The First Tudor Palace (Esher) | S13E4 | Time Team

this residential estate is in the heart of the surrey commuter belt it's typical of the success wealth and show of the modern age and in the middle of it is this tower which is typical of the success wealth and show of the tudor period but it's also the tip of an archaeological iceberg because if you look at this really old drawing you can see that the tower is the gateway to a lavish palace which was once owned by some of the wealthiest men in the country the bishops of winchester it's a palace that was once so admired that king henry viii literally stole one of the buildings so how much of it survives under these beautifully manicured lawns and how many of these gardens would it have once covered the palace has been lost for over 300 years we've got just three days to find [Music] it [Music] [Music] waynflete tower lies in easter in surrey in the medieval period it would have been three days ride from winchester and a day's journey from london by land or riverboat it's named after the powerful 15th century bishop william waynflete who built it at the height of the wars of the roses we've been invited here by its current owner penny rainbow who spent years researching the history of her magnificent home this is great isn't it somewhat blurry but it's a fair sketch from a distance but you know what's it going to be like in there amongst those buildings mind you tudor palace this is this is your period oh give me one of these the thing is it's not quite tudor what do you mean that's a thing well you think about tudor palaces with big brick gatehouses maybe woolsey at hampton court or henry viii's but this was built maybe 10 20 years before henry vii the first tudor came on the throne so this sets the standard for those brick-built tudor palaces what's this well this plan of 1606 it shows the gatehouse as it survives and then it looks like a socking great castle and what's this over here well i don't know what that is it might be a chapel but it looks three stories and a stare turret could be guest lodgings that's all to play for that one jonathan thinks that this early plan might just illustrate the late medieval layout of the palace in waynflete's time it certainly shows penny's tower with a courtyard surrounded by loads of buildings great targets for our gf's in penny's back garden it's so frustrating on day one we just have to wait until they've geophysically well no no i've got a trench digging yes exactly well let's do that if you don't mind please do if you're good you might guess give us permission this is a zonking great building isn't it isn't it now what's a bishop doing building a great tower in during the wars of the roses hang on do you actually live in this yes how many rooms have you got five bedrooms yeah but i mean it's a nice house yeah very pleasant comfortable place but was it always comfortable that's my question you've got a hole for a musket at the top and then maybe arrows underneath i mean is this a bishop who's afraid for some reason so if you've got arrow slits around the corner and the 1606 map shows a big wall so this would be coming off this angle yeah pretty much down there what's that wall doing there it could be a thick wall with a parapet like a curtain wall of a castle you've got doorways coming out of this wall here in this direction anyway so there must be a range of buildings across here yes i think we should put a trench somewhere across this range here and then we're likely to pick up not only the curtain wall but the the walls of this range as well yes now think about this because i think they're implying that they trash not only your back garden but your front garden as well that's fine by me go for it get digging go for it get digging right to our ears so we're going to dig our first trench in penny's front garden to see whether waynflete built a large defensive wall around his palace penny wants trenches so no messing around and digging starts straight away william waynflete was one of the most powerful men in the 15th century as bishop of winchester and lord chancellor he owned 240 properties but our search for his esha palace won't be easy the bishops of winchester lived here from the 12th century and they and any of its other owners who include henry viii cardinal woolsey and francis drake's family could have built on the site although waynflete's tower still survives the rest of the palace was knocked down at the end of the 17th century and the area has been landscaped on several occasions all these phases complicate our search but they're not the immediate problem for phil look we've got a main sewer coming here through where those bricks are to that manual and then at the same time we've got the the canopy of the trees we can't dig anywhere underneath there none of this is possible we really can't be digging any further than that down to the canopy over there which is where your buildings are going to be but we can survey the whole area we can survey right up to the trees so we can hopefully give you a plan tree roots might be a problem but not all our clues are below ground since we want to discover more about the palace wayne fleet built what better place to start than the tower itself what is it that's so innovative about this building well in the 15th century we'd been at war with france now we've had a lot of experience of our generals going over to northern france and flanders and seeing brick buildings but it's exactly at this period with that influence from the continent the people like waynflete start building with simply with bricks there's one here example farnham he's just up the road yeah and he's got exactly the same