The Fortress in the Lake | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

[Music] this week's time team comes from an enchanted lake this is flan gorse in the middle of the Brecon Beacons in Mid Wales after centuries local people have told stories about ghostly church bells under the water and a mysterious township lost at the bottom of the lake way back in the dark ages a real live human King to show how powerful he was built this man-made island in the middle of the lake and stuck a palace on top of it who was he who were the builders what happened to them all the time team have got just three days to find an answer [Music] this week's time team our McCaslin Bristol University landscape archaeologist carrenza Lewis Royal Commission on historic monuments Phil Harding Wessex archaeological trust field archaeologist Robin Bush archivist and Victor Ambrose historical illustrator [Music] right well we only got a limited amount of time and I reckon this kind of be raining on and off all weekend so to business we would get started quick what are we gonna do this is a big enclosure around the riding stables and that consultants interesting she's there like with this sort of circular enclosure around it between the crown Agra artificial island and the early monastic site we do have some geophysics in there I think at some stage anyway well this sort of shaped enclosure he's the sort of thing we get perhaps you know for a prehistoric settlement or even a post Roman settlement and you'll notice that they come to a line that she goes round it's shown it's just a bit above its problem yeah see 160 meters it's just a bit above the general sort of marshy area down below so it could have been an old island or something well a promontory yeah there's an ideal place for somebody to have a settlement but we're also surely edge you're literally gonna have a look at the at the crown I'll go down here the archaeologists at Cardiff University and National Museum Wales that don't find a lot of work there already we've got permission to work with them and have a look through the stilts around the edge of the island to see if we can find anything there that will give us an idea of what people were doing on that island and it's actually got some quite secure dates from it already we know that it was built in the late 9th century and that it was destroyed in 916 or thereabouts we're hoping that no there abouts about it's spot on from the anglo-saxon Chronicle and and I have to say that this is one of the better sites document tree wise because we got charters we've got a folklore and you name it we've got it I'm looking forward to this weekend no end well I've already got started Antoni this is news no but it is a rather fine log boat that was dug out of the lake is in Breton Museum now and this is actually got started to mate build a replica of it I mean it's pretty certain that that anybody living out here would have been using boats like that so you're making what a copy of it it'll be as nearest dammit a one over one replica and oh it's a cracker right well let's get on show yeah trango lake in South Wales lies in the middle of the Brecon Beacons about five miles from Brecon it's one of the largest natural lakes in Wales and the artificial island or pranic is the only one of its kind yet discovered outside Scotland or Island it's obviously a fascinating site for the time team and what's brought us here is a letter we received from a mrs. Mitchell who lives and works near the lake via Time Team about four hundred yards from my writing centre Elan goes is an island which we now know is man-made I'd love to know what happened to the people who built it is there any archaeological evidence of their existence to be found in the area you're sincerely Myfanwy Mitchell Ellesmere Riding Centre this is the further interesting with this circular nearly circular hedge round it I thought you ought to meet Chris and John who have gone to the geophysics survey in the field with this amazing instrument it's just like a glorified metal detector in a way but it will pick up magnetic changes in the topsoil and so we can actually identify any settlement any features any burning that's gone on within the field it means we don't actually have to dig at this stage and so we'll just be walking up and down with this and it will bleep every now and again yeah you'll hear it bleeping you know people walking up and down and because well I better get on with it don't we because with a limited time now I've got to go up in the helicopter which will be here soon and we'll keep you informed what's going on okay so we've got this extraordinary man-made construction stuck in the middle of this lake the Labour alone must have been phenomenal who on earth was it who would decide to build such a thing well if you want the Welsh name I've been practicing it's called le Seth son of Tudor and he was king of brick high Niaga which was like yeah it's the kingdom that included languor sand the hill area around about it and he seems to have had an Irish ancestry and these kind of artificial islands were common in Ireland but they're very rare if not unique over here and not only that in this part of Wales you tend to get Irish type inscriptions in an alphabet called Ogham so that there is this this kind of connection with Ireland which finds its mirror in the construction of this crown AAG we don't really know why it was built here whether it was for defense it was obviously fortified to a degree because it had to be captured at a later date but it may also have had a kind of mystical almost a ceremonial purpose as well because you wouldn't have got the entire King and his household and all these camp followers onto there at any one time with any great degree of comfort it's pretty little yeah so if they didn't live on the crown all could they have lived here in mrs. Michels d-shaped field the geophysics team are in the process of trying to find out and at the edge of the field a small dig is under