The Lost Norman Motte And Bailey Castle Of Alderton | Time Team | Chronicle

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] two summers ago local man Derek Batten was driving through this Village alderton near Northampton when he was surprised to see a sign advertising a castle and a moat for sale he was intrigued because he didn't even know there was a castle around here to cut a long story short he bought it and this is what he got for his money the remains of what's thought to be a Norman Castle which as you can see is almost completely covered in trees naturally having bought it he wanted to find out more about it but he didn't have much success which is why he contacted time team he wants to know who built it when it was built and how much of it remains and as usual time team have got just three days to find out [Music] foreign [Music] I've walked all the way around your site and I reckon you've been conned no no he hasn't dude there's no Castle it's just a little Hill it's very definitely what we'd expect from Norman Castle you can see it's under the trees but you can see the the moat and the rest of it is hidden under the trees but it's what we'd expect you'd have to take all estate agents particulars with a pinch of salt but this said castle and moat I reckon I've got a moat I can see that and this expert tells me it's what we'd expect for a Norman Castle what sort of Castle is it well I think it's probably a ring work is that what we call a modern no no if you come and look at Victor's drawings look you can see the sort of two basic types of Norman Castle this is a modern Bailey look with a big Mound with a Timber tower on the top and around the bottom one or more Baileys which have got the domestic buildings in whereas a ring work is a much more flattened Mound with all the buildings on the top so are we going to be looking for the remains of buildings up there somewhere yeah we're going to be looking on the top and we're going to be looking at the bank and ditch because they'll tell us something about when it was built it's not surprising most people don't know there's a castle here it's almost completely covered by trees hopefully Derek has cleared some of the overgrowth in the interior of the castle where Jeff is working but our surveyor Bernard has got quite a battle on his hands recording the Contours of the site so that we can see what it looks like without any trees look it's five past 11 on day one yeah this must be some kind of a record we've already got a trench going in yeah the reason is we need to get right to the bottom of the ditch so we need the full three days to do it Phil how's this Trace going very very well actually Tony we've already got through the main disturbance the the recent disturbance and we're already into ditch fills and mainly we've actually got medieval Pottery all right what you got yeah what we've got here we've got a mixture of stuff in the top soil but underneath we've got a couple of bits of a medieval roof tile and a couple of bits of medieval Pottery late 13th to 14th century so we're definitely into archeology here but this place wouldn't have been built in the late 13th or 14th century No but the evidence for if it's a Norman Castle is going to be much further down in the ditch the castles are protected ancient Monument but because so little is known about it we've been given permission to dig in specific areas of the site why have you said that we should dig here in order to find out more about the mo than anywhere else we looked at all different locations and if you see on this photo you can see we've got the modern Road by the side of the castle we think that's on the medieval line but in more recent centuries there's been dumping of rubble and other rubbish in the moat in this area so we thought move around to an area where there's less contamination so it's the best place to dig and what other areas are you going to let us dig in well we've agreed you can look in three areas uh this this trench in in the motor itself one on the bank and one inside the castle is that actually going to be enough to tell us what we want to know well it should be because we're actually looking very carefully to place these trenches where they'll give the maximum amount of information for the minimum amount of disturbance of the size 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 and 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 the digging strategy was agreed weeks ago it's just the precise location of each trench that needs to be decided now we reckon somewhere here Tony through here we're going to put a trench from here all the way up to here up this slope and then over the back here into the interior how are we going to do it is it technically possible hang on to the roots that's the best way when you get obvious you'll never get up it's kind of archaeologists just hanging on to Roots between days well Mickel rigs some sort of system up I've no doubt when you mixed be able to get us to get us up here I'll I'll try so trench number two here to investigate how and when the rampart was constructed which leaves us with one last area to investigate the interior of the castle we got the Jew first John yeah but it's a bit disappointing Tony we're seeing lots of tree roots and we're not seeing much more detail than you could actually see in the Earthworks themselves