approach to building completely with brick is all of this building waynflete well it's a jigsaw puzzle tony because we've got 300 years of occupation here later improvements often have little bits of classical details that these architects are so used to they can't imagine doing without that's a greek key motif and that is um called the vitruvian scroll it's a wave motif penny's really keen that waynflete should be recognized as this really innovative architect how do we work out which bits were him and which bits were tacked on by someone later i suppose brick sizes are useful aren't they we can we can have a look and see whether those bits with the diaper that are obviously waynfletes are the same sizes as some of these finicky bits uh you taught me what diaper was about three years ago it's those diamond shapes that they used to put on linen hence exactly the use of the word diaper and here it just means a diamond bricks with the glaze very decorative thing and waynflete loves his diaper work penny's gatehouse is an outstanding tribute to waynflete and i'm intrigued to discover what else he built at esha john's got his geophys results for penny's back garden but there's a problem we've got the really good results you wanted phil there's a clear building we've got walls coming out beyond even more walls but it looks as though that's all underneath the canopy the main thing is i think we can get the the corner yeah corner there and there's only one branch in it it's a twig oh a twig a mere twig right in the front garden where we're trying to find out if there was a defensive wall jonathan and matt have hit on archaeology fine mortar and that's what he was 18 cents the 18th century actually yeah i'd be looking for bigger chunks of chalk knocked together with some little dark flecks yeah so my guess would be you're talking about 18th century demolition yeah we haven't found the wall yet but stewart's had a look at the early plan and he's convinced it holds the key to waynflete's palace this map which is produced by ralph treswell he's a spectacularly informative map yes i've seen a blow up of just that tiny space it includes a phenomenal amount of detail in the buildings and it's actually a measured survey although the buildings are drawn as if they're a bird's eye view the way this is made was to make a plan and then draw the buildings on afterwards it must be one of the very first measured maps then it is i think there there are a lot of clues on this map i mean this is a real gem to work with so this early plan is a great starting point to search for waynflete's palace it shows penny's tower as the gateway to the complex with a possible defensive wall coming off the side the mysterious chapel lies to the south there's a keep in the next door garden and a large building possibly a great hall immediately in front of the gatehouse so phil and the diggers begin to open a trench in the back garden in order to test john's deer fizz and tie down the buildings and in nearby easter place we've set up an incident room where the rest of the team are busy trying to uncover clues about waynflete's master plan historian john guy and our own helen geek are trawling through the records of the bishops of winchester by 13 1 we know that two carpenters were hired for mending the great gate they're trying to find anything which might throw light on the development of the palace and wayne fleet's building activity so where does this information come from it comes from the bishops pipe rules they're called pipe rules because they were long membranes of parchment and then they were bound together at the top and then rolled up around the equivalent of a rolling pin so they looked a bit like cylindrical pipes that's right but what these contain helen is not if you like major building works only repairs the infuriating thing is that the major building work is on a separate role and those roles are lost so if we know about this can we look up in the pipe roles about what waynflete's doing in the 15th century we hope so but this is really what we have to do in the next three days to actually you know plough through all these latin entries and see what we could find oh gosh how is your medieval that well i've got my dictionary john's got 40 years of records to plow through but we're hoping to give him a more specific target so we've called in mick the twig to give a dendro date and tell us exactly when waynflete built his tower hey i'm making you spoiled for choice aren't you here no tony this is a really bad building for me oh you always say that no i don't this the outside of this building looks fantastic as you come down the drive but once you actually get inside it you start realizing the building's been messed around with over the years a lot of the original wood is gone they brought lots of sort of reused bits of attack as anywhere i can describe it in here the roof has gone at some point a lot of the floors have gone so there just is not that much timber in here that i can do anything with well it all looks pretty old to me now look at this piece here this this looks like it's just come from local builders merchants so you're being a bit rude about your house being incredibly rude about my houses yeah it was about tackle tap yeah what did you say tack it's a shropshire thing despite these sarcastic country comments mix managed to locate a beam which he thinks might reveal the date of the tower in penny's back garden phil's beginning to find evidence of buildings oh look i know it's got the mortar it's got the more look it's got the mortar on it but that's the edge of it there's the well it's got some finger marks in there look oh yeah well they presume