way as if we discover how old the field boundary is if you think that shape is particularly significant but if you look at it from here it's much more circular than any of the other fields around and that suggests that it's there before the other fields are laid out and they've sort of been built up against it at some stage it's the sort of shape in Wales in Ireland in Cornwall and elsewhere they get associated with prehistoric farmstead prehistoric settlements that go on he uses father since right through the priesthood right to the Roman period it's in the dark ages afterwards so we sort of from a landscape one of you will look at that happening are that might be encapsulating the sort of the shape of an earlier site that's why we've got for it and what would you expect might be there in Dark Age times well ideally we'd hope to find perhaps defenses around it Bank and ditch refortified or re-emphasized from something earlier and we think if we were lucky facts of the geophysics we might get patterns of buildings and so on although I'm bound to say from up here it's rather large I think one of the advantages of coming and sitting from the air is it actually looks a bit too big for the sort of small enclosures you get in the you know in those post-remand centuries I don't feel quite as happy about it now from up here the little island is tiny isn't it yeah it's I don't think it's exactly the size that it was originally because the the reconstruction showed rather more drawn out from this frame it sort of tied four to a circle that we've got now nevertheless it's not absolutely huge and you wonder about the impressive how impressive would have looked as is fairly small feature like that with buildings on it yeah I thought that the King would have built a palace on it but it hardly looks room for that yeah I think that's true but yeah I concept of what's big um there's I think he's it's very different if you look at some of the churches of that period which we know we refer to as magnificent structures that we like only as big as your front room though you know they're the whole the whole scale of things as much smaller them and no dad's if you were used to a site like that and then it was sitting out in the light with the Palisades defences around it they would look pretty pretty impressive if you you come from a sort of glorified shared yourself with a glorified Chicken Shack you can just about see the causeway under the water now look on the right and then showing up really quite nicely I just need to show you these fools down here Tony off the west end of the lake because these are the fields of corrector has drawn our attention to where to gain that it's a little Peninsula of higher land projecting towards the lake yeah we were thinking well that's an ideal place for people to live out on that little bit of higher ground but although they plowed it you see these numbers of brown fields here there's nothing I don't think obviously archaeological there are some over there yeah they might be charcoal spreads author we might touch you go and have a look at those severs anything with them I can't believe that somebody would have use a little bit of higher land was a good place to farm with a second but I think perhaps you'll have a look at that on the ground you know tsipras anything to see this is the three and a half ton piece of oak but fill in the boat building team are attempting to transform into a Dark Age dugout boat this weekend as Phil said time is short so the plan is to working shifts around the clock to try and get it finished in time for the presentation side of the tree without incorporating this piece of raw and the maximum width we have is up to ear is it this this is the heart nurses are this is a bit we've got agree no we don't want a lot [Music] woodworking skills like these would have played a crucial part in the construction of the crane all rows of Palisades cut from oak planks surrounded the island and the remains of these can still be seen around the Krenim today our illustrator Victor Ambrose has been working on a drawing which shows how the Palisades would have stood out of the water in the 9th century [Music] within the palisade wall the Cronulla floor was made up of rock and brushwood and it's been estimated that over 1,000 tons of rock must have been ferried in carts or boats to the island and laid on top of these bundles of branches which amazingly can still be seen around the shores of the island [Music] [Music] [Music] so thankfully we got a min with us it just probably made more log popes and like that off dinners is it going there it's going very well incredibly quickly we're starting out by doing each stage using the toes and then to save some of the time save some time we're using chainsaws for a certain amount of work they well they used fire in places in the world where they have trees which are naturally inflammable like in the southeastern United States where the trees are full of resin a lot of European explorers who went there in the 16th century saw the Native Americans building dugout boats using fire partly because they didn't have metal tools and part because these trees will actually burn green oak is so full of water this stuff you feel it's damp feels damp and cool and it's so full of SAP this is a freshly felled tree that it won't burn anyway you see litmus you probably don't have to but a lot of we know from accounts from various parts of the world that people tend to use animal fat so this bit down here it's salute being smeared with lard to stop it drying out too much it's not so much to keep the water out is to stop the wood drying too fast oh it's got a bit of a tendency to split as it dries in the Sun and the wind and if you put animal fat over that slows it down and just reduces of splitting controls it to certain amount one thing you might notice Tony is that this is actually upside down yes looking at the bottom of the bow yes you can actually see here some of the ravenous piss oak