The Archaeological Mystery Of The Abandoned 12th-Century Castle | Time Team | Chronicle

foreign [Music] ists are going to get married right and one of them wants to buy the other a wedding present so what does he get her a silver trowel a pair of floral wellingtons not even close he buys her this this wreck was all the remained of Scargill Castle a stronghold in a lawless violent landscape that was fought over for Centuries by English and Scottish Kings now after 10 years of loving restoration the Gatehouse looks like this and the new owners know that the Scargill family was once a powerful Dynasty they played host to a King and they lived here for over 400 years and yet in spite of all this obsessive investigation no one knows what Scargill Castle looked like in its prime there's only one way to reveal a true picture of this home of the Lords of the Wild Frontier isn't there and that's to dig it and we're quite good at that aren't we foreign [Music] scargills sat on the tip of the north riding of Yorkshire before boundary changes moved it into the county of Durham and it's probably that rather boring piece of central government legislation that saved this Gatehouse because that's when Nile Hammond and his wife to be first heard of it we can't really call you two enthusiastic amateurs can we well no not really I've been working in archeology a good number of years and at the time we came here I was the county archaeologist for Durham it would be impertinent to ask you how much it costs so how much does it cost um it was a bargain at any price is that what we're going to get out of here exactly yes look this is the state of it when it was bought as a wedding present how did you feel about it I was thrilled to pieces to get it but it was also tinged with quite a bit of tonic because it looked like it was going to fall down and I thought it might kill somebody in passing what was it apart from that that attracted you to it because as an archaeologist you live archeology you breathe archeology and here is an opportunity to own something that is a scheduled monument and the more we explored it the more we restored it the more questions we had about it we think we've done as much as we can by looking at the upstanding remains we've got the Gatehouse lots of upstanding walls scattered around us we think we've got the remains of a tower but we need some you know some good hard dating evidence when does the Castle start 12th century what happens when it goes out of use in 16th 17th century [Music] tree Origins of this guy's house we also want to find what's left of the rest of the medieval castle it was an entrance to and over at the front of the Gatehouse Mick's wasted no time in opening a couple of trenches and stamping all over the good name of Scargill Castle I'm not sure we're dealing with a castle actually I think it's more of a fortified Manor House hang on Caroline and Nile bought a castle it said Castle on the OS map I know it does we've only been here five years we're going to bring their wonderful wedding present Crush into his knees but it isn't really like a massive great structure it's more like a house with a wall and perhaps a Gatehouse around it whereas a castle really is a much bigger structure you know it's a difference in scale enormous difference in scale if it is a fortified manor house then shouldn't it conform to a particular shape so we know what we're looking for more or less we know we should have a great hall we should have lodgings kitchen The Gates house Etc but it's not quite working properly here at the moment why not well the gate hash for a start it's a rubbish gate task defensively it's a very nice skater but defensively you don't have big windows in it you have a chimney sticking out the side of it it doesn't really work as a defensive Gatehouse I think they're being a bit harsh lots of manor houses have been called castles over the centuries and it certainly doesn't make Scargill any less of an intriguing Target because the trenches Mick has put in suggest we're looking at a substantial complex that survived here for centuries it is a conundrum this place and these two trenches are a good example you see the the top there there's a wall comes off the Gatehouse running across this bank here but just in front of it about two or three meters in front of it they're the foundations of another wall sort of parallel with it but about three feet away and a much more massive wall so clearly that's not right one of those must be earlier than the other one it's an example of the sort of confusions we've got all over this site that we've got to sort out I'm still reading with the fact that it's not a castle and it's a rubbish Gatehouse I'm not telling Caroline I think I'll leave that to Mick these two massive walls built close together are just the tip of our archaeological Iceberg a lot of the surrounding sheep farm appears to have been built with bits of fine medieval Stone and I suppose we shouldn't be surprised history records Edward II staying at Scargill in 1323 and Kings expected the grand houses they visited to be well Fit For A King and that's just one mention of a family that made their presence felt through centuries of British history I've had a quick look at the Victoria County history and it's got an immense list of people descargill with footnotes showing that they turn up in the pipe pearls and in the clothes rolls and in the charters and so on so there's lots to get your teeth into