in the third person singular caesar rather than i in sight of the enemy [Music] with their cavalry and chariots and tried to bar his way by attacking from a position on higher ground now this is the important bit repulsed by his cavalry they hid in the woods where they occupied a well fortified post of great natural strength since all the entrances were blocked by felled trees laid close together well there's no doubt that that is a seriously engineered piece of ancient british fortification isn't it it's so tempting to think of caesar's legions marching on bigbury against the celts but is there any real evidence beyond caesar's account to support this i've come to meet steve willis who's a local archaeologist and has done a lot of very good work on big brewery steve are there any other candidates for this roman battle any other iron age hill forts of comparable size around here no tony this is a unique sight in eastern kent there aren't any strong holds of the late iron age around here for miles so this does fit in with the caesar story exactly the other thing that caesar mentions is this 12-mile overnight walk does that make sense it brings us exactly to this spot from where he landed exactly and you've got another intriguing piece of information haven't you that was brought to you by a local metal detectorist we have tony it was found in 2012 a very recent and very exciting find these helmets dating to this period are very very rare this is 2 000 years old this would have been worn by one of the adversaries in the in the battles against caesar you must have thought that all your dreams had come true when that was passed to you and this is what it would have looked like originally yeah that's right we have this replica which is coming to light now i try it on yeah well indeed tony how do i look well it fits you but you're wearing it back to front sorry that was like a school cap oh so this is to protect the neck to protect the neck yeah correct yes i love the idea of me looking down upon the enemy surrounded by my mates with the sun glittering on our helmets that's right and that would have been very intimidating i think my enemy would have been really scared of me the romans did eventually conquer britain in 44 a.d and ruled for nearly four centuries they gave us new towns canals viaducts i would have used the very track i'm walking on before building their own roads hard and straight across the countryside [Music] the north towns way is entangled in the legacy of the roman occupation yet sometimes it isn't the great monuments but the tiny clues that reveal something extraordinary about this ancient track [Music] stepping back onto the north down's way i'm struck by how these wonderful ancient tracks channel the imagination about the people who traveled these paths before me every step could be the step of a christian pilgrim or a roman centurion or even an ancient briton after leaving bigbury i find myself thinking about what the romans left behind in britain and near the saxon village of chering an unexpected trace of the romans still lurks in the undergrowth normally along here on the track you can find intriguing creatures but knowing my luck i'll not be able to find any now triumph i found them look there's one there isn't it massive another one under here this one over here too little crowds of them not allowed to touch them because they're a special scientific interest but they're they're called pot lid snails or sometimes apple snails presumably because of their size and until fairly recently people thought that they'd been brought here by the normans uh as a snack for pilgrims who were going up and down the pilgrims way but it now seems pretty sure that actually they were introduced by the romans there are certainly a lot of them associated with roman sites you can't prove anything for certain can you but that seems to be the case sadly in modern times these roman snails are being poached as a delicacy and many of their native habitats are now kept secret by conservationists [Music] the idea that it was pilgrims who first brought these snails to britain is one of the many myths of the north downs way i'm meeting a local writer who's dedicated his life to debunking the myths of this old road do you think the pilgrim's way was originated by pilgrims no i think all the evidence that historians and archaeologists have concluded that it was a prehistoric trackway one of the things that happens in the pilgrims narrative is that the pilgrimists build and exaggerate each other's stories so we start with numbers of pilgrims then we build on that and we have thousands of pilgrims and end up with a hundred thousand pilgrims medieval pilgrims using the pilgrim slave so in prehistoric times you've got people coming maybe from as far as france using this pathway to trade tin and copper and shirt or whatever yeah and then it falls into disuse and then the pilgrims start to use it then you get thomas a beckett so many more pilgrims are using it then after the reformation it falls into disuse again and then towards the end of the victorian times suddenly these writers seize on the romantic notion of the pilgrims way and uh and here it is now brought back to life yeah and for me one of the interesting things about that is perhaps we um have as many pilgrims walking the pilgrims way today as we did in the middle ages using it as a root of becket shrine and we're two of them [Music] i'm a different kind of pilgrim my journey is taking me in the opposite direction it's funny though wherever you are on this pathway there's always some sort of religious symbol nearby [Music] but i'm leaving christianity behind in search of a time before the pilgrims before the romans to find a prehistoric place that holds clues to our stone age past [Music] some of the earliest human remains known in britain have been found in this area [Music] this is the