planks that form one of the palisade lines you can see how well-preserved they are just one of the environments that we have and they're still here after above a thousand years and that they're really solid still that's right you can see the Timbers running in an alignment into the shoreline at this point very impressive oh very well preserved timber and this is an area we haven't really looked at yet because of course this wasn't the show when the island was built was it extended out here so actually the middle of the original settlers right where where we've seen the erosion over the last thousand years and the scrambling effect of waves wind wind generates waves most of them mixing up lines and dragging stone off down so what would you like us to do in terms looking at the silts here well as you can see what we have is a mixture of stone insults what we've done in the past is carefully laid out corridors a metre wide under water and these have been systematically searched using their hands and then sipping all the cells for the smallest of artifacts that survived if we get set out this evening work out where we're going to work tomorrow then we can actually kind of start working through the silts tomorrow morning yes I think we can [Music] a tree this shows you a common feature around your neck I think it would have been in the ninth century because not only was the dugout built out of a tall straight tree high amongst other trees and dense woodland but also the palisade Timbers from around the kernel were also made from very big Oaks perhaps so much in diameter a nice straight grain very few knots and so on and growing maybe for 150 to 300 years probably around the 200 year mark generally and those trees produce easy to work straight grain timber that you can work by splitting people didn't have souls then so they couldn't use any kind of soil hands or all chainsaw they had to do all the work as we're actually doing there would have been less holes in the original yeah because it was much more forested yeah it was much more densely forested you can look at timbers from an archaeological site like wrangles recalled the way the the tree seemed to have grown from which the Timbers work are and then you can actually to some extent visualize the landscape of the period in three dimensions when people managed woodland mainly for firewood produce essentially generally smaller nazia trees in a semi soft natural oak woodland the trees are being forced to drafts all and straight and that produces lovely sweet easy in which to work so by looking at the boat in the museum it gives just some idea of what the environment was like at the time by looking at the boat in the museum and the other Timbers from the site yes and we can reconstruct semi natural high woodland being or if you like forest wild wood being a feature in the landscape somewhere around here but in a way when you see things like the clan wars number one boat it's called in the museum wreck and you can actually if you if you know what you're looking at you can almost hallucinate and visualize the world so this is how the lake may have looked in the ninth century but what about mrs. Mitchell's field do we have any clues as to how that might have looked then have the geophysics team found evidence of a settlement here and as out wrench contain the remains of a boundary dicks which might have surround it how are we doing in the hole well really we don't through there through the hedge line for the boundary line hoping to find a ditch of thing yeah there's nothing in there I think at all well the reason being there there's a modern water pipe that's no Bank no ditch no structures tall we're dealing with a hedge okay right well we stop great it'll please you have a EULA there's nothing in this field as far as we can see actually the grady alma tree yeah nothing there's no sighting would would you expect anything to show up in the show i think it'll be in settlement here occupation at some stage we definitely got something yeah it's a total blank well that's fantastic isn't it end of day one and we seem to have found out one thing for certain there isn't anything in this field but there's tomorrow and there's the next field which mick noticed and all those interesting crop markings in so stay with us to see if there's anything in the other field [Laughter] [Music] couple of dark ages is that they have a habit of leaving you completely in the dark the local people round here didn't leave any nice big bits of pottery lying around either Romans did they didn't build big stone walls like the Normans it's the beginning of day two and the only evidence we've uncovered so far are a few charred pieces of ancient wood which we discovered in the silt over there but why the wood burnt and how come the buildings on that Island the palace or the stockade or whatever it was lasted for less than 25 years well it all hinges on a day in June 9 15 AD when an abbot called Egbert was assassinated and unfortunately at the time he was under the protection of the most powerful woman in England athol flayed the daughter of Alfred the Great and for some reason or other she decided that the king of brawny AAG was to blame for his death and so she sent an army of battle-hardened anglo-saxons into Brecon three days later and they laid the place to waste and they captured the King's wife and 33 of his followers at least that's one version of the story some people might say but it's a typical example of anglo-saxon propaganda to justify the fact that a slore flayed wanted to dominate the Welsh so she sent the troops in but whatever the true story the facts remain the same the buildings were burnt to the ground and the King's grand designs crumbled to ashes [Music] the big question for today is what do we do now having drawn a blank in mrs. Mitchell's field where else do we look for evidence of a ninth century settlement McCann carrenza have decided to have a quick look at the higher ground to the west of the lake which makes