there but the the best earliest reference is 1171 when we've got Warren descargill working for the king he's the kind of project manager on the king's refurbishment of Bose Castle which is just a few miles away I love the idea of a Scargill being the king's man because as soon as you say Scargill to me who do I think of the legendary Arthur Scargill urging his miners to stand up against the government and the police you don't really think of him as a king's man do you I know I I wonder if he'd be horrified to think that he presumably is descended from the same group of toffs that held held this place but it would seem the archeology on this site isn't confined to the 400 years that Arthur's ancestors were here because Niall and Caroline's beloved Gatehouse isn't as medieval as it looks really impressive Gatehouse beautiful new gates installed by Caroline and Nile but when you go inside you can't get out the other end it's blocked off by a huge wall That's because we think in the 19th century it was reused as Farm laborers Cottages so this makes it into a room essentially there are a lot of other puzzles for example it looks like the only place to hang the gates is halfway in which is a very thoughtful gesture towards anyone attacking it to keep them out of the rain Richard what's your first thoughts having had a look at this place now it's a rubbish Gatehouse defensively at this rate this is going to be the first one day time team we ever do as you say it's got no sign at all of having ghosts either end of it and only Bank slap in the middle yeah it implies it's not built for proper defense it's built as a status symbol of some description it's built to impress and for the Timbers along the roof as you can see they're quite highly decorated which again seems an odd thing to do if you're just a defensible structure have you got a date for this building yes we've got a dendrodite of about 1560 which is quite interesting yeah because isn't that after the scar gills have stopped living here exactly the sky girl line has died out but there seems to be this massive investment in building this structure [Music] and the Gatehouse may not be the only Tudor building on the site I mean obviously this was a fireplace to me yeah because in the farmyard behind it is something that looks like it was built after the Scargill scargills died out so but it looks like it's actually a Tudor Arch because it's quite shallow you can see it coming up here beginning but it's going at that kind of angle so it's 16th century something like that so if we put a trench through we should see any earlier Wars and features so our third trench goes in over what looks like another later Tudor building a bit perverse considering that we want to find the remains of the medieval Scargill manner we'd rather come a bit this way rather than go too far that way but it does make archaeological sense manor houses were laid out to a basic pattern and even though they may have been rebuilt over the centuries a number of key buildings such as the Gatehouse and the Great Hall would remain in roughly the same place we suspect the medieval Gate House is directly under the Tudor version so unfortunately that's out of bounds hey Phil we've got a plaster up against this wall oh that's the first discovery that's nice beautiful but if there's a medieval Hall to be found here there's a very good chance it's under this Exquisite piece of Tudor architecture ah got the players gel look I want one of these at home actually lunchtime day one and while the archaeologists are beavering away outside I'm up here in the incident room and I have to say that as incident rooms go this has got to be one of the strangest and most exhausting of the lot we've got graphics and Maps up the top [Music] on the palatial ground floor gear fizzer beavering away and in the middle basking in the wall for this fire which on a day is freezing as today is a very welcome relief are all the documents in our history team so Helen I can see you've got a big black book with the words doomsday and book on the spine does that mean that scargill's mentioned it it is but incredibly briefly and it's quite hard to understand it says that Scargill is worth three carricates what's a carricade a Carrick is as much land as a team of adox and could plow in the course of a year but they weren't plowing at that time because it also says that the land is waste so when does the name of the Scargill family start appearing we've got a definite Warren discogle in the 1170s and from then on they run right through this family until tutor times when they end up with two daughters one of whom it marries into another family the thunderstorm family and Scargill then moves into a different Dynasty what what about the place itself do you have a plan for it no we are finding it incredibly hard to find out any details about this actual place so it's going to really be the archeology that helps us to get the clues to build up what it might have looked like so now we're attacking the site from two directions with the history starting at the origins of Scargill and moving forward through the centuries killed by accident at Richmond especially boiling lead and died eight days and the archaeologists beginning with the last phase of building and moving back through time let's just hope they meet somewhere in the middle anyway we're off to a flying start in trench three there it is as Phil and Tracy have just hit the half of the Tudor