epic landscape of the medway megaliths these mysterious structures are the only group of megaliths in eastern england and like much from prehistory are steeped in folklore the first iron counter on blue bell hill are the fallen stones of a neolithic burial chamber that have puzzled the locals for [Music] centuries it's said that it's impossible to count the number of stones on a megalithic structure these ones are called the countless stones and you can sort of see the problem little stones would get buried under the big ones some stones would be under the earth and only occasionally reappear in fact there's a story about these stones which is that there was this smart baker who decided he would work out how to count the stones he baked a whole lot of loaves of bread and he put one loaf of bread on each stone [Music] now the punch line of the story is there's the last one that the devil was coming all the way around behind the baker and he was gobbling up the loaves so when the baker turned round he had no idea how many there were another version has it that the devil took just one away so he got the count wrong another says that the devil disguised himself as a loaf hello and again the baker got the number wrong the fourth one is the most dramatic he gets the number right the crowd gathered all around him and just as he's about to announce what the number is he keels over and dies [Applause] that was pretty realistic wasn't it except that now we're gonna go around again and put all the loaves away the story of the countless stones is only a bit of fun but later generations have always projected their legends onto these stones because in the mists of time their original power and purpose has been lost hey chris oh hello you're not lost are you you know i'm not lost i want to glean from you your fantastic story chris lives over there in that lovely house and at the bottom of his field is this this wonderful stone which is a stone of great significance it is indeed because this is the white horse stone of kent yeah uh five and a half thousand years old like all the other graves in the area but there's a story associated with this one oh that yes it's a little bit special this stone because many years after it was used by the neolithic people it was used by the saxons who first arrived in the country about 455 a.d and what happened was the saxons landed they wandered around in kent for a couple of weeks and they ended up here which marks the site of a very important battle which may well have taken place in that field oh indeed yes that's right there was a huge battle between the saxons and the britons and the leaders were vortigan on the british side and his son category on the saxon side they were the brothers horseradish so on one hand you've got the newcomers the saxons led by hengist and horsa and on the other side you've got the romano british who were here after the romans left absolutely yes the battle was dramatic many hundreds of people were killed on both sides um very big battle and both of the chieftains or kings were killed as well uh horsa the saxon king as he lay dying was put on top of the white horse stone and that his blood stained the stone bright red which means that even today the flag of kent hits a white horse on a red background and all because of this style all because of this stone that you see here yes amazing thank you see you [Music] [Laughter] [Music] it is amazing this intoxicating mix of myth and history projected onto stones placed here thousands of years ago just a short walk away at the last of the megaliths older than stonehenge the oddly framed kits koti around here you've got the only collection of prehistoric megaliths in eastern england megaliths just means large stones but these ones are the entrance way to a huge barrow that stretched 70 meters in that direction and inside it there were a lot of burials now you can see it's surrounded by this metal fence and that was put up by the victorians to try and make sure that it didn't get covered in graffiti but can you show them all that graffiti there that's victorian so it kind of failed and instead what you've got is three large stones surrounded by a monument to victorian wrought iron work [Music] it's such a victorian thing to do to build a fence to simply keep people away but my journey on the north town's way will take me to the home of a quite extraordinary victorian mind one who would take us even further back in time to the beginning of life on earth [Music] i'm crossing the river medway in kent to continue my journey along the north downs way i've come a long way from the travellers on the pilgrims road to canterbury searching for a spiritual revelation [Music] this trip though is a pilgrimage for me to pay homage at a place of profound significance a place of scientific revelation my last stop on the north townsway it's truth it's getting hot now is at the house of someone who knew these downs intimately and drew a conclusion from them that turned religion on its head [Music] charles darwin is one of the greatest thinkers in history and his theories on nature made us re-examine our place in the world in 1842 after his round-the-world trip on hms beagle darwin moved to down house just off the north downs way down this corridor is something i've always wanted to see just behind this door come in this is the study that belonged to charles darwin the charles darwin i suppose you'd have expected all this kind of bric-a-break on the walls the maps and the skulls and the books this dog basket belonged to his little white terrier called polly who'd lie curled up here while he did his work and i love this detail come over here have a look in there this is where charles darwin did his ablutions his shower and washing his hands and his potty and everything you don't think of him doing that kind of thing do you and this is his table with his