spotted from the helicopter yesterday the theory is that the lake may once have been this size marked here by the 160 contour line which would mean that this promontory like mrs. Mitchell's field would have always been higher than the lake but close to the water's edge it's difficult stuff to try and pick up things in because there's a lot of natural regularity and stuff yeah well that's the shaped blocks of stone although I don't think it's too obscured by the grass and the stubble I'd be I'd be quite happy post medieval stuff on it yes it worries me slightly yes I've been luring and dumping the stuff yes I mean there's a bit more yeah it worries me that yes they brought stuff in and if we do anything we could possibly just be could have been bought in I think you know the critical thing is you've got to decide what we actually do with this field you know whether we actually come and do some field work can you tell that's one bit of Flint like a little blade because it was struck it's nicely patinated I feel about that you know I think we should leave it like so if we are kind of failed we shouldn't put it on that stone so that we can find it again but you know one piece of Flint doesn't make a summer disease it's I mean this is the problem we're saying earlier isn't it if we're not gonna find anything really good as any confidence about what else to do by this method unless we find a huge evidence is not evidence of absence nope every Rock you're just better than these remind us if we don't find anything it doesn't mean anything there got an absence of anything to go on I mean I still think looking at it it's a good point it's obvious if I was looking for somewhere to settle on the edge of like go here but it's a big area and the corner though because that's my plaid field sucked off off the lake of what was probably marshy well anyway possibility so we found one tiny piece of Flint probably from the Mesolithic period which Robin tells me as 12,000 to 3,000 BC this means we've got evidence of activity here in prehistoric times but so far that's all in the incident room Victor's making better progress this is his reconstruction of how the cran old might have looked in the ninth century [Music] the silt search on the crane augers now started and carrenza and I are hoping to join them a bit later on but first what about mrs. Mitchell's main question where did they live I've still got a bit of work to do in the d-shaped field that would in here now but it's it's not proved to be the answer to everything we wanted to know to answer this missus Mutual's letter is that a euphemism for nothing's turned up in it no not quite I think I think no no Danny like that no we've got a bit more work to do he asked me that a bit later on but we thought we'd widely touted as a result of looking at the helicopter work that we did yesterday went over remember over the western end of the lake we saw those plowed fields and I got excited about various patches and things in them we've been wandering about there today me and cranes have been out there and we've got a couple of bits of Flint she got there look at one or two other things and we think it would be useful to get the geophysics chaps to have a look at that is this is this narrow head or am i doing it very well we wanted filter look at eat at you and give us a sort of diagnose I'm sorry to report it looked very much like glass it's not even Aborigine not even our original I don't think they've they got up this foreigner this is far more interest in Qatar don't you tell me what you think that is and then I'll tell you what I've said it is well it looks to me like a little broken blade lip snapped off good good chance it was burned yeah anyway well we'll pursue that this sort of thing yeah I'd be quite happy to sort of see summat like that in the Mesolithic Neolithic but it's certainly not later than that I wouldn't a thought yeah I mean God what do you want answers from one piece anyway we'll go well go on have a detailed look at that geophysics possibly some field work the other the other place that we've sort of rather fixed on is the other church on the other side like this langusta over here which again is on a sort of promontory with almost a little mall on which the church is built and we did in a weaker moments after a glass of wine I think we might have another cran are over there but let's be a bit more level-headed yeah but at least we could again perhaps ask you chaps to look around that with the geophysics and then we'll perhaps have a think about that we might even dig a test fit to see what sort of Jones you whatever it is we've got there and then that's then you know extending the range around the lake so that you know missus Mitchell's letter was what was going on around like who was living here and so on so is it a question basically of knocking off the most likely sites for this Royal compound or whatever it is one by one and at the end hopefully we'll come up with one on which our king of bro Carney org lived yeah the difficulty is really in a period where they don't have pottery they don't leave stuff lying around the chronologies quite exceptional so it's it's it's you know we've got have we've got a another day yet we've got to crack on beneath it right and give us the three most important things to do now I think the the the first thing is we've got to look at the churchyard which is the the early monastic site and would be contemporary the crown AAG we ought to look at this property on the western side for occupation of any day too early on there and we've got to look at the the other church on the other side of the lake and we got to finish the boat hour right I was gonna ask you about already I'm already taking bookings for the maiden voyage because the preservation around the crown on is so good our best chance of finding Dark Age material within our three days has got to be in the silt around the island itself so while I make my way to the island with carrenza to help with the