how do you feel about that I'm quite pleased in a way because they're in that platform is very distinctive to me that that's as good as evidence as John normally gets with with thick hard lines on this drawing that's got shape and form to it and there's an earthwork that suggests there's a building or some sort of structure going on over there so are you saying that the Earthworks are doing for us what geophys so often does I think so in this case yeah and what we had to rely on in the days before so work begins across the earthwork which might be the remains of a building in the interior of the castle while a short distance away digging has started on the rampart on the easy part of the trench leaving a bit more time to think about this [Music] a camera of my own my own talk to some of the perfume like the diggers Stuart yes have you dug a castle before no no no very rare opportunity to dig a castle have you come across anything yet that's excited you for the whole site's exciting is our English Heritage inspector excited to ask I think I probably am this is across the monument we know very little about and the opportunity to actually find out how it works it comes along very rarely we're also going to be investigating one of the gardens that back onto the castle because local rumor has it that some burials were discovered here when a sewer pipe was laid a few years ago as the gardens a good distance from the village graveyard it possible the burials are part of an earlier Cemetery perhaps associated with the castle this is our incident room which is the local Village Hall and here's Stuart beavering away what are you coming up with well is Air Force grass which show a big complex of Earthworks around the castle you see the castle there we carved some of the trees just here don't sit there we see all around here they're all these other Earthworks and these may give us some Clues as to which comes first here whether Castle is dropped into an already existing landscape or whether these other things are built around the castle I'm going to try and unravel all these layers so what are you actually going to be doing lots of walking is Ray San hello oh this is interesting what you got this is Bernard's survey data with mapping it it's the interior of the castle so even though I could hardly interpret it at all because it was so covered in trees by the end of the third day I would be able to make some sense of it because of what you've done hopefully the model clearly shows the earthwork we're digging inside the castle and as Bernard collects more survey data we'll be able to show all the lumps and bumps that make up the site especially the shape of the huge ditch which surrounds the castle hold on with that right here sure Castle ditch well it's incredible how'd you feel about it gosh you've done some work what on Earth made you buy the castle in the first place well there are moments in my life when I've wondered that myself over the last couple of years or so but I've got an interest in local history bit of an interest in archeology and I thought it would be something that I could develop in my declining years I mean anyway you're drawing through the village and you certainly see this sign it says for sale what on Earth happened when you went home and said I think I'm gonna buy a castle well I must say Bridget's quite used to me coming home with a lot of eccentric ideas from time to time and I think she just Shrugged her shoulders thank you having summoned up some courage make the digs currently testing his system for digging the Steep side of the rampart but now I want to talk to Robin is there a chance we can find out from the documents who built the castle not precisely they didn't need planning permission in those days in quite the normal sense the earliest record we've got for this place solderton is the Doomsday Book of 1086 and that's common for a lot of places in England uh what we do know is that by that time 1086 uh William the Conqueror had granted the manner to his half-brother Robert count of mortane who became almost overnight after the conquest the wealthiest landowner in England by the king and the church so you reckon this Robert's count of montane could probably have built the castle I think it's most likely he was a a prominent Norman Baron and he was the kind of person who needed to keep his thumb on the newly conquered population who were ready to revolt at a moment's notice kind of person isn't very hard evidence is it could it have been built later well there is one other period the Anarchy during the reign of King Stephen which is what 60 years later 1130s 1140s it's the period of brother cadfail on the Telly and they were building castles then they were very definitely building castles because effectively Civil War had broken out between Stephen and his rival the empress Matilda so those are the two possible periods yes so it's from the 10 70s 80s and the 11th 30s 40s that we ought to be looking for evidence from but my money is on the early period well the pottery finds from the castle so far are telling us that the site was still in use in the 1300s but the big surprise today is the large number of pottery finds discovered in our trench in the back Garden naturally Kathy and many of her neighbors want to know more about them how can you tell looking at the pieces what age they are and where