The Massacre In The Cellar | FULL EPISODES | Time Team

the mysterious ruins of Hopsin castle still bear the scars of a tragic past 400 years ago this fortress was torn apart by a Civil War siege the small band of defenders inside who were loyal to Parliament gave their lives defending it against an army of King Charles the first today only the tower survives as witness to their heroic last stand and nobody's got any idea what the rest of this castle looked like so that's where we come in we've been invited here by the local Preservation Society to try to find out and maybe to solve a little mystery along the way Richard you're our castles expert and you want us not only to sort out what the castle look like during the Civil War but to address the issue of a war crime indeed yes it's not only a fantastic sight you've got a fantastic story with the Civil War siege in these brave garrison holding out against the Royalists for several weeks before finally surrendering and then being rather brutally murdered Helen you're particularly excited about this site Anya I am because it's got this fantastic historical account we've got a description of what went on written by the garrison commander the chap who is in charge of defending this place and it gives lots of details of of the buildings that were here but it is rather one-sided offices it's only his account and it's a really fantastic opportunity for archaeology to find out how much of this is true Neil you're the boss over the next three days how are we gonna tackle this site very carefully this is a very sensitive site talking not only is it a scheduled monuments a nationally important optical sight it's also potentially the site of a mass grave yeah I understand we have to be sensitive but that doesn't mean we're going to ignore the bodies does it no but it's not a grave chase Tony what I want to do is actually use the archives evidence to see how reliable is this historical site can we get traces of the actual siege how truthful is the history most of what we know about the siege of Hopsin comes from a man called Colonel Samuel Moore the garrison commander he wrote it all down in his journal and it reads like a novel he says that the Royalists attacked the outnumbered defenders three times losing hundreds of men [Music] it was only when the attackers had the Parliamentarians cornered in the tower but they finally gave up instead of showing mercy the royalist commander put everyone except Colonel Moore to the sword but did it really happen the way he said it did well first thing first and that is to find out what this place looked like so geophys get to work looking for buildings 6:00 then ok thanks and Stuart our landscape investigator starts hunting for the castles ramparts from its shape we suspect our Civil War castle may be medieval in origin it fits the classic model of a modern Bailey which is basically a big tower on a mound with a defensive ring below it suppose we start a trench somewhere about there yes it means fill and build the local English heritage inspector can make an educated guess where the outer wall might be this war which we think might be part of the original medieval castle and might have been refurbished in the Civil War down into what we think might have been part of the original backfield ditch yeah and then up onto this Bank which is probably going to be part of the defenses or the assault in the Civil War yes yes as what you call it Torah faddish that's Axminster doubt his faith though he does love his dirt doesn't he so Phil's trench goes in looking for the moat and ramparts to help us work out the original shape of the castle but it's also our first opportunity to test the accuracy of Colonel Moss historical account of the siege one of the most exciting things about this site is that it's a battlefield as well as a pastor if we can find the outer wall and signs of the combat can we identify where more said the Royalists first attacked [Music] the Civil War divided communities between King and Parliament and Hobson was right in the firing line so what more do we know about the men who fought here they were the only garrison the only stronghold held for Parliament throughout the region all the other strongholds if you look at this map there are more than 20 of them were held for the king you can see here's optin and it's parliamentarian and there's just Brampton Bryan to the south over the Herefordshire border that's parliamentarian as well and everywhere else is royalist so they were a very isolated group and they probably felt very isolated and lonely so there was a lot of tension going on here even before the massacre started yes huge amounts of tension and we have to remember that people were just terrified of neighbors that they'd lived side by side with for years because of the issue of religion which became a kind of emergent theme in the war people were just terrified that a Catholic royalist army was about to attack so my betters these guys were probably in the castle because they thought it was the safest place to be so hop ttan was the civil war equivalent of the Alamo alone and with no sign of relief for three weeks the 30 odd men behind these walls held out against hundreds of Royalists soldiers and over in his trench Phil thinks he may