silt search Robin takes Mick off to clangers Church to look at a gravestone which dates to the time of the crown all my missus Mitchell's fields this church is surrounded by a circular boundary which again usually indicates that this was here before anything else it's possible that this was once a pre-christian site which has then been reused this is one of these early Christian inscribed monuments yeah that when if one says they're relatively common in Wales they're not that common this early no but they're almost the only thing we've got in both Wales and corn or elsewhere for this language I know Tony as its Mick I'm in the churchyard over we've had a rather interesting find here that I think you'll be pleased about we're on the island and they've just discovered under the water a dark ages shale fingering that's incredible a shale over Romek it's a very significant find in terms of the cultural material that we're getting from the underwater silt searches it's a shell fingering of a type that we know has been found on similar 9th 10th century sites elsewhere in Britain what is marvelous about this particularly fine example is it is complete and in excellent condition and you just confirm the day for me mark over with our island story will bash on now with our bit about the monastry here which of course is also the same sort of date over and out that's right a lot of these stones around well they put kind of 7th to 9th century on this one which overlaps again with the same kind of period and the idea was you had in this particular instance across and then the name of the person commemorated and then the name of the person that put the cross up right so in this case we've got a cross followed by the name ger see yeah do you RCI and then bled us down the other side in other words the cross commemorates ger C and bloodiest put it up right right now the normal context for these although you can get the mean parish church is ordinary churches and chapels they are often associated with monastic sites sure and we've mentioned several times about this particular place so we can we take this as evidence of a monastery at that time or would you be happy if you had some better evidence well a paper evidence well we have got paper at Rice because there was a quarrel hierba King between King Tudor and the Bishop of the then Bishop of llandaff in round about nine to five which talks about the King turfing the bishop out of the church of the monastery of languor right and then the quarrel being made up but when we talk about monastry at that day particularly in this part of the country we're talking about a circular enclosure with huts and perhaps a few of these things standing up shop tiny little domestic community but this is one of our most tangible links with the crag and that period yes all we've got is that one charter you know associated with the monastery and this bronze stone the crag and we're never gonna better this from the the fieldwork although from what they tell us that crown OGG they make it a pretty good go of it that's right this is a typical assemblage from the underwater searching you can see the wide range that animal bones charred all possibly darkened simply on the burial conditions what's that this this is a good typical piece of furnace lining and it's evidence for metalworking on the site yes that's very interesting point of view of the activities what they were doing here for sort of the metalworking what they're eating sort of jewelry they were wearing it's it is a picture of the people that lived around that's that's not only mrs. Mitchell was asking about so now we've seen the sort of stuff we're looking for sure we're so they'd have been sort of swordsmith butchers in women's clothing basically that sort of thing I don't know what to do with all this stones see something like that I don't know whether that's oh we get a lot of driftwood and twigs off the trees here apparently the ring was found in one of the first handfuls of silt taken from the lake today no such luck for me but our luck is changing we now have a Dark Age ring and the boat building team are making fantastic progress with the dugout boat so time for an end of day meeting but more importantly a chance for everyone to get a look at the ring here's our triumphant piece a piece of gas fittings fantastic it is larger than I thought oh it must be presumably a man's dream this is amazing the difference last night they were all calm and serious no it's just we've given up on the Western promontory I think as a result of no I think it's a case that your dark brown blobs nuts that's and these sites of trees that have been cropped out and in the farmer burned so far 10 years ago bit of a disappointment it's a darker edge sighs that's all right we we now know that there was no there wasn't very excited about this langusta down here [Music] the historical associations Mercer and so on so we're all rather what you might well as a bank coming across that continues what might be a sort of outer enclosure and so they we've been doing some geophysics in it all rather we're still very early days what we've done is just a small area beyond the current church wall this is the actual wall of the peasant church and then beyond the wall there's a curving arc the present hedge line and we've actually started to survive in between and the mediate thing we noticed was quite strong a difference between the lower regions which is obviously flooded and they're giving us low resistance readings and the area actually close to the wall where we're actually getting quite high readings and I do think there may be evidence of structures in there but we need to do some more processing now I can't see all I can see is nothing in the top half and a lot of ink in the bottom that's the difference Tony that's the high response is here where you're likely to have structures because we haven't had time to process the data we can't actually see any buildings if they are there but the main difference is