they've come from we've got lots of different variations in Pottery which add up to the identification I mean this piece for instance is a medieval jar or cooking pot Rim it's a very distinctive shape the main way of identifying it is what we call the inclusions it's the different minerals and other bits and Bobs that we find in the clay this piece was made up at livedon or stanyan up in the northeast of northamptonshire again the inclusions the bits of fossil shell in it are much bigger and not as well distributed within the clay which is very distinctive of that industry we've also had a fair bit of animal bone sort of lots of domestic animals of All Sorts um so I mean this is early days but we're wondering whether some of the stories of Bones being found in the pipe trench might relate to these it's nearly the end of day one how does Professor Aston reckon it's all going well this one here we're still taking the top soil off yeah so that's the that's going to be through the rampart that's going to be a three day of that one well I think so because it's so slow but here this is already beginning to produce really quite nice archeology now you see producing nice archeology am I allowed to get in uh you better ask Katie no she says no why not all it is well tell me what's there well we've just taken a whole load of Rubble off which has got lots of 14th Century Tires this is the rooftop we've just seen down there isn't it yeah and now the green green glaze stuff look yeah and now and now we're coming down onto pits in there I can't see a pitch show me a pit and you see the black and the yellow no you're treading in the trains yes I'm allowed to I'm professional you see the edge there yeah and there's lots of black material bit of tile charcoal so it's probably a rubbish pit of some sort right but we're still in quite late periods so we've got quite a lot more to do I think you still think it looks like a grubby hole Yeah but it's a grubby hole that's got a pit in it finally just enough time to see what's happening in the garden for myself crikey this has got deeper since this morning oh we've been working very hard Jenny what have we got in here well it's all turned out to be a lot more there'd be some human bones and there doesn't seem to be at the moment but we have got several really interesting features in the bottom we found the sewer pipe that was what led us here originally I think I can smell it yeah but under that it seems to be cutting through a really big pit that's full of lots of organic stuff and a lot of animal bone so that might be where the rumor started but over here there's a very strange feature that looks as if it's early medieval maybe 12th century we've had this um lovely big piece of cooking pot which Paul thinks is very early so we don't really know quite what's going on but it's certainly very exciting whatever it is it looks as if it's almost part of a settlement you know sort of pre-village or something it went with a Castleman doesn't it yeah it looks domestic definitely it was all the animal bone and some of the pots been in the fire and that's saying I know from the way that they're talking that they're going to say can we extend the trench tomorrow that was the next thing yeah yes how would you feel if we made it bigger I'm quite open to it even if it went as far as the party they say that the bones are somewhere between here and the patio so if it's patio has to go it has to go we've had a really good first day we've dug three big trenches up at the castle including one that's literally a cliffhanger and as for here what's under the patio join us after the break beginning of day two and it's not until you start climbing up these ramparts that you realize the sheer scale of this place when I first got here it seemed like a little Hill but I now realize this Castle is a massive structure and we're gonna try and take a whole slice out of the ramparts over there and the archeology in the middle there is incredibly complicated it's going to be Touch and Go whether or not we can finish in time this trench across the ramparts tricky to say the least and it looks a bit scary is it no it's tiring my hips are killing why your hips I'm still dangling on the end of them it's very unnatural you never never get brassed off with us no only when we're told to try out quietly we're also digging across the huge moat but at least some time before we get to the bottom of it to establish when it was first dug in the interior of the castle we're widening the trench over the earthwork that may be the remains of a building and not far away we're digging in a garden that backs onto the castle and we've opened up a second trench in search of the burials supposedly seen some years ago when a sewer pipe was put in at the moment though Jen is excited because the pitfall of pottery discovered yesterday has turned out to be a big ditch Paul the pottery expert looked at the pottery yeah from parts of the film and at the moment he thinks it's the earliest feature he's seen here the last couple of days because it's all looking as if it's 12th century material all right so what we really want to know is why why a big ditch here so you want Stuart to look at the maps I think we do yeah well already looked at the maps and the air photographs yeah and there are ditches in that field just beyond the Hedge which yeah I've been