have found the first evidence of fighting we've got a musket ball it's a bit splattered but it's definitely a musket ball but is this civil war I don't know but given the sight that we're on and it is so we're in the right period but are we going to find the bloke who was on the other end of this we'll know later welcome back to Hopson in Shropshire where we're trying to uncover the secrets of the Civil War siege which practically destroyed the castle behind me and perhaps even find the remains of the murdered garrison who we think lie somewhere del hear the story of Hopkins destruction and the brutal massacre of the garrison became famous well notorious during the Civil War 400 years on nobody knows how truthful our surviving account of the battle is or even what the castle looked like Phil how you getting on we're not too badly nail Phil's looking for the old castle wall and the moat where we think we might find traces of the first attack this Bank here was was we thought originally might be part of the medieval castle defenses well we've gone down through it and we're getting masses and masses of bricks but more importantly we're beginning to get pottery too you see here I mean here's the base of a pot and here's another piece of pond it will tow any handle but I mean this stuff is clearly not many evil and when you say Banco we actually uncovering the foundations of the wall when is that what that big stone is ah but there's no other stones around it sort of keyed into it to make it into a wall no what it seems to be is is literally a bank just muck that's been thrown up mixed up with rubble and dirt that's the thought thing you could really throw up at a hurry if you knew you can be under seen well exactly I mean it may in the end makers have to rethink about what a lot of these banks are around here it looks as though this one might not be magical Phil's already got his suspicions that the shape of this castle might be slightly different to what we anticipated still if his rampart is from the Civil War does it fit into the history 26th of February is the first attack over the next few days field marshal Helen geek is going to do a spot of wargaming now there's body of foot who approached the out wall along with Richard our castles expert she's going to compare colonel Moore's account of the battle with what we find in our trenches [ __ ] okay but it's what happened after the siege that really intrigues me so the guys from the garrison who died could be over there where they're Geophysical they could be somewhere completely different it's just pot luck whether we find them or not yes from the first account of colonel moore we really don't have any idea I don't think he knows where they were put he just says that they were all killed but then we've got another account from this chap called Prima's Davis now he was part of the garrison at Brampton Castle not far away so it's possible that he would have known and he says that they were driven into a cellar unfinished wherein was stinking water the house being on fire over them when their every man of them presently massacred and he implies that that's where they're left how trustworthy do you think that is or could it just be a bit of propaganda well I don't know it certainly makes its way into propaganda because a few weeks later it only takes a few weeks we get we get propaganda definite propaganda in these newspapers now I've got one here area they caused a deep pit to be digged and throwing them in altogether they buried some alive is there anything that you've read in any of the documents that could narrow down the search for us yeah I think so I mean the first one says it's a cellar now we ought to be able to find a seller with geophysics and it would be very recognizable if we do encounter it that's one good hypothesis that we can test that they might be in a cellar the second one is that all the sources concur in saying that they're there somewhere near water mud or water and so I think that we could go for anywhere that's waterlogged always standing water I have a look round there and see what we can find [Music] so if we can trust the documents the murdered men could be buried in one of two places a damp cellar or a muddy ditch well John's been busy doing chief fears and he thinks he might have picked up a good candidate for a cellar not far from the tower John you know Bailey sure it's pretty good I mean we've done mag and res and I think we're starting to see cleared buildings inside look at the magnetic to start with so the white line is showing what I think is a big structure there and the black on the inside it's either midden deposits areas of burning in the resistance you can also see that the shadow outline of buildings now what I think we've got in front of us here you can see it clearly on the earth yeah you know but we've got a wall going underneath that Hawthorne bush I think it actually turns through a right angle and comes back underneath our feet so we got to put a trench in here haven't we absolutely and I've already fought caps on this side if we can dig down here try and expose the wall on this side see if it matches the wall on that side is it a single structure and of course the key thing is what date is it yeah [Music] our second trench goes in