he must have just lifted it off and there's the other edge so that's one corner of it everyone knows the rest of it no so do you fancy living somewhere like this oh it's my dream house i think i might make an offer yeah and it's in such good neck too isn't it it's beautiful i mean the quality of this whole thing is extraordinary look at the staircase we've just come down every brick individually curved to make that sweep so much surviving from the 15th century yeah yeah what's this thing here it's a fireplace it seems rather bizarre to have one on the landing i don't know what that is there's no flu there you call it a gate house but look over here there's a big room which is now penny's kitchen there's a huge thing here actually this is the lift which i don't think they would have had in the tuna period but you've got another room there another three floors above isn't it so you've got a host of rooms why does a gatehouse need all that it's an inadequate description in a way isn't it does much more but other than offering people the sign of the entrance and a means to direct them through to the other buildings you need a porter as well to make sure you know security is adequate and then there are big lodgings above because they're grand spaces with good views in a prominent position you know but three for the price of one i'd say such a nice house in the front garden bridge has been working on the wall trench for most of the day are you getting on them bridge wow we're getting down mick don't look very interesting no it's not really we have a little bit but it all seems to be out of situ and we're just going through lots of garden soil and demolition layers and that's really about it that's right my biggest concern at the moment is found this 1912 map here all right of the excavations done then you can see this is foundations of brick for brick wall of wayne fleets times with a little note here saying foundations are over six foot below the present surface have is that the top or the bottom of the foundations well my pick is it's going to be the either way jonathan it's a long way down isn't it it's what we've got here it is and the wall if you look at the scar on the tower at the moment should run through about here right okay so let's dig the trench for the machine let's get that far and then think about it again yeah okay so bridge and matt will have to dig a lot deeper to find the wall but in the back garden phil's keen to know whether he's found the first clues to the buildings on the early plan and hopefully waynflete's palace i think i've got something here that might interest you it's a brilliant the glazing it basically it's a tudor floor tile a tudor yeah so it dates from about 1500s onwards no hang on jonathan i thought you said this morning this place was pre-tudor yeah well now the gatehouse that survives is but this has been a manner of the bishops of winchester since the early 13th century so waynflete wasn't the first builder and he certainly wasn't the last and for these it could easily be someone like the bishop of the first half of henry viii reign who was richard fox another great builder in line it's nearly the end of day one and although phil's finding building material it's later than waynflete and i'm getting worried that we're not any closer to understanding the rest of his magnificent palace well maybe this trench was a bit of a disaster we've been digging all day and we've still down on nothing no it hasn't at all we're still working on you're always like that the end of day one you're always a real misery at the end of day one we need to do a lot more work in this trench and the same in the other two in there we're hardly down on the archaeology at all but also there's the geophysics of the whole garden which seems to show some sort of big building probably a hall we need to look at that and then of course there's the other gardens and the one in that direction has got this thing that looks like a big chapel in it so we have a look at that as well what about the documents i've had a great day tony i found all sorts of interesting documents about the things that were happening here but i've also found an account of an exorcism in the buildings that were over there which actually adds to what we know about the arrangement of the rooms excellent so tomorrow a hall a chapel maybe even an exorcism that should raise our spirits it's a joke day one is a joke am i allowed to finish on a joke beginning of day two here in esha where we're looking for the rest of the palace to go with that magnificent gateway and yesterday we got some pretty good clues in penny's back garden but one of the buildings that we're looking for is this chappily thing which would have been on this end and that's not going to be in penny's place at all but in one of these back gardens the chapley thing is just one of the palace buildings which once lined the banks of the river mole and it's shown clearly on the early plan to the south of the palace we've compared the plan with the modern estate and we think this building stood two doors down from penny's tower so we've begun to see a fizz in this back garden to see if any of the structure remains and find out whether it was waynflete's chapel waynflete's power extended way beyond the bishopric he was a great educationalist headmaster of winchester provost of eaton and built modeling college oxford back at the tower and phil's got a captive audience as penny and her children check up on his progress in her garden in her front garden we're trying to establish whether fleet built a defense round the palace have you got this wall yet matt not quite rick and you can see we're getting pretty