interested in since I first came here one of them actually heads in this direction right I wonder whether this is part of some kind of annex right or enclosure associated with this what you're thinking of something stuck on the side of the castle Yeah [Applause] if the castle was built just after the Norman Conquest then this would have been a common sight in alderton 950 or so years ago yes not too bad is it yes very light a lot of weight this is a reconstruction Norman saddle made of Timber and Rawhide we can tell in the veotapa street that the Saddles are built up at the front and the back the front obviously is providing plenty of protection in the all too vulnerable groin area whereas the back of the saddle is going to stop the Norman knight from shooting out the back William the Conqueror shipped across over 3 000 stallions for the conquest of England an amazing feat in itself two stallions together will fight put three thousand stallions together crammed into boats that's small how do you do it how do you land approximately the same number of horses at the other end in any sort of condition to fight a battle but they did remarkable Phil how's the trench going oh really well really really well I mean I bet from that there it looks really impressive doesn't it I just looks like someone digging the road look it's imagine look at the size of this right down in here I'm poor devil attacking you and you're heaving rocks down on me I mean it is impressive and the main thing no what we're doing is we're going to um just find the other Edge we've got it and when then we can empty it out in the interior trench progress is slow but sure as we work our way through layers that may relate to different phases of building on this platform working with a metal detectorist we can be sure we're not missing any small finds in the dark soil [Music] look at them [Music] just gotta find the casket that goes with it now meanwhile Derek's Keen for our Pottery specialist to see the fines he's collected from around the site over the last couple of years well it's for such a small collection of pottery it's quite remarkable we start up here we're in the late Iron Age around about 200 100 BC to this piece probably a base of a big storage vessel we move to this piece it's what you call belgic or used to be called belgic late Iron Age into early Roman 1050 A.D we come down the bottom and then we're into the Saxon period this little piece is early on middle Saxon this is the grotty dog biscuits when you say early to Middle Saxon what sort of dates you're talking about 450 to like 50 A.D really Derek's collection includes medieval pottery and roof tile belonging to a building that was here in the 14th or early 15th century it's all local stuff does this surprise you the range of material you've got it certainly does because I mean this is a surprise it's absolutely there are Roman settlements in this part of the world but there's prehistoric stuff is really exciting looking at this Pottery this suggests you've had people on this mound from about 200 BC to about the 15th century Stewart thinks the shape of the castle suggests the Normans reused an existing site it's a very odd shape and it looks to me as if it's actually reusing an enclosure of some type it's it's almost triangular yeah it's got this very pronounced curve around here and yet it's got this very straight side along here making the whole thing almost triangular shaped yeah yeah okay what do you think I quite agree um I can't see any reason on the ground where that should turn through that immensely sharp angle on the right angle it's very difficult to imagine them building if they were starting from scratching much better if it's running along there and around here and they're actually chopping off something that exists already good reckons the root top of the hill like this may have been an Iron Age Hill for Saxon defended site called a burr the Norman simply cut off one end of the enclosure resulting in a castle looking something like this to our experts the sheer size of it suggests it was built very soon after the Norman Conquest when Robert of mortane owned the manor the locals are already paying their rents and their obligations to to a Saxon landlord so to some extent it's a change of landlord isn't it but if if there's no you've got the big boss right on your doorstep would Robert have more time actually have lived here well I mean you have nearly 800 manners uh I mean I'm sure some of them he never went to in his entire life uh so it's it's quite possible that he never came here although we only know of three castles that he built and this is the only one in this this Pub in this neck of the woods and so I'd like to think he might have dropped in on a couple of occasions at the very least yeah how many people would have lived and worked in that castle probably when the Lord wasn't there there would be an administrative staff to make sure that all the rents came in yeah of perhaps six or seven people and then there'd be a curation staff as we might call them of a porter to make sure that nobody walked off with anything and two or three people to keep it clean so you're really looking at a sort of dozen How would this Castle has affected the lives of the ordinary people who live around here it might have had some good spin-off because here are people with money and where there is