to see if we've got a cellar so that's one possibility for the master but what about the muddy ditch I'd assumed that our whole team were over here trying to sort out the castle until I saw this little head bobbing up and down behind these rather nasty metals Henry were you doing I am occurring the bottom of the moat stitch which means well basically although it stood right in this big ditch here it was once with you much much deeper once I get to the bottom with it with the auger when I look at the soil down there I will be able to tell whether it's flowing water through there or it's still water whether it's just a muddy hole it's not the document say the dead bodies were found in a muddy pit right you could be giving us some evidence couldn't you yeah no this dish is tell apart that story yeah but we're not all chasing bodies [Music] Phil is doggedly digging away trying to work out the shape of the car see he's changed his tune from this morning he now reckons we do have a water it's just underneath the earth planking found earlier these also got signs of serious construction which fingers crossed might match our account of the battle the thing is that this Bank sits on top person credible burnin layer especially on top of the burning house look at it alright look at it yeah the burnin is running underneath so the the construction of that Bank is later than that burnin you know I just I do wonder what the hell is burnin tasting well we know the building from burnt during the siege exactly you see you you just make you wonder end of day one and as you can see our trenches are really coming along now we've got quite a lot of evidence of structures we've got some really interesting stones for instance down there but are we in the Civil War yeah we are tell you look lovely 17th century token which we didn't use exactly at the right time to Civil War and even better than that got this piece of lead doesn't look much does it because he's actually a musket ball there's been fodder the such velocity bits hit a structure means splattered flat so it's clear evidence of warfare and fighting in this area and what can we tell about these structures well we've got a stone wall over there and put another one coming through here so I guess what a sort of medieval building but where's phase digging laser diving down and down and hasn't found the floor yet could that be a cellar I think it has to be because we just saw a below the ground level Helens documents say that the bodies of the garrison were found either in a muddy ditch or in a cellar could that be the cellar we'll find out tomorrow beginning of day two here at Hopson castle in Shropshire where we're looking for evidence of the English Civil War and in particular of the garrison that was slaughtered here I thought the archaeology would be pretty straightforward but the more we dig the more and more confusing it appears to be gentlemen I assume that what we were going to get was a big moat all the way around it and then a solid wall to protect the castle you told me you thought there would be a big empty cellar we don't seem to have any of those things I have to agree I thought there's gonna be a large wall around the outside because how else could this place us we stood siege for a couple of weeks so we put trench in here and we asked fuel to look for two things like stone curtain wall and the large moat ditch in them that is where you went profoundly wrong Tony you assumed you assumed far too much when we get down to the archaeology the archaeology is different but it is just as exciting in here we don't actually have a massive curtain wall but we do have a building and that building must have had a wall that face though over here which would have acted as a defensive curtain no I'm lashed by your criticism about my assumptions nevertheless surely it would have to be a wall that was more solid than one that had got little houses all the way and tell you what if you've got a pack of defenders with muskets behind that war peppering you with musket shots that is a defensive war okay that's put me in my place this castle is turning out to be rather different from the simple one we imagined sorry I imagine it looks like by the time of the Civil War the inner Bailey was surrounded by a small and rather unimpressive war and instead of a moat it had earthworks and at the center of it could be a very large building it looks like we're coming on to a sort of different level here we've been through this incredibly loose compacted brick deposit yeah which I guess is what you think the walls of the building Neal and Bill are digging a deep cellar which we hope who might contain the bodies of the garrison but instead they've got loads of rubble they just came out to these which I guess what a really roofing slates they don't like roof don't they yeah so if you've got roofing deposit the building was gonna collapse in yeah first of all I guess the roof would fall in yeah and then the walls coming over the top of it so that would that would suggest yeah we're not too far off the bottom of the cellar levels the roof tiles just building it might match something called the brick dwelling house in the sources still it's a little frustrating that we haven't found anything from the massacre it's and