deep now yeah i'm watering the bottom i see that's cool in the bottom but according to the 1912 map we're still about six inches off right are you actually on the right line looking at that uh chamfer up the tower there i wonder if it isn't a little bit further back over this way yeah so i think what we've got to do yeah is go down a little bit more right i think you're right we should probably go back a bit more as well move it further back yeah so once again the digger makes its way over to hunt for the elusive wall well i'm off to the incident room on a little ghost busting trail yesterday you teased me with the promise of the story of exorcism and you still haven't told it to me well in the early 17th century the house was owned by relatives of francis drake the great francis drake who fought the spanish armada and the lady of the house joan drake suddenly woke up one night and streaked and screamed and said that she was possessed by a devil so her husband sends for an exorcist and he comes to the house and in fact he climbs the stairs and joan drake is in the dining chamber which is on the first floor and she sees him coming so she races upstairs to her bedroom and bolts the door so her husband chases after her with a great iron fork in his hand and beats on the door well what happens next is that in fact they sent from more exorcists they're wrapping the chamber above jane drake's bed chamber and they pray and they fast and as far as i can tell from the documents about eight years later joan drake is finally reconciled to christ well it's a lovely story and a happy ending but does it help us at all well i think it does because in fact what it shows is that if the dining chamber which we know has to be on the first floor because that's how things were then so if joan drake's chamber her bed that was on the floor above and these three puritan exorcists are on the floor above that it has to be a four-story lodging do we know what she was doing with the devil well she she said that she committed the unpardonable sin this is a family show but have we any idea what that might mean well it could involve you know the idea that she'd had cardinal congress with the devil good lord back at the tower phil's found more walls than he can well shake a brick at look there's a face of stone that runs along there you've got a big block of stone in there block a stone in there there's a all the way along there that comes in there i mean i was wondering whether this isn't the earliest earliest war we got on the side it's it's just complicated very very complicated while phil struggles with too many walls and matt struggles to find one jonathan's taken me to nearby hampton court just over three miles away hampton court was built by one-time easter resident cardinal woolsey and jonathan wants to show me just how much it owes to waynflete what's the date of this place january 1515 is when wolves's carpenters and masons turned up and the materials poured in for hampton court but at that time when it was a building site he lived on waynflete's manor alicia really at waynflete's old house anyway so every morning when he came in he'd got that image of isha in his mind absolutely he did you can certainly see waynflete's influence in these diamond patterns in the look of the brick one you can't tell anybody but look carefully at them see the way in which they don't really line up they're all over the place now waynflete's mason set that diaper work perfectly it's very organized on the facade it's tightly built it's a kind of relief to know that even cardinal wars he had problems with his build isn't it it's a huge contrast to waynflete's crisp diamond patterns picked out in a black glaze no cowboys on this job but no one really knows how this effect was achieved so we've called in brickmaker tony minter and glazed specialist beryl hines to experiment so what are you putting into these glazes well we've got four glazes that we're trying out the first one has got a potash feldspar with some clay the second one is soda ash with some clay the third one wood ash with some clay and the fourth one is a fairly traditional medieval style lead glaze with some copper in right how have you come up with those um recipes have you got them from documentary evidence or have you done any scientific analysis to come up with them well there is no documentary evidence so how are we going to get the glazes onto the brick well we're going to dip them and we're going to brush them can have a go please do right so i just paint it on with this brush too i shall have a go here we go so the bricks are coated with the four experimental glazes hoping to replicate the black finish of the diaper pattern it's now a 24-hour wait while they're fired in a kiln at over a thousand degrees two doors down from the tower john's got the geophys results for the chapley building we've got these responses here now they're actually in this area where this sort of little bit of where we've got the ridge we've got higher readings down there that might just be make up for the river but i'd have thought if we put a trench across here yeah um then we can investigate what that is perhaps about a two by two or something like that or something across here just small to start with something we don't know the garden totally do yeah okay let's do that then mark it out for us yep then i swim uh only if it warms up a bit after a day and a half in penny's front garden matt might finally have made a breakthrough in the wall trench hold it there for a second think there we go oh without a doubt ah and there's a course down there as well [Music] that's the other side there definitely so we've got one bit there and