money then people can normally pick up something for selling cabbages or yeah or chickens well presumably they would have been involved in the construction aren't they they'd have had to let's go local labor into yeah if we're talking in the conquest period of the Anglo-Saxons had a tax and obligation to do works for their landlord and the Normans seem to have simply said well we are landlords now you build a castle so go ahead and start digging they're all saying you've got a good find yes yeah we have I think it's the uh the bottom of the Scabbard of a dagger and it's called a shape so is the shape just the bottom bit then yeah yeah it's it's the it's the piece of metal work that you get on the bottom of a leather Scabbard and I think that's probably what that is to stop the knife going through the screen the entrance to the castle is thought to be here but we weren't planning to dig in this area because of a long-running boundary dispute between Derek and his neighbors however having spent a couple of hours talking to them separately I now reckon it can be sorted out Derek where did you say you thought that your land should end I think my land ends at the end of the scheduled ancient Monument itself the bottom of this Bank down here and Marie where are you saying that it should end where the Rope is just over here that's some difference isn't it what we're suggesting is that you should split it 50 50. you see this this orange mark down here if the line came through there right down to there and then across there how would you feel about that well we've got a compromise and I'm happy with that after two years after two years time team has solved the problems brilliant and we've got the landowner's permission to look for the Gateway this hollow in the rampart looks favorite but we're going to do a radar survey to make sure the agreement with the English Heritage inspector was to ring him should anything like this crop up we can't reach him Mick makes a decision he gave us 50 meters we've only used 24 so we've got another 26 to get out so we're well within the Glen's okay this so I think I think we go we go ahead the landowners are relieved this is much better than fighting it out in court and talking of fighting Phil Brave man that he is has agreed to play the part of a Saxon soldier in a demonstration of how effective the Norman Cavalry were at the Battle of Hastings what we're going to try and do today is to give you some idea of what it's like to face a Norman Warrior on this the ultimate killing War Machine of the day yeah this is a Spanish stallion 15 hands typical of the sort of thing that Norman Knights were riding at Hastings what you'll be experiencing is what the Saxon Warriors felt like as they were couch Behind These Walls trying to see off these machines and I mean I feel like I'm a Norman am I am I really a Saxon as well virtually no difference in kit at the time yeah a lot of Saxons would have looked a lot like Norman's even this Norman face guard helmet was worn by a lot of Saxons now be honest with me do you have Psychopathic tendencies [Laughter] Norman War stallions were highly trained even taught to bite in battle but the first part of training was to get the horse to go against its Natural Instincts and Gallop add the opposition rather than away from them in combat of course I'm going to try and always keep the side of myself The Shield side to you yes right because the moment I stop around here you can see how vulnerable I am I'm just another infantryman right and here I am it's an easy target so in combat I'm always and this is where the training of the horse is crucial trying to keep this side use my shield right yeah push you back and you haven't got any chance at all hey you didn't tell you didn't tell me about that I thought you were gonna hit me on the shield that's cheating well do you think we could give you a helmet in typical Norman rules I know would would I be able to to stab the horse you wouldn't think twice about it yeah you would be trying to kill the horse because if the horse is dead then the rider is very vulnerable and and you didn't think enough of your horse to put armor on that as well it was a trade-off between Mobility and speed and protection but now the training session's over time for Phil to stand up for all Englishmen and face a full-on Norman cavalry charge oh my God [Laughter] Stanford you know you can do it [Music] and then we're back in you're on your own foreign [Laughter] a change in the weather but it's not stopping us working let's have a look the geophys is looking promising the blue and red lines on the radar screen indicate substantial stone work under the ground that might be the remains of the Gateway into the castle while over in the rampart trench we've come down onto evidence relating to the construction of the castle well I think there's a line of stones across there there's a darker patch beyond the resterns like that across there and they all seem to be part of the construction of the rampart and that's good because once they're taken out we might be able to find out how it's built and if they left any rubbish behind we could tell when it was built surprisingly French Potter is rarely found in early Norman castles much of the pottery we've Unearthed is made locally this is a rim of a 14th century jar in use towards the end of the Castle's life while