Henry's survey of the moat hasn't got any signs of a mass grave there either so it's probably time to ask the question I perhaps should have asked yesterday can we be sure that the bodies are still here wouldn't the relatives of the people who've been killed creep here afterwards take the bodies away and give them a proper burial which would mean that we wouldn't be able to find them here all these hundred years later well not really because actually if you look at the list which we're lucky enough to have of the defenders of Hobbiton castle you'll notice an enormous number of very welsh sounding names like evans thomas jones and some of them actually have this w after their name which probably designates that they actually were from Wales and not local wealth people I think all of that suggests that I'm a family would find it pretty difficult to get here from Wales to ribery they're dead [Music] it's never occurred to us until now that many of the defenders like David Evans and Richard Jones might not be local under attack and a long way from home it makes you realize how isolated and afraid they must have been and over in his trench filled thinks he can now tell the first part of their story I think in 1644 in this spot there was a wall this is the wall and I mean whether or not there was a complete build in there I don't know whether that building was ruinous I don't know but there was certainly a wall here and now I think in the early part of the campaign the initial onslaught there was a serious fight here and I think that it was it was very very hard for and I think there was much burning and devastation because you see you've got masses of areas of intense burn and you see all that black that charcoal here that's lying directly on this wall and this comes right the way across and we can actually pick it up on this side here I think it was a pretty vicious fight because we actually have the first possible evidence of conflict there human tooth and always sort of Owen kind of imagined that there was this vicious fight between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads and that maybe it got hand to hand and that maybe somebody took a musket and took a swing at some bloke and knocked his tooth out and I think once the the the Royalists had gone away to restock and replenish their forces the parliamentarians thought what are we going to do about it let's strengthen our defenses and so that had got the picks and shovels and they would've stood where I am and they'd have done that and they would have been building the bank there the bank there and the bank there and I think these three banks are very clearly situated to fill the gap between the main ditch of the castle there and the stream isn't it ironic that for the last day and a half you've been doing exactly what those blokes were doing all those years ago but thankfully I wasn't expecting anybody to come through that field Amy to get me so that's great news our first direct link with the history in his journal Colonel Moore says that after the initial assault his men raced to build works temporary faces and our earthworks also give us a better idea of the shape the castle is much bigger and more complicated than we thought and it means we need to make a few changes to our battle map yeah yeah so we need a lot more soggy paper because we got lots of other banks to to build up as well general Stewart Ainsworth has identified more earthworks like fills all around the site and he's looking for where the second attack happened when the Royalists actually got into the castle Moore says hundreds of invaders broke through a burnt-out building only to find themselves trapped and shot to pieces [Music] but can we take his word for it is it possible that so few defenders could kill so many men having wrapped up early Phil's going to find out Andy hello I've got you a recruit oh well done you your piece of strings on fire by the way it's meant to be oh sorry Oh slow magic this is a matchlock muskets otherwise it doesn't go off bang oh I said we need this so are you gonna get our guns that's the idea bring down firing and reloading a musket was a complicated and time-consuming business little bit of gunpowder in there I mean I close the pan blow off and clear off the loose poles which means you don't get sparks landing when you're loading and the gun can't go off early that's the idea so close then I'm gonna [ __ ] the match I'll present I'll open the pan and I'll squeeze the trigger right he'll show us how it's done properly I think I'll leave him to it lunch time on day two and with the layout of the castle changing we're now having a long hard think about our brick building in the middle of it I know you don't usually like dating these things no so what am I gonna be able to press you to say about it surprisingly I think I could be quite happy in dating this particular brick oh really nothing happened at this castle site after the Civil War as far as we can tell that's true this is a typical 17th century handmade brick so we can put it into the first half of the 17th century can't be after 1640 card after 1644 also in Shropshire we've got plenty of timber framed and stone buildings brick is a very late arrival it's not until the middle of the 17th century where they become