one part of the wall there so what am i standing on here matt seems to have hit a brick wall in more ways than one while in the neighbouring garden things are just getting started as kerry opens a trench to search for the chapley structure and in penny's back garden rakshas opened another trench based on john's geophys results which showed a large building possibly a great hall now phil's cleaned up the walls in his trench he's pretty sure he's found part of it if this is the great hall coming along like this geophysics says that it doesn't run the other side of the path right so if this is the corner of the hole i'd like to resolve whether or not it turns this way if it if it's absent from there yeah we know that the hall has got to be this way and not that way in other words whether we got the front corner or a back corner yeah good very good keen to solve this puzzle phil and jonathan want to know whether raksha's trench holds any clues raksha oh hello hey cheering on doing very well actually we've got this this wall running down here and it's still it's composed of the similar material that phil has in his trench we have something coming up this side which is composed of flint and mortar not i can't really see what's going on because i think we need to extend that way and then we have this floor running through here and i'm wondering whether it's a corridor or not is there any chance that you're walking on a floor that's made up a bit of rubble and cement or mortar that would have had tile on top of it yeah it's possible we had lots of tile coming out of the demolition layer because that wall looks a lot like yours well that's the obvious thing it's exactly the same composition as the wall i got running parallel to it and it's also the same composition or the one that looks as though it's coming parallel to the pathway what sort of distance we got well let's measure it out phil never mind about types [Laughter] how one two three four five six seven eight eight nine nine ten about ten meters that's good thirty foot isn't it just over thirty foot so that's that's exactly right for a great hall yeah absolutely bang on typical nice so we've found the great hall which ties in perfectly with our plan and it must have been part of waynflete's palace the halls made of stone so would have been built earlier than the brick gate house we've also located a wall in the front garden it's made of brick but is it waynflete hey jonathan come look at this sloth mate i can have a nose yeah this is all get really really complicated now look you've got two walls going on we've got the first wall here yeah it's lovely flat face down to there and from there downwards is the slightly more messy foundation and also appears there's been a drain cut through it there we carried on back there's rubble so either the wall is collapsed down here like that or it could be beginning of a culvert which came up like that then we hit another wall or in fact more of a large plinth with a kind of triangular feature on top which seems to have a couple of bricks heading off in that direction that 1912 map didn't show two walls here did it not at all it showed one wall marked coming straight up this way quite a wide wall and this is that wall do you think that's shown in 1912 it seems to be on the right alignment a little bit off so does that mean there's a passageway between these two walls then well doesn't seem to be any flaw in between in between these two walls they're also not quite aligned together so they could be different phases as well so is this bishop waynflete then because we came we dug this hall thinking this might be a defensive wall built by the bishop that's what was claimed in the early map wasn't it but i need to get down and have a look at the bridge compare them with the tower let's have a look jonathan i'm going to leave you to carry on with this and i'll come back later when you've sorted it out all right as the archaeologists tried to date the wall make the twigs busy working on his wood samples trying to find a precise date for the tower [Music] bridge is casting an expert eye over a coin we found and historian john guy is plowing through the records searching for evidence of waynflete's building project and by the tower there's been another find stuart penny's done some great research and she pulled out this plan from the bodleian library in oxford and it's by john aubry the surveyor i think it's a great plan so i've been able to spend a little bit of time looking at it there's the gate house there there's your wall but also there's this the tower key which is probably the most important building on the side i couldn't stop playing once that once i got my teeth into this and i've put it against the the modern map there's the gatehouse there there's your wall that's where the keep is and the majority of it is in next door's garden what this basically means and tells us is that the most important building on the site is actually just behind these trees here we might just be able to get a bit of it can we dig it well i think i think there's enough room to to get in there there's a strip down here we could dig in but i think the majority is kind of oops over there we might be able to unearth a key building on the early plan a whole castle keep and it's a great opportunity to discover whether or not waynflete was building with defense in mind and the sticking starts i've heard that mick the twig might have some news for us hey youtube dendro date dendro day what is it i don't know he won't tell me he's been very secretive you are such a tease no tony you had to be here for this i've actually got to eat humble pie here is me saying this wood was