between these mix gone to the immediate thing of interest that's the line this clearly marks a ditch coming through at this point it's a slight earthwork difference the content there and so it's a question of how it relates does it relate to this unless it's something to do with earlier buildings by the church that's very possible I mean if we've gotten we didn't talk about what we're saying is that there is the possibility of an old Celtic church and graveyard their fifth century if the fifth century what why why do you say that well we've got the evidence of the dedication of the church to a chap called Gaston which is where you get Lange gas tea and we know that Gaston was the tutor of saint Kellogg who was one of the sons of Bracken well it all fits but it's a bit complicated we now have a connection between our site at LAN gas T and the Cranach both Lancaster's early Christian community and the island was set up by descendants of King Brian who founded the kingdom of Brian Young the question now is what do we do tomorrow well I think we're going to continue with the geophysics work there yes we want to complete the whole of the side of it around as much as we can get ongoing and then we need to cut the trench across there keep our fingers crossed hope we don't hit any barriers that just leaves what's going on the crown oak which I haven't seen yet which you have been mine yeah it's it's been pretty fruitful and I think we should just continue doing it we found some them in the Rings very nice too found quite a few other bits and pieces founded a charge of grain as well we're picking on that sort of detail so stay with us yesterday we had nothing today we've got a Dark Ages ring and the possible Dark Ages monastery who knows what we'll have to morrow [Music] so 8:00 a.m. day 3 only 8 hours to go before the presentation to the public and work begins at the Klein gas tea church site do we have enough time to dig a trench to discover more about the ditch which the geophysics team tells us runs across this field this is the ditch Tony that we're interested in you can just see it on this computer screen and that's where I've actually put the trench through and we want to actually follow the line of the ditch coming out of the church and then we're actually expanding the survey this morning to see with the ditch turns what its relationship is with the old field boundary they got any idea what the ditch might be well I think it's gonna be the old boundary of the early church the early monastic ditch and so that's why there's the great interest in it so would that imply that the lake would have come much further up this way do you think yes I think we're stood on a another slight island here and where Claire's surviving down there she's actually in this swampy area and that would have probably have been flooded and that's why we're getting low readings down there yeah as we come hurry up we're on the drier ground so we'll the geophysics survey of the rest of this field and the graveyard itself provide any evidence that langoustines on the site of an earlier monastery will we be able to tell mrs. Mitchell that this higher ground which was once much closer to the lake was occupied in the ninth century Victor has been working on an aerial view of the Krannert which makes sense of the various lines of Palisades which can still be seen on the island today [Music] this is absolutely fantastic agent I've been anxious to get out here I just can't believe the wood there sticking it up to the water like now I've got the context of it there's a bit of wood there that could be almost any day couldn't figure out it might be quite being aggregated over there with the crow mark yeah yeah that's a stained black by presumably chemicals in the water we see the roots of the chief underneath that fantastic process and then it's it's not quite underwater archaeology but it's certainly not dry land right it's incredible that the water has preserved everything so well and I'm sure that there's masses of evidence still to be found in these silts which will tell us how the cran org and the lake have been used in the past just by looking at how much wildlife still lives in the area today it's easy to imagine how important the lake would have been as a source of food so at the time at the crannogmen hundred ad people must have lived near the lake the question is did they live here at lang gas tea let's hope Phil's trench can help with the answer it's got a lot of findings in it the minute they're all very very recent but I mean it could well mean that there is actually was a hollow ear to start with and that they've actually just filled this in either deliberately or maybe as it would might have actually formed Holloway an old route way and it may be in times when there's the grain got a bit boggy or summat like that a lot of rubbish just to firm it up a bit it's not worth putting the digger in for a few more inches we have got diggers we've got human diggers so one of the fines that you've felt when you say defines a fairly recent that you've found so far dummy do you mean 19th century I mean it's just what I think you thought they've got on your son only family heirlooms yes either old holding pots obviously all broken and you see there you've got a little bit of slate and it's not a not a roofing slate it's just got scored lines on it oh like a school that's it pretty certain there's no bit so we're probably somewhere near the school times really against us but what we have to do is dig deeper and find the ditch and then ideally find some dateable evidence in the bottom of the ditch which would tell us more about when it was dug we now have two trenches at Lancaster by the way Mick has asked for another excavation to be done beside the existing church wall to see if it's been built on top of an earlier boundary the geophysics team are working as quickly as they can once they've completed their survey of the graveyard there should be just enough time to process the