common in the highest status building so we have been quite happy to date that between about 1600 and 1640 oddly it's starting to look like we've got a really rather grand 17th century house slap-bang in the most strategic part of the castle and it seems to have been destroyed in the civil your siege you see that really intense Charcot area there I was pointing if that's like a a burn beam that's perhaps collapse down the burning also means we haven't given up hope of finding a mass grave here we know that one account says the men were executed in the cellar of a burning building this is beginning to be more like one of those crime scene investigation shows than that time team but then as is always the case on time team something turns out which you don't expect I heard some bleeping and the words gold we've got a gold hammered coin oh wow and that came out from here this extrordinary thing about gold but when it does come out it just shines straight away look at your face you can't please Sonjia Helen yeah could you come have a look at this gold coin oh my goodness how extraordinary that says yeah Cobb that's James yes and well I think that that is James the fifth of Scotland I mean um when was James the feather of Scotland well he's around Flodden isn't he so it's like the beginning of the 16th century the intriguing thing is what's a gold coin doing in the bottom of our cellar that where it came from yeah that is fantastic we've got to find out how long this circulated for yeah that is just just amazing Helen's got to double-check the date but could this gold coin have been dropped by one of the garrison or even by their killers [Music] it's easy to imagine losing the odd coin in the heat of the battle especially if you're a bumbling musketeer like Phil Harding we're gonna cut stuff and we're gonna blow off all right bring it up hang on hang on still blowing right yep professional soldiers could fire up to three shots per minute hello Phil do we blow on the match Wow nothing's happening right then open your fan give fire Oh Stone the crows what it was a bit of a surprise when it all went bang you know if isn't taken the Roundheads that long to load the seeds would never event yeah but I would have been behind the war you see I'm in a savior position behind the wall that's where I dove in it does show you how exposed those soldiers were though doesn't it absolutely but actually it's a very common sense sort of pattern of movements you could do it you would get there eventually even a common old agricultural type like me perhaps yeah I think it might take you some time in the hands of trained soldiers and at close quarters muskets were deadly he makes more claim to a shot and killed hundreds of Royalists at the breech sound much more plausible but where did this happen our armchair generals are playing toy soldiers to find out so they're through the breach most most of the 200 so it's at least 200 they're within the breach but not within our works but as in a pin fold in the circumference of the burnt lodging what is a pin fold it's basically a very large sheet pen it's for sorting out sheep so they're caught in a trap yeah I got Moses yeah so do you know where that first breach in the wall happens I have very strong suspicions Helen it's in this area down here anybody come in through this narrow gap in the breach will be trapped it can be fired down from there from there they're literally trapped like shaping it in a sheet fold if Stuart's right then somewhere here should be a range of buildings which resemble a sheep pen as well as giving us a direct link to the history if we do have structures here they'd make this castle far larger than we first thought we're gonna have to ponder this one over a few beers tonight on but before we can down tools and raise glasses whoa goodness we've got our hands full with yet another remarkable find from the cellar I think that's a cannonball in fact I'd put even money on that mini cannonball and that's about a nine pounder isn't that fantastic further analysis reveals that cannonball does indeed weigh nine pounds the size of ammunition fired by a gun call at deme Calvin Moore's account says at least one of these was used by the Royalists to pound the castle in their third most deadly attack so could this mean we're close to the end of the siege few are heavy that is Tony just that little bit of it is some weight isn't there making that coming crashing in through the walls and landing right in the bottom of the cellar I'm in no doubt now that this is the brick dwelling house referred to in the siege accounts and what we know is that this defenders set fire to it that's not the Royalists using it so I guess what we've got here is evidence of burnt Timbers being fired on with ordnance surely this now locked us in the history and activity together but there's such a little bit of it that's what's so frustrating yeah I really like to see some more of this like you should open up the trench of it further what I'd like to see is more of the base of the SELEX it's got these cannonballs got nice fines pottery also how big is this house isn't just a cellar or other rooms on either side so really with a day to go all the effort in here I would think tomorrow it's been a really exciting day - for