this fragment found in the garden trenches earlier and dates to the 12th century the ditch discovered in the garden continues to turn up early fines or something Paul yeah wow it's hard to see because of the mud but once it's cleaned up it's clear that this is a small knife early Norman in date and in use probably around 1100. Jenny how's it going on it is yeah we've um we've got the sides of the ditch now and we're getting we thought we're getting towards the bottom but Simon's just put a rod down there and it's already over a meter deep and there's another meter and a half down there isn't it very deep yeah are we any idea what date it is well the pottery has given us quite a nice little story um we're fairly sure that it was backfilled after 11 50 but before 12 25 12 50 at the absolute latest that's rather good isn't it as good as that it's quite tight yeah and what we're also getting is bits of late socks and pottery kicking about in the film right so this bowl for instance was probably made no later than 10.50 so there was something going on before the Norman's got some settlement in this area yeah and it looks very much like it from the pottery do we think that implies that it was dug during the Saxon times it's still possible but I think it's as likely that it's part of the first Norman Castle an outer Courtyard of the Roman Council which is being abandoned 150 years after it was and all the pottery which has been lying around is thrown into the ditch to fill it up so what's the Saxon Pottery doing inside it one may well suppose that there's some sexing poses around here with their rubbish bits still no sign of any burials but we're going to check under the patio as promised but so far so good end of day two and plenty of fines to show the villagers and the promise of much more to come tomorrow join us after the break and see a Norman Castle revealed watch as we unearth a link with a medieval Knight and find out why English Heritage stop the Dig day three and it's our last chance to crack the mysteries of our Norman Castle this is the best part of the site to be in because cheers apart from anything else we get an endless supply of tea it's this trench where we're hoping to find the entrance to the castle I don't think I've ever been the t-boy on time team before but here I'll add you gotta oh drink up and keep working because we've only got a few hours left there's good news to report from our trench across the rampart because it's looking like we're starting to find dating material we're actually digging out this slot here some shaped slot oh it's nice yeah yeah we're cleaning it out doing a half section of it and we just found these two shirts of pottery all right well this bit's uh light Saxon at 900 to 1100 um this other piece is a little bit later 11th 12th century thereabouts but we're all still dates to round about the time of the construction of the castle but the real excitement this morning is in the incident room where Derek's about to see his sight for the very first time without any trees in the way oh look at that oh yes and what what it is illustrating really well is the earthwork former the monument because of the rampart along the top and along there this section has been destroyed here it also shows the platform which we started to put the trench in just there if you look from from that direction you'll you'll see a different picture as well you can see you can see the regularity of that platform very very clearly up there and look at that terrorists coming around the inside of the rampart all the way around there now that to me that indicates the whole series of buildings yeah along the inside the rampart and probably down down down here as well and very striking is this depression here in the middle of this side where the the entrance is all I can do is take an aerial photograph of the area and drop the model into it it looks fantastic without the trees on it isn't it to see what it would have looked like yeah I mean in the seeing it here in the landscape context it also allows you to to visualize this Annex tapped onto the edge of the Ring mopped there with the entrance into the main ring what here just this side of it yeah the entrance facing the church across the way there and in the ditch that went around the annex we now have an environmentalist at work losing an auger find out how deep the ditch is and collect some soil samples which hopefully might tell us something about what was going on around here 900 or so years ago in the Gateway trench Phil's making good progress he reckons he's found the edge of something here and possibly another edge of it on the far side of the trench look here what's happening here and this is where we're getting really quite excited you see these big stones and that's looks like it could be another Edge for something which is dipping away on this side as well it's early days but our Castle expert thinks this looks promising too this is the first time in this cutting that I can see some sign of structure coming I think this is I think this is very exciting it looks much more like a natural collapse with the big Stones rolling in and if there is an entrance in this area I would put my money on that hole why is it so important to try and find the entrance well because entrances are sensitive things if somebody's going to rebuild their Castle they very often