fireplace shovels off mostly it's selling page we're also uncovering more of the substantial walls outside the Gatehouse on there all of this is Vital Information for our graphic Recreation of this site and I pulled in four different Manor House sites from different periods of the 12th century 13 14. now as far as Richard and Ray San are concerned all the archaeologists have to do is work out what walls belong to what period and they can do the rest it all seems so simple when you're sitting inside in front of a computer doesn't it say he managed to Source out this trenches I think we think we actually we've got the wall coming in here well that's this here is it yes and presumably that's the same as that one there exactly and we've also got the inside of a room the surface coming in here is that what that flagstone is I think so yep and then we've got another wall coming in here just there there's sort of rubbed out is it hang on if you've got a wall there yeah and we've got a wall here it's a pretty thin room isn't it possibly it could be very little room another thing if this is our wall here why has it got just one window right up the top of it I don't know so I asked you whether you're going to sort this trench out yeah the real answer is no isn't it I found the wall that's what you told me to look for well if the room really is this small you can find me the loom we've got the bathroom ready What a fine archaeologist I feel like just air constant happy Rumblings from this end of the trench you always hear satisfied rumblridge for me mick how about this this is the gem this Tudor fireplace yeah it's looking really nice and crikey I've actually got the sort of Threshold at the front of it now and you've got some points out of the ashy stuff then yeah we are yep yep we've actually got window glass great but the major advance in this trench here is this working great wall here and you see it but Phil's only started with this trench as he's begun to uncover other walls which may belong to an earlier building yes I mean I think this is really exciting because I think what we've got the Tudor Hall here with the big impressive fireplace but immediately next to it I think we've got a much older building maybe 100 150 years old a defensible tower which is the walls you can see to the rear here which are much more all this right here yeah so if you were anyone of substance in the Border counties in the 14th and 15th centuries you'd have had a defensible tower you're thinking this might be medieval rather than Tudor there um fingers crossed this should be medieval Niles nails that there may be an earlier Tower here Phil's work and the latest Geoff is it would seem he may be right it looks as if there's a big corner of a wall or something in the air look we need an area open up in here to test that out well we don't need a separate helmet why don't we just link the two together and make it one big hole fine fine shouting at me again finding evidence of a medieval defensive Tower would be fantastic this part of Britain was raided attacked and fought over for centuries as the English and Scots battled for control and the family living at Scargill would have been well aware of the threat of incursion in that year this is 1318 not long after Easter the Scots burnt the terminal North Allison of the church and the surrounding Countryside wasting and spoiling the land they reached Bolton Abbey and looted it myself isn't it and have you seen this picture of um it's fantastic isn't it and that looks like our our manor house up there and um dragging a poor cow with them it said that they would kill cows and boil up the meat in the hide of the cow oh golly yes I suppose cows represented wealth didn't they and and food yeah it's not stowed our partner it looks like parchment of green glaze there so what sort of here is that um I would say that's late medieval kind of 1400 maybe so that makes that quite an old wall back out at the gate house the trenches are continuing to produce big substantial walls and they certainly seem chunky enough to withstand a medieval Scottish attack do you see these big Stones here here and here that's going down there and they go off this way so actually looking at a corner of a wall which is why you don't see it coming all the way down here how does that tie into the walls around the face trench well if you look just to the north of phase trench there's a small line of face Stones just sticking out from the grass yeah the line of that follows exactly down here lines up with this this edge here a pretty big building yeah it would be huge actually but you don't know yet how that ties in with the Gatehouse uh not yet that's one of the problems with big chunky walls they can be almost impossible to date by themselves what we need are fines or architectural Styles we can date so we're now extending our geophys survey in the hope we may find some likely targets to get us that evidence so at the end of day one we may be no closer to answering Niall and Caroline's questions about the origins of medieval Scargill there's no more in it just a load of stones sort of flung in but we certainly know an awful lot more about the Tudor history this is a bit good isn't it oh absolutely what a first day I mean look there is this wonderful Tudor fireplace and we've even got the last remains of the final Tudor fire Caroline come here a minute what do you think of that this is absolutely brilliant a fire you can always feel