absolutely useless yeah yeah and the rest which which yes well actually i've actually got to tell you that i've managed to get a date out of it and what we've managed to do is get the date range down to 1462 to 1472. fantastic it's pre-pharm absolutely it's free hampton court and it's pre-farnham that's wonderful please there's an undisguised triumph it's not a competition there you go you can have that oh i can't believe it well penny seems to be pleased not bad going for day two but will mix dendro help us understand waynflete's palace the dendro date 1462-1472 oh that's it yeah nice penny heard she went it's earlier than far north a triumph very good it makes a lot of sense too waynflete opens parliament in 1459 with a with an impassioned speech of let peace and unity be amongst you all because we're in the wars of the roses aren't we in that date yeah and in 61 his fears are realized because he's besieged in his own house at east miami so to to make a castle-like palace from 1462 makes a lot of sense to me but do we have anything archaeological that marries with that kind of date ah well look at this this is a silver coin from the demolition of the hall it's an irish penny of edward iv and these are really quite uncommon because they're not supposed to circulate in england because they're lightweight and this one's been clipped terribly anyway and it dates to 1473 to 8. very close isn't it very good mick what about what i have been referring to all day as the chappalie type thing on the edge of the complex is it a chapel i would doubt it i would need a lot of convincing actually i i can't see a big free-standing chapel like that okay so we're thinking at the moment probably not chapel is there anything that we can be sure about in terms of what buildings we use for what well i think we actually got a keep a castle-like key john arbour in 1673 describes things as being castle-like and that 1606 map seems to show that he won it it does then his plan shows a thing here which looks like a square keep with turrets on the corners just like a castle so are we beginning to look at a complex which is essentially about defense yeah i think at various times in its history probably was a more defensive structure probably early on and probably later on and it would have looked like a castle so tomorrow we'll start looking not so much at esha palace but something a little bit more like isha castle yeah [Music] beginning of day three here in penney's back garden in easter where we weren't looking for esha palace except now we think that at least some of the time it had a much more defensive function maybe something more like isha castle and this being day three some of our lads have been here since seven o'clock this morning because they think that in these trees somewhere there might be a really important significant trench actually it's more like a badger in here i think they reckon thank you that there could be the keep in there although yesterday you said that the majority of the keep was in the next garden so why is this so important that's right the majority of the keep is in the next garden it's just possible this strip down here might be within penny's garden but the majority is in the other garden there's no doubt about it look that's the survey next door you can see the keep quite clearly this dotted line is the avenue of trees behind us and the keep extends across here so you haven't been able to fish behind the trees no but it it extends round like that so could these red bits actually be the tip of the key yeah and we're digging in here it's looking good we've made loads of progress there's a great hall opposite penny's gatehouse we've found a wall though we're not sure how it fits into waynflete's grand scheme and now we've got the chance to discover and date a whole castle keep the site's now a hive of activity bridge is busily digging in our chapely trench and the diggers continue their early morning efforts on the keep trench i'm keen to see how the great hall fits together in penny's back garden so jonathan's giving me a guided tour raksha is on the other side picking up on the geophysics is very clear and there is another piece of iron stone masonry that's the other side of the hall so what's the logic of that why is it here like this well you see nothing should impede the relationship of the gatehouse to the hall because you need to be guided through to the entrance to the whole complex okay so i come through the gatehouse yeah and the hall is the assembly space so coming but you're now walking through the porch and you've gone through what raksha's wall you're into the hall now there's the kitchens over there they're knocking up dinner for you this is where you as a bishop bishop tony have a court you have retainers you have staff this is your basically your staff canteen and big reception space it's an all-in-one multi-functional extravaganza so i come in here yeah so through the timber screen and aubry describes a roof here with angels holding up shields fabulous vision and bits of stained glass so from the south the stained glass will shine through on a platform at the far end where the bishop sits presiding over everyone now when he's finished his meal he's going to go up his stairs off he goes there's bishop warmth bed comfort far end there's the kitchen's noise dirt smell danger the hall separates everything out into into servant's end and posh well that's that bit sorted out let's go so not only have we identified the great hall but thanks to documents we've got an idea what it looked like inside helen's keen to find out what else the documents can tell us john now we've got that dendro date 1462 to 1472 the building