start with the entrance so if it's got two or three rebuildings you'll very often pick up traces of that at the entrance area suddenly though we've got a problem the English Heritage inspectors arrived and is less than happy about this trench across the Gateway everything's ground to a halt at the moment the guy in the dark blue is the man from English Heritage and he's the one who gives us permission to dig here and he wasn't able to be here yesterday but today has come in and he's not at all happy about what's going on and we're gonna have to resolve this pretty quickly because we've only got three quarters of a day left it's already been an hour well they've been deep in conversation meanwhile outside the ancient monument and totally unaffected by this drama Jenny's finding out about the environmental samples taken from the ditch in the back Garden so what are all the little black things that are coming up then well there's a lot of very short rounded fat wheat grains and um they're what I call more of a club wheat and what what sort of things would people be doing with that type of wheat well they probably would have been making bread with it oh great and this type of wheat would make say a better bread than Emma would Emily which is common in the Roman period it makes a bread that rises much better more gluten in it yeah but they would also have used it in potage which is like a like a stew sort of casserole yeah and and pulses and things like that and vegetables this is the trench that wasn't in the research design after a full and Frank exchange of views the English Heritage inspector now approves of the Gateway trench despite the fact that it wasn't part of our original plan I have to be convinced that it's really essential and I was convinced that there's a good academic reason for looking at this area what would happen if you got it wrong I get shouted at which is why you were shouting at us that's right which is the way of the world oh does that just come up yeah oh let's have a look oh even while we are talking another fine look at that foot isn't that lovely any idea what it is yeah um it's a shield and it's got on it looks like a coat of arms it is a coat of arms with an eagle on it and a bar across and it's been secured to something probably a leather belt and it's got a hinge in it so that it will swing it's enamel you seen anything like that before again yes but they only come from very high quality sites what do you think it is it's a bit of horse harness chopping so what do I date would that be they're not particularly common and if we're looking for the entrance this this probably helps find it yep well finding this is a bit of better than rowing over the side just better get it in a bag so the conservator can have a look at it this is a great find and under the microscope you can see how Vivid the colors must have been oh that was red wasn't it that's bar there is also red so we have a red bar crossing the eagle so it would have been really quite a very bright a very bright object Victor's illustration shows it in context but I've asked him to do another drawing this time showing a 15th century night in the Gateway of the castle [Music] we've lost a lot of time today so now it's a question of working without brakes if we're going to tell Derek as much as we can about his castle one question that occurs to me is why build a castle here in the first place isn't it a bit out of the way this is interesting Stu because although it's not on a main road it's on a Ridgeway but it joins up these two main roads I mean look at this now the Watling Street you know then they're only a mile off that yeah yeah and we know that this road is actually one of the well one of the great roads of Roman and Saxony indeed indeed look at it sort of straight as a dog and it brought towards Shropshire that way not see any better example of a massive Roman Road going straight across the street terrific look it back now our village is a mile from this road and a mile from the other the great North Road the other side on The High Ground in between yeah from there you will be able to see the castle on the hill now but it would be dominant up there wouldn't it with lots of people arriving on site now time to start collecting our thoughts about the archeology Unearthed over the last three days first the trench across the rampart on this side it looks from what they've dug that there's a slot across where a Timber was more Timbers to brace it out and probably a wooden platform held up by what we've got down there so you've got Palisade you've got Earth butted right up against it and then behind that a walkway wooden walkway that's right yep so can we now solve our mystery of whether or not it was built in the Norman times when they first landed just after 1066 or whether it was built 80 or so years later in the time of Matilda and Stephen I think we can because there's quite a lot of material that's come out so far and it's all belonged to the earlier rather than the later Horizons so I suspect that we're pretty close to saying that it's early give us a date 1070. well we sold that one didn't we lucky we did get dating evidence from the rampart because the story with the moat is that it's been regularly cleaned out over the years and surprisingly we've got very few finds out of it but post-excavation work May tell us when the ditch