the warmth of the Flames can you and it's all yours this really is a lovely piece of archeology it's like a time capsule one moment just Frozen in the ground but that's not all John's just shown me this gear Fizz this thing is out there somewhere what is it is there's a a tower is it a pond I don't know we'll find out tomorrow history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans enjoy our Rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period history hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones Elena yanega and Cat German not only that but with a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of History through our network of podcasts sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle at checkout look at that fantastic Tudor fireplace every so often you get an episode of time team where you start out with one little trench and by the end of the first day you've got a Pandora's box of fabulous archeology this is Scargill Castle in County Durham and in addition to the fireplace over here you've got Echoes of the medieval manor house which was once on this site and look at this geophys last night this mysterious circular structure appeared somewhere over there what is it don't know till we dig it I'm really enjoying this one [Music] well I may be enjoying it but there are plenty of other people who may disagree potentially 500 years of occupation to investigate we may have any number of manor houses built on top of one another and that's an awful lot of work for the archaeologists the good news is we've certainly found loads of walls the bad news is we haven't the foggiest when any of them were built we need to resolve this wall through here with this one across here I never know what resolve means earlier than which all right I understand that if that's the earliest they only expect these to butt up to it but the only way we can do is look under where these Boulders are lifting these boulders to work out how one wall joins up to another seems like an awful lot of effort away isn't it I'm a bit embarrassed that you've made such a possible yeah but Mick assures me that work like this will be key to discovering the medieval layout of the site as measuring the thickness of the different walls and deciding in what order they were built may be the only evidence we can use for dating and the perfect example of this is over in Phil's trench where he's now uncovered the remains of a Tudor Hall fantastic flagstone I know it's hard to believe that we thought they'd been ripped out and reused somewhere else but we've got this superb floor and what we've actually got here is much much more detail now we've got what looked like Tudor bricks they are actually um earlier than the plaster so the plaster is sitting on top of them and this plaster becomes absolutely crucial because it does come all the way around here all the plastered walls surrounding our magnificent Tudor fireplace measure just over a meter in width but what's got Phil really excited is that he's discovered they're built on top of an earlier much thicker wall what you're standing on we think here is probably a blocked doorway so this entrance was here before the Tudor building exactly hang on a minute is this the thickest wall I've seen in men here long day yeah you notice what are you doing there Helen what I've started doing is cleaning up this Rubble which was revealed when this opening was cut through to make a farm access so that's a different knocking through not that one a different one yes there's everything going on here so what we want to be able to see is how this wall relates to the thicker part of the wall like where you are which is actually going off at a slight angle so does this mean that this is only one war or is it a whole series of wars that have been glued together over time at the moment Tony we are really banging our head against the wall because we really don't know what we think might be at the moment is that this is going to be the earliest War yeah and then possibly it was remodeled and the fireplace was built in The Tudor period so this possibly might be medieval somewhere over there you've got Tudor possibly so Phil's going to extend his trench to try and uncover more of this earlier thicker wall as the more medieval walls we uncover the clearer the layout of the medieval manner will be just when we get to the end of the trench a little surveyor turns it and that's why Matt is also opening a trench next to Phils as Niall and Caroline the archaeologists who invited us here believe this strong evidence that some of these standing remains once belonged to a medieval defensive Tower stop for a second have a good look we're pretty much on it there Ian and we're not just looking at the holes in the ground you see these sort of big gaps between the stones here they're quite cruel we think many of the walls of the sheep pens started life as part of earlier grander buildings well this is obviously earlier than this I mean it looks like a fine Tudor possibly blocked window but that's inserted into this bit so this is earlier this is early right so now if that's early yeah yeah could that be part of Nile's tower that we're looking for it could be I mean yeah it's certainly medieval [Music] and with the new trenches open we can finally get round to investigating the mysterious geoffiz result on the plateau yeah and what are we think it is I mean it could be a cup well it could be a dove cut and somebody said