of the gatehouse is there anything in the pipe rolls that would help us narrow down that date even further there was a word i couldn't read and uh i've read it now i've translated it it's a billy that means sable and you think well that's a fur you know for a gown or decorating a hood but in fact i discovered from the woolsey building accounts that he had sables and they were ropes and they were special ropes for gins that's the engines and cranes the heavy duty lifting equipment of late medieval early modern building sites so there's some major building project going on in 1462-3 and obviously a rope had snapped and so they had to replace them so it occurs in those repair accounts so is that enough of a smoking gun it's very it's highly suggestively suggestive that's fantastic we've now got the evidence which proves waynflete commissioned major works around 1462. we know he built the gatehouse opposite a medieval great hall and i'm spurred on to find out whether that wall and the keep were part of his grand design and then there's that other building in the next door garden well john you reliably informed me that there was going to be something in this trench we've gone down through what looks like just demolition makeup layers and just hit natural geology you've summed it up it's the makeup that we saw just that gravel layer will give us the effect that would be enough to give you that signal yeah because the clay is so wet and that is dry by contrast right so it's just the make up right so i mean the main thing we can see from this trench no building i think we shut this down then should we shut down this garden then nick yes i think so you know don't fancy a dip first well i quite fancy a bit of a dip you said no to me it's a disappointment but we can't really complain we found the hall and the keep trench looks very promising we're looking for the last piece of the jigsaw you know we've got the hall the really big thing that we're looking for is the keep that's why we're digging in amongst the trees and we think that this brick wall might actually be the wall of the keep you know this plan anyway but you know your house is there yes and the keep is there now the crucial thing is to be whether or not we can find one of these octagonal towers in fact exactly this mirror image of what you've got on the corner of your house exactly the same thing so we reckon that if this is the key the key identification thing is whether or not this wall carries straight on or whether it splays out into the turret and i reckon that we are just about a point to know whether or not that's true or not fantastic because you see look we've got a wall coming along there and it's going straight there look oh amazing that's just brilliant so what would have been in that turret another staircase or you know what have you got what have you got what have you got in your turrets [Laughter] well what have you got your turret a spiral staircase well probably a good bet then that you've got spiral circuit amazing but that has got to be the key that is playing out got the castle you've got the keep in your garden the keep trench is getting more exciting with each bucket load and john and his geophys seem to have found a fan in penny science is amazing isn't it hear that technology here what's that amazing 21st century science are you impressed by i'm very impressed oh good lord if you if you work with him as long as if you work with him as long as we have you'd know this was just a mere fluke i'll just ignore that you get on in with your toys things are also shaping up nicely in the wall trench have you sorted this yet you chaps there's been a breakthrough mick oh i like breaking news that's good we have got can you see down here see the brick floor here which joins up this wall and this wall ah so they were definitely contemporary right so does that help us jonathan in explaining what it is it does if you're if you're standing in what's a passageway yeah that makes sense and this is a pier there so that a column of of brickworks rose from it right it ties in exactly with what john aubry shows in his 1670s survey of this being a whole arcaded wall with a terrace on top and that explains the bulk so we're underneath it here exactly you're just outside the wall yeah matt is under the terrace and so about five feet over a head would have been a walkway you see now i've been looking at the bricks yesterday all i had to go on was the standard brick size that looked like waynflete was using on the tower well that's nine to nine and a half inches by about four and a half yeah but but these go from nine and a half up to ten so actually the brick you can't make a typology here so we've got to look at another way of reading this and the way to do it is to follow this terraced wall and see what its relationship is with the gatehouse so we've got to look at the gate house now what's going to hold the info yep right so mick the bricks are all over the place we're not going to learn much from them so the building's got to speak to us now that feature up there yeah of course window it's window now isn't it but what about the proportion ah it's more like a doorway isn't it it is too yeah it is did waynflete have that door put in or is it later well there's no ragged hole around it it's contemporary the tower isn't it absolutely but now it goes out onto thin air if it is a two-story wall there should be some way of getting to the underside of it that's rather good isn't it yeah so we should find some means of getting into it from the stair turret look at this mig oh yes i noticed this but it makes a lot more sense now yes it's bang on line with matt's trench yeah if the stairs