was first dug although we've not got a significant amount of pottery we're really lucky because there's some organic deposits down there we might just get a c14 day well we did get a radiocarbon date for this sample and it dated between 10 20 and 1270 A.D which means the ditch wasn't dug in the Iron Age but it could still be a Saxon ditch that was reused by the Normans we've also been digging another big ditch here in the garden time for a final report from there good and bad the bad news is that we haven't found the bodies under the patio there's nothing there I don't feel too worried about that actually no because I think the good news is that what we found is actually a lot more interesting I mean I don't know what you think but we've got lots and lots of ports yeah well it's a remarkable collection from from one Garden isn't it I mean you presumably had no idea whether it's under your garden absolutely no idea so what are you going to do now dig the rest up make swimming pool in some ways the biggest challenge has been has been sorting out the interior of the castle ask any digger let's do it when I talk to you first you were dead excited about digging your first castle has it moved up to expectation it has yeah it's been very tiring and very rewarding have you learned anything um I've learned that the archeology inside these structures is very very complicated Hearst has got the job of sorting it out this is the platform here so that is that a natural Edge there is that Natural Stone no this I think this has been deliberately put here it's a nice strong sort of revetments for for this platform for this for this flat platform so basically this is the this is the edge of the platform right yeah and all this all this yellow stuff is really deposited natural which has been put here too so they've boarded in to build up yeah and is this then a building put on top of it this is a a slot for some Timber so we've got to imagine a great big square or whatever timber in there with with Timber wall plates put into it yeah yeah okay that's all brilliant but then it all goes to put although we found a few stalls we're missing the big ones required to support a large building with a heavy tiled roof we think it's a substantial building because we've got lots of tile that's all the roofing tile that I saw earlier yeah so you're gonna need something pretty solid to hold those tiles up aren't you is it likely that we've either missed it somewhere in here or that another Timber slot like that was actually somewhere out over that one I would think that's probably the most well we're not going to get that now so anyway we can't win the more no so can we stop now yeah I think lots of tired diggers around including those working in the Gateway trench but it's all been worth it according to Phil what you're looking at is one of the towers of the entrance this is the actual base of it now you see I'm I'm now outside that that Tower right Phil's found evidence of a Timber post that he thinks was holding back this concentration of rubble sometimes the gateways to Timber castles were rebuilt in stone at a later date but we can't see enough of the evidence to be sure if this is the case here and then Phil's theory is that the rubble may be the base of one of the towers of the Gateway so what you've got is the main entrance into the castle there and you've got a corresponding Tower probably underneath that tree now in fact uh rob you got that drawing see this might make life a little easier ah right did you get the gist of it yeah we started off there yeah with this River in yeah we walked along there and we're now standing there and the entrance way yeah go straight through there so we were wrong when we thought this might be a sort of road or something coming up through yeah it's it's actually the base of something ladies and gentlemen as you probably know you have a Madman in your midst who bought a castle and a moat we've got lots to tell Derek and the Villages of alderton firstly the people have been living on this Ridge of Higher Ground since prehistoric times the unusual shape of the monument suggests it may once have been part of something else most likely a fortified Saxon site called a burr which could have looked something like this however the clearest and most spectacular evidence belongs to the Norman ring work Castle this reconstruction shows how it might have looked when it was first built which we now know was in the 11th century its size reflecting the status of the man who built it Robert count of mortane half brother to William the Conqueror we found evidence of the Gateway and discovered what we think was an Annex to the castle finally we know that the castle was abandoned around 1400. the last three days have been a bit of a battle what with boundary disputes and English Heritage inspectors getting nervous and it's been a very complicated site to sort out but it has been worth it and the vision that I'll take away with me is with a 15th century night thundering through the castle entrance turning to admire the Magnificent Palisades and just at that moment something on his harness snapped and he dropped this [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 51,089

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

Id: YHNiyJTfY8g

Length: 48min 52sec (2932 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023