a pond or a well because we can't work out what it is just by looking at it I'm slightly concerned that it's not actually round right I'm slightly concerned that this is an artifact of the processing so it might not become a circular structure it may not be it may not be okay I'm just plugging that for the record all right so we're looking for a circular square that may or may not be a dove cut or a well yeah bomb crater so trench fire s round or potentially Square feature as we're hoping it may turn out to be a fancy piece of medieval architecture [Music] we think this is the original crossing point of the river which then LED on up to Scargill we suspect that as you approached medieval Scargill you would have been presented with an impressive Mana complex this is the picture that people would have seen very very impressive as Niall and Caroline's years of research have found numerous references to the scargill's dealings with medieval royalty including playing host to a King we haven't got a castle we've got a manor house we haven't got a medieval Gatehouse we've got a Tudor one but we do at least know that a king stopped here don't we oh dear I'm afraid I might have been guilty of being a little over optimistic I was using an impeccable Source this is the Victoria County history and you see here it says entertained King Edward at Scargill in 1323 except they prefix it with probably I didn't know there was a problem tell us about the problem well it's very understandable that they said that because if you take the the close role we know from this that Edward II issued a writ from Scargill on September 26th 1323 that looks solid that's not interested surely the problem is with the itinerary what seems to be going on is he we know he's at Barnard Castle here and we are there's our little Gatehouse we're just south of that Scargill yeah they first of all go over here to Richmond and then down to Kirby malzade further south to DACA then apparently right back up to scar kill and then down to Skipton right down here it just doesn't make any sense does it but could he have done it because we can't deliver another bombshell like this about Caroline's wedding present without being absolutely sure crazy that means the greatest bit the route where you're going right up the hill and back down again I've looked at the actual profile of that so we're going to get our surveyor Henry to work out just how far a medieval King and his retinue could travel per day I don't know what they have to rest in you consists of it's huge we'll be talking of at least 300 people and you're talking about something like eight to ten long carts carrying all the belongings with the equipment the food but it's not a straightforward task because when a king visited a nobleman's house he bought his whole court with him and it was such a big operation the different parts of the royal circus traveled at different speeds the Royal hustle divide into various sections there's the the biggest would be the Wardrobe uh the chamber that'll be the next biggest the previous seal that really is quite small like I'd imagine they could this could take quite a while you step back and you've got this massive wall here which as you can see is clearly a continuation of the wall in the trench behind me there back on site and oblivious to the doubts being cast on scargill's medieval history Nile thinks we may have uncovered another pre-tutor building yeah I mean that fits in very well with what will be the South Wall of the Tudor Hall with a big fireplace it's only maybe about 90 centimeters this wall over here though this is about one meter 40. this this is probably earlier probably medieval now we've got a nice finished face here so obviously if it's a doorway and then the wall should continue now if it does your wall running through here should have a relationship with it which will give us a dating [Music] there's now just a few hours of day two left and we've no shortage of walls some of which look very big and medievally so far archaeological logicals for such a supposedly long-lived medieval site there are very few finds almost everything that's come up so far has been Tudor we've got the tutor Gate House these although they may be older certainly were around in The Tudor period yeah of course a Tudor fireplace and maybe these walls at the back of Tudor as the end of day two approaches there are dark murmurings among some of the team but there simply isn't the evidence to suggest the scar gills built a major house here interesting when we go on to the medieval period now we've certainly got a piece of wool stuck in the corner of match trench which seems to lead through the top of phase all the way into those back walls and I suppose we can say that there's a bit of wool running in front of the Gatehouse at the moment so can we predict where the hall is for instance I don't think so what about the tower we haven't really got footings to show we've got a tower at all at the moment so there's nothing at the moment we can really extrapolate from this not really and we can't even prove that that first phase the earlier phase is Medieval we've got no dating evidence for it whatsoever wow and as if to add insult to injury the history isn't really supporting the theory that the scargills occupied this place over a long period here's the reference William descargar or John de Burton taxes in the west riding that said and what date is that that's 1335 and it looks as if