one's carried around you might have the option of going up or down but that would lead you down to the underside of that double decker wall outside so that's the lower doorway that's right up the stairs here look let's see how the that window was once look it's a door and there's you've even got one of the pintles of the door left looking the wall there oh yeah yeah yeah there's a flipping lock look catch plate down there well that all makes a lot more sense now doesn't it so we'd walk out there onto the top level of a big arched wall yeah maybe with crenellations on the top and it does feel like something of a castle yes doesn't it yes yeah that's brilliant that is it all makes sense so we've found our defensive wall of two levels with a covered walkway on top and what's more it's pure waynflete but penny's not gonna let us stop now she's certain there's more of that keep down there it would be wonderful to get the return so we know that you're abortion you're talking like an archaeologist just the more you dig the more we find out i know so what we've got to put back well i'll put it back just please if the um if the taking away of it's the problem then i'll help put it back [Laughter] i just rather you yes please all right we'll take out a bit more phil doesn't seem to need a lot of encouragement for penny to get her way the glazed bricks have been fired for 24 hours and it's the moment to see whether our experiment to replicate the finish on waynflete's diaper work has been a success is this the um glaze that we thought was going to be the felt about potash feldspar no no this is the one and the temperature hasn't gone high enough to flux the glaze so it hasn't melted at all no it's completely unshiny it doesn't even look like glaze no no no the wood ash hasn't melted either so does that mean that the temperature needed to get over 1000 degrees yes then to create the glaze if we gone any hotter the brick would have melted it's actually because yeah this big underground shape yeah yeah this is an incredibly vivid one here well that's the lead glaze with copper in so tony are you happy that we've reproduced something similar to wayne fleet's tower i i have spent about four and a half years trying to achieve this effect and fired nearly a thousand bricks and this is the best so far and for me what's so amazing about this is the incredible glittery effect that you get there's just no way you could do this with stone no absolutely while bridge and helen have rediscovered the lost art of brick glazing phil and penny are making sterling progress and the octagonal turret is beginning to take shape this is a a strange twist for time team there's all the experts standing on the edge of the trench watching the owner of the garden do the digging have you enjoyed yourself very much sue i'm a willing apprentice what's he like as a teacher i've got no complaints a bit cheeky at times she's still under instruction you said that you thought that this trench would be the linchpin of everything that we were doing what is it that we found well this is one of the most amazing things i've seen on time team this is a corner of a vast brick keep that must have accompanied the gatehouse and it's waynflete's character of building and this should have been his lodgings and the whole arrangement would have been impressive wouldn't it you know you imagine coming through the big brick gate house into a courtyard and now as soon as we got past that that's impressive you get into a core chart out here and there in front of you is an even bigger brick tower when you come through the gatehouse that he's built he has a two-story wall with a terrace on the top he's got he's got his own private link between the gatehouse and his lodgings because that's what this is all about it's smart lodgings in a place that looks like a defensible castle what's the relationship of this keep with the great hall does he live in both of them or does he live in one of them i think it depends on whether he's visiting here as a stopping off route on his way to london or whether he's having visitors here because if he needs to entertain then he's going to be in the hall and retreat to the lodging if he's on his own he may as well just walk through the gate house and lock himself in this wall's a big display place isn't it where you know you have feasting you you shove how wealthy you are how much food you've got and so on he's not going to do that if he's just going to come in for a you know a point in the sandwich on the way on the journey well it's the perfect end to our three days in a major brick-built palace that had been lost for 300 years [Music] he wanted wayne fleet's reputation restored it seems like he's kind of done it himself doesn't it got this massive gatehouse put a defensive wall a curtain wall all the way around it lots of buildings here for food preparation kitchen great hall dominating the middle of this area and right over there even bigger than the gatehouse a keep and virtually all of the buildings in your garden good story it's superb [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 117,488

Rating: 4.9729562 out of 5

Keywords: Team Team, Archaeology, History, Education, Educational, British TV, British History, Tony Robinson, Phil Harding, John Gater, Stewart Ainsworth, Mick Aston, archeological dig, Channel 4, Time Team Full Episodes, Full Episode, time team full episode, time team, time team season 13 episode 4, time team surrey, time team esher, time team tudor palace, british history, surrey history, history channel, Archaeologists, historical dig site

Id: A70ExrIWQ0c

Length: 47min 36sec (2856 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021