results with just a matter of a few hours to go the dugout boat is almost finished it's now just a question of finishing touches and making plans to transport it to the water you know Tony we've been talking about the the Irish connection with this area and maybe that was what impelled them to build the crown or a traditional Irish artificial island there is another connection which we haven't mentioned so far and that is in this immediate area six stones inscribed in an Irish script called ogum have turned up and this is peculiar to South Wales there's the odd one in England but generally speaking this is the area where it's concentrated and this is all this is all gone it's usually carved around the corner or the edge of a stone and is written upwards how do you mean carved around the corner of a stone right so you'd have notches on one side of the stone here or on the other side of the stone or actually crossing over the corner right and that would give you enough permutations and combinations with no more than five strokes or notches to each letter to get the 20 odd letters involved in the organelle favette and I wrote along this vertical line that they called the Drouin the word Cranach read from the bottom up woods with the letter C ah a a single stroke right across the line nn5 strokes on one side of the line repeated Oh G so what sort of things did they write around here well for instance I found one in this textbook which commemorates the daughter of Cunha binos and the stone actually in autumn reads the stone of the daughter of Koenig knows Vittoria and this is autumn in action in both the Latin and in autumn script so you can translate from one to another that's right yeah this is one of the algum stones which is now in the Brecon Museum you can clearly see the algum script on the left hand edge but does the fact that these stones were found in the area mean that it's possible that the crannogmen built by Irish craftsmen certainly it's a highly skilled job and the people who built it would have needed some knowledge of waterfront construction probably we'll never know but what we do know from a two-day search of the silt around the island is a bit more about how the crenell was used bits of animal bone the furnace lining the charred grain and of course the ring all add to our picture of life here in the ninth century at Lange gas tea we've run out of time trench number one has revealed a boundary ditch but we haven't got any finds from it to help us date it trench number two has confirmed that the present Church wall has indeed been built over an ancient boundary which has been repeatedly used over the centuries the alignment of these ditches does suggest it was part of a Dark Age settlement but no time for conclusions now the moment that everyone has been looking forward to has arrived it's time to launch the dugout boat [Music] you ain't gonna run off without Bo are you fantastic it floats and I must say I'm relieved because Phil's threatening to take me on a trip across the lake later on but first the presentation a new excitement because Mick believes the geophysics results at plan gas T may show the remains of a Dark Age religious settlement from what you tell me these are these are hard print so stone layers basically they're not some individual walls as such but it's even individual graves far too large for being grave they're seven or eight meters across so perhaps building size I mean you know the context to me looks remarkably like things around the wall inside the actual enclosure and you know what comes to my mind are these you know Celtic monastic sites or the chapel or two in the middle graveyard around and then cells for monks or Hermits around the outside I mean you know all we can say in sort of conclusion at the moment is that you know if this is evidence of cells of a monastery or a hermitage or something like that then it's pretty unique and it's very important and obviously we need more information from other sites and any work that goes on here to actually sort of sort it out will you be able to continue the work that we've just started at Leicester well I very much hope so I'm about both the Nationals in and the University of Wales in Cardiff have ongoing programs of research in early medieval wells really is just opening more doors for us and so I think we're gonna see this developing a big way it'd be great if time T was actually started a new dig that goes over some years that we bring back well that's right so how does all this relate to missus Mitchell's question about life around the lake at the time of the Cranach well incredibly after just three days work we can actually give her a good idea of what was happening around clangorous Lake say in around 900 AD just after the building of the croc the area would have been bustling with activity and on the Cranach there would have been smoke coming from cooking fires and furnaces smelting metal to the north there would have been an early Christian monastery here where language church stands today surrounded by the ancient circular boundary and across the water at planned gas tea it's possible there would have been another Christian site which we think might have looked like this with a group of isolated monastic cells built around a central wooden church occupied perhaps by a group of monks leading a more isolated existence and to complete our picture of Clan course in the Dark Ages it's easy to imagine at the edge of the lake that they may have been a solitary boat waiting to cross the water to the island but probably launched by people who had had a bit more practice than Phil and I have had [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 172,577

Rating: 4.9029603 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, fortress, lake, wales, welsh history, irish, irish history, dark ages, dark ages documentary, ogham, Llangorse Lake, brecon beacons

Id: qpJHsC5cacY

Length: 49min 53sec (2993 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 28 2019