his interests have shifted acquiring New Rather better lands further south yeah safer as well so we got an awful lot of problems here haven't we because you've got marauding Scotsman your lord has essentially left I think this this early 14th century is going to be disastrous as far as Scargill is concerned it's at times like this you can turn to only one man Phil your trench seems to have taken a life of its own you started out back there somewhere you discovered the flagstones then you got the entrance through here now you've got a wall down there you've got two walls there and it's still heading off in that direction oh my God it's been worth it I mean look pretty so you remember this morning I told you about a doorway yeah well I think that this is all medieval I think that this is a later period possibly still in the medieval so all this wall is Medieval right up to where those roots are and then you've got two walls here exactly that one there I believe is the earlier of the two and I think that it's probably Tudor it's very very much like the build that we've seen elsewhere on the site but what has happened is that at a later date they've punched a hole in it through there and built around here it's some rubbishy old build but I think it's much much later so I think we've got three phases we've got the medieval we've got the Tudor and then we've got this extra bit on the outside why'd you say that's Tudor it's very much like the the masonry we've got in the hallway and it's later than the medieval Phil May find himself in a minority by continuing to use the word medieval but as we came here to investigate the medieval origins of Niall and Caroline's Castle I'm going to stick with him I thought when we came here that we'd be looking at a medieval building in fact what we've got is a medieval building a two to one on top of it we see loads of the children just tantalizing glimpses of the medieval light in this wall so what do we do tomorrow the main thing is we've got to go down by the medieval walls and just try and get some pottery to get some dating for this medieval phase without extending this trench anymore we're not gonna go any further I'll hold him to that beginning of day three here at Scargill Castle in County Durham and among all this sheep there is a feast of archeology there's lumps and bumps there's standing archeology over there we've got half a dozen trenches not to mention Mig this fantastic geophysna came up last night the problem's going to be where not to dig really isn't it well that's right I mean there's loads of targets on there but I think there's one that we're bound to go for I think really we have to go for this enclosure that comes around here this is where it's this earthwork you can see along here along and it turns that sort of rounded Corner goes under the wall oh it's in both Fields yeah and it's very rectangular playing cards sure looks just like a little Roman forts but I mean there's loads of other things we could do if we were going to be here for three months we've got one day left give us the break we're looking for a moment which evidence of scargill's medieval history we've got quite a lot going on in this trench if you look behind we've uncovered a network of walls under slowly but surely establishing which ones belong to a sizable Tudor manner yeah that's the hall with the big fireplace it's probably the Parlor right so he needs a door through but we've also discovered even more substantial walls below these rooms suggesting the Tudor House was built on something earlier I feel like we've got these um Stones down here they're pretty compact I'm willing to say floor at the moment any phones uh what do you think nothing at all yet see this is very typical of um 16th century cistern where but try as we might we still can't find any conclusive dating evidence that the Scargill family built a manner on this site in the 12th century and then lived here for another 400 years so but definitely 16th century oh yes yes almost everything we've been able to date is Tudor if I turn up on my van with all this in a box in the back and said to you what dates this site what would you say I would say broadly 16th century and if I was to twist your arm and tread on your toes and say stretch it as much as you can well possibly late medieval 15th century [Music] sure we can positively date to the medieval period will make a massive difference to this dig yesterday we had high hopes for the trench we put in the plateau over this intriguing circular feature could it be full of pieces of lovely dateable Pottery or coins it's a big hole in the ground and somebody's put a cow on it look there's a shoulder blades there's both sides of the ribs and then you've got the head out that way legs out that way and the tail around the back ah it's a big depression or a pond or something that's just been filled in with stones depression is the right word isn't this too we thought we might have something interesting like a dove got here and we've got a dead cow well not really I mean what it's done it's led us to investigate this area up here now what Ian's found here is a is a clay bank and this possible series of regular linear features which occupy this rectangular platform here the platform is mixed Roman Fortnight what this platform actually is is a bomb King what's a bombkin it's an enclosure rectangle enclosure they get attached to a medieval fortified house so you do think that there was a