microscope on it and lots of string holders for some reason tickets and notes and he would sit here overlooked by some of the greats of his age like a kids pop posters on their bedroom wall that's hooker the biologist that's lyle the geologist that is josiah wedgwood the pottery manufacturer who was his grandfather and whose money of course helped fund this whole project and it was here that charles darwin wrote a book that transformed our understanding of us within the universe and that book was the origin of he wrote it species i think that's really exciting darwin's book the origin of species marked a dramatic turning point in scientific thought that life on earth was a process of evolution and not an act of god [Music] from downhouse darwin could gaze upon the north downs and reflect on the experiments that he'd created to test his theories what he developed in the house was put into practice on his walks outdoors [Music] one of the things that virtually all writers and philosophers and poets agree on is that walking helps you think in fact in some languages the word for travelling is the same as the word for thinking darwin even created his own trackway in the grounds of the house and he regularly walked this circular path including five times at lunchtime but in order to keep track on the number of times he'd been round he had a pocket full of stones and at the end of each circum locution he would put a stone down it would work really well except his kids would come along and kick the stones and chuck them away so his system was completely blown nevertheless some of his greatest ideas emerged on this very path irony hello the orchid lady how nice to meet you lovely to meet you too show me some of your blooms i'm not sure you want to come into a hot greenhouse on a sunny day like this yes they do look lovely don't they but of course darwin was famous for his orchid studies because the first book that he wrote after the origin of species was about orchids and that was where he learned that orchids are very different from most other flowers how they have rather specialized adaptations they don't have stamens like other flowers they have strange pollen sacks on little stalks the idea that flowers had some kind of sexuality must have been quite difficult for the victorians it was very difficult for darwin too because it was highly controversial and shocking even and people who started to try to hybridize orchids or said that they had sexual parts were almost excommunicated so he was on very tricky ground when he started his work on orchids how did he get away with it well darwin got around this very neatly by saying that the insects that pollinated flowers were acting as marriage priests which is a very charming way of explaining it isn't that lovely he didn't just experiment inside his greenhouse though did he no one of the places that we know he went to regularly was a small um grassy slope and hopefully we'll show you some of the wild orchids that grow there hopefully let's go let's go after traveling the world in search of clues it was at home on the north downs that darwin discovered some startling evidence to support his theory of evolution [Music] so what was the experiment that he did i'll show you one of these orchids these orchids are all pollinated by insects so having looked at this flower darwin decided to mimic an insect and took a pencil yeah and he probed into the flower deeply and then when he would do it to his astonishment on the pencil with a pair of little stalked pollen sacks the orchids pelina so it was opening itself up in a very sexual way to the bee yes so the bee could then take the pollen move off to another orchid and fertilize that one and what happens is the bees are a bit put up by this you know suddenly on their head these strange club-shaped structures are stuck on and you can watch them backing away and they're so disturbed that they very often fly to a completely different plant really then ensuring cross-fertilization between two separate plants so it's a remarkable adaptation i do find it absolutely extraordinary that there is this beautiful tiny discreet bit of kent countryside and these lovely elegant little flowers and they opened up our understanding of evolution and natural selection i've been on a journey exploring faith and superstition but there's a nice irony i love here i've ended up with a great man of science and reason charles darwin was a traveler on a quest for knowledge and the answer to the fundamental questions of our existence [Music] the north downs trackway was formed by the footsteps of thousands of people who made their own journey traders invaders and pilgrims and today we still walk this path partly to pay homage to all its previous travelers and partly like pilgrims to continue the search for something of our own you see a path like this one and it feels like it's been here forever doesn't it but of course every path starts with someone wanting to go from a to b across virgin territory and then someone else goes in the same direction and someone else until hundreds and thousands of people have done it and it's worn and there in the landscape and then maybe after a while people don't want to walk that way anymore and it starts to fall into disuse and eventually you can hardly see it and then maybe hundreds of years after that someone else wants to go from a to b for an entirely different reason and then more people do and more people do until eventually it's like a huge scar it's become part of our country part of our landscape part of our culture you

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 46,255

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, british history, tony robinson, roman history, ancient tracks, ancient roads, celtic history, ancient rome

Id: WFzVzKN6Erw

Length: 46min 44sec (2804 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021