medieval structure here itself almost certainly at some point yeah and we wouldn't have known that would we if it hadn't been for Daisy thank you for your sacrifice days foreign support for the owners nylon Caroline's view that Scargill Castle was indeed once the site of a defended medieval manor I.E you've got something like a pumpkin or a pumpkin or something on the side what's this all about a pumpkin a bomb kid what's that thing well it's a term used in in Scotland mostly and in northern England inside it would expect to find sheds workshops that kind of thing and would have had a wall around it at the time I think almost certainly because it's a fairly lowless territory here to some extent it's wild yeah and it's some way can bring the animals in as well and give them protection so I'd expect to see a stone wall around this thing yeah but as day three progresses all our work in the trenches and the incident room seems to debunk the medieval history of this site what's the route I thought that was going to be the county boundary well it gets even more crazy when you look at the route from Chicago back to Skipton yesterday we started to investigate the claim that Edward II visited Scargill Castle as part of a tour of the North in 1323 probably the best historical evidence we have for a grand medieval building on this site how far is that that's over 80 miles how far would a would the Royal rest of you have been able to go in a day I think you'd expect 10 miles or so what about if it is just the king essentially nipping off on his own uh I think he might manage 20 perhaps even 30 miles a day but no more than that and how many days have we got from here on the 24th the next date we've got iscargill the 26th so that's completely impossible this is this is totally and completely impossible it it just could not happen this is devastating news and what's worse the work the team have done has identified another stronger candidate for the medieval Scargill Castle 1359 we've got a reference to our Castle Scargill in Havre Park there's another Scargill that I'm quite sure is wearing of the second stayed and he then simply went from there to Skipton which is a perfectly straightforward Journey but sorry he was never at this Scargill he was at the Scargill in Havre Park oh dear and the news just keeps getting worse you've been saying to me for the last 36 hours oh I'm not sure if there is anything medieval on this site it's inescapable if you look at the pottery that we've got from this site and there's very very little medieval I mean a handful but it's all 16th and 17th century lots and lots of that hang on me all through this dig we've been saying look right behind us we've been saying oh there's a big medieval war there and a Tudor wall on top of it but what we've really been saying is there are several phases of Walling here and the earliest one is big and blocky we've sort of assumed that's the medieval phase whereas actually there's no reason why the war can't be 16th or 17th century we've got no Pottery indicating anything else so the walls that we've been calling medieval could be early Tudor walls and the stuff we've been calling Tudor is late Tudor I think so I don't see why the walls shouldn't take place in the 16th and 17th century with nothing earlier suppose you're wrong unlikely I know I may well be I may well but but the sheer small quantities of medieval Pottery makes me very very wary I just don't think it's here this isn't the sort of Discovery we'd expected to make well they're all complaining in there about having no medieval archeology but some of the team are determined to rescue the medieval Heritage of Caroline's wedding present look at this area forskoff the yellow line is the 45 Manor and the blue area is the the area of the bomb King if you look all around got plenty of evidence there for Earthworks behind the farm over there of settlement grouping there's another group where that farm is over there if you put all that together which I've done on this drawing here that's all the classics of a medieval village underneath the protection of the Fortified manner up on the hill suggested that one time this is actually quite a a big population actually down here but now when you drive through it it just looks like three Farms so we actually got a deserted medieval village next to a 45 Manor so clearly something something changed here and it went from being actually quite busy to actually being depopulated [Music] but we need to find the archaeological evidence to confirm this medieval Theory so we're putting in one final trench to get to the bottom of Stuart's farmkin now there's a sentence you don't say every day it's a substantial rule three and Mick's just announced that we've only got two hours left to find dateable evidence so everyone's redoubled their efforts to look for pieces of pot particularly Phil who after categorically definitely announcing that he wasn't going to extend his trench anymore has just extended his trench again [Music] final put Because deep down in the trenches a few archaeologically precious shards of pottery begin to appear well this is a nice big bit of chunky medieval Joe Campbell and they aren't Tudor and it looks as if they've just over fired it a bit but it's still good to pour it I've assorted your cow burial out then Ian yeah I think so right off the bottom we've got a piece of what looks like a medieval pot oh yeah that's okay isn't it this green glazed on the one side so at least the carries post medieval isn't it yep at least yeah I'll put it another way this medieval Pottery is pre-cal but it's still only one of a handful of pieces of medieval Pottery on the side hardly evidence of 400 years of occupation and Helen thinks she knows why I've brought out these 13th century finds because I think that they're illustrating the earliest part of the site that we can see so far and it fits in incredibly well with the historical context because our first recorded person here Warren descargill is recorded in 1170 he seems to be the kind of founder of our Dynasty but only about 90 years later a discar gill marries a de Stapleton and moves away to the West riding and so we've got this then this enormous Hiatus from about 1260 to about 15 30. 15 30 odd we get Mary who's the um she's a scar girl but she marries a Tunstall and she's she's the first female Heir male line dies out for some reason she comes back and she lives here she's buried in barningham church and people are living here right up till well 1671. so the fines mirror the history really well do you buy that now yeah I think I do I mean the picture has changed a lot in the last couple of hours we've now got this 13th century Potter that goes like earlier phase so you've swallowed your doubts now doubt a boy um yeah fairly clearly now there's something either on the site or very nearby that's producing this material we've got our medieval period at last this perplexing site is beginning to make sense that looks like a really good deep garden soil anything come out of it yes just a couple of pieces of pottery medieval Pottery actually and over in the last ditch bomkin trench we may indeed just have established that the medieval activity was based here on the plateau that's absolutely fantastic because if they're 13th 14th century Pottery out of this soil against this wall then that's got to be medieval date so I think that seems absolute confirmation that this wall is a wall that goes around this platform which has seemingly been called a pumpkin boundary a bumpkin boundary which in reality it's a bomb King a wall going around the edge so it may be a bit of a stupid name but this wall confirms Stewart's hunch that this Plateau is a bombkin the outer enclosure of a defended medieval manor house right at the bottom of that wall we found a 14th century shirt of pottery it is the best piece of dating evidence you could possibly have but can we finally convince Mick that there was a medieval manor house inside it it means that this war must be at the very least 14th century you see it comes along and actually turns here and we've actually found that the war continues through here and in there we've got a plastered room with a lovely cobbled floor then when the Tudor period come along what do they do they built their Tudor fireplace on top of the medieval building and they did the same thing there would you reckons medieval wall actually is me I think what we're looking at is some sort of medieval Tower house so like a mini keep or something like that rather than anything else excuse me is this the professor mcaden who three hours ago told me there wasn't anything medieval on this so we didn't have the evidence then didn't we you just told her they found it and that crucial piece of evidence means the features in the other trenches fall into place well I remember this morning we thought we might have one side of a door there there's the other side of it in there blocked up though and more importantly it means Caroline and Nile's conviction that medieval Scargill Castle or Manor did exist is totally Vindicated this wall here 1.5 meters that's a good stonking masonry is the sort of thing you expect from a medieval building yeah and hopefully this is another entrance perhaps a grand quite formal entrance running through to a paved area here yes what does that give us in terms of structure I think we've got a very large medieval building these footings are good Quality Masonry yeah I'd like to think it's a medieval Hall um perhaps of a family or slightly on the up at the time the massive walls of the Scargill Manor would have dominated this landscape in the 12th and 13th century with a tower and Gatehouse overlooking a vibrant and productive rural community but thanks to the archaeological and historical evidence we've discovered we know it was short-lived The Manor was abandoned becoming a forlorn rundown Outpost of a family who'd moved to a richer environment further south but this ancestral home was reborn and rebuilt as a grand Tudor Manor including a new Gatehouse that has now survived for over 400 years it's rather ABS that are present from one archaeologist to another has also given our team one of its most rewarding digs even if it was a bit of a roller coaster ride [Music] do you remember three days ago the three of us were standing in that sheep pen and you said oh we think the medieval Hall is here and surprise surprise there was a medieval Hall how you feeling it's absolutely brilliant news what a marvelous present to be given something that's been around for so long yeah a pretty dodgy wedding present but we made it good for you Nile you didn't do the dodgy present but it's got solid foundations [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 92,284

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, the dark ages

Id: k84-83BnHds

Length: 48min 49sec (2929 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2023