us particularly as far as the fines are concerned including our wonderful gold coin which we now know was called a quarter laurel it was worth two weeks wages for an ordinary soldier and we've got a very precise date for it now it's 1623 - 1624 but tomorrow we come through the really exciting part of the story the final attack on the castle which led to the supposed massacre of the people inside it let's hope tomorrow we can really find out what actually happened although Phil already knows how the Cavaliers got into the castle don't you feel - right we do beginning of day three here at Hopson castle in Shropshire where we're investigating the bloody siege that took place right here during the English Civil War and throughout our final day we're going to be concentrating on this area here particularly this trench where yesterday we got all those lovely finds including the beautiful gold coin and the cannon ball but just because we got a lot of lovely stuff out of here yesterday Neil does that really justify us using so much of our labour on this one little spot it's not just this one spot Tony we're looking at this large and impressive building we've got several trenches open either looking if you ever swipe the cellar over there and rings beyond that over the new trench they're looking for rooms that side the cellar and Matt's open everyone behind us except that on the very first day your brief to us Richard was nothing to do with this specific building it was what does the castle look like throughout the English Civil War and we got anywhere near approaching that I think we already have we've already investigated not just this building but a lot of the other lumps and bumps around the site so we know where other buildings were the landscape now makes more sense to put the whole thing into its context so I'm quite happy we know a heck of a lot more of this place now than we did on day one trust me Tony this train here will give us the best evidence for the siege trust me Tony now where have I heard that one before [Music] Neal's convinced that our brick dwelling house with its seller can tell us a lot of what we set out to discover and another link with the history books but even though we've got less than a day left we're still doing geophys yesterday Stuart wanted us to look at the other end of our site not only does he think there could be more buildings here he thinks it could be where the Royalists first broke into the castle what a beautiful spot you brought me to get a lovely view with a castle but there's nothing here there is something here though because if you look in this area over here Phil there are lots of lumps and bumps too suggestive up there I've been buildings here and walls that there were things blocking this end up here and for once I agree with the black the high resistance showing brick built structures maybe stone built structures more ephemeral responses maybe timber and we've got a possible courtyard here with buildings set around and that one in particular interests me because it's got really strong magnetic responses what we got put in a trench and have a look Stuart thinks this could be the spot where the attacking Royalists would trap losing hundreds of men as the defenders fired from both sides the records talk of a range of buildings which they described rather curiously as looking like a sheath pen but take a closer look at the see shape on the G of fears could this be it one thing's for sure this is no longer your typical castle we've always assumed optin is a medieval motte-and-bailey style fortress thanks to the 14th century tower but is this crumbling and frankly rather dangerous structure all that it appears to be richard is it going to pull them it would have done if it's just left as it is at the moment it does look in a terrible straight though doesn't it it's awful inside you know what strikes me about it is that it looks very old-fashioned it is because it looks almost like one of those old Norman castles from hundred or even 200 years previously it's one of a handful of castles in there in this area then the far older than they actually are all built after the end of them the worth of the Welsh wars around 1300 and there's a possibility that it's a deliberate ploy if you like they're saying to the Welsh look my great-granddad upset your great granddad by building these Norman keeps we could do the same but at the same time they wanted their luxury so these are quite nicely appointed tower apartments if you like but does that mean they weren't that good at defense they've been not that defendable because although they look great big thick walled things the actual walls are honeycombed with chambers and window apertures and that sort of thing so they're not that strong so it wasn't much of a war machine when it was built in the medieval period it's now clear it was even less suited for battle by the time of the Civil War here yeah that's my war Matt's found the far end of our brick building and isn't just a house it's a mansion in fact it was so big the builders had to fill in the moat around the tower just to squeeze it into the Bailey by the time of the Civil War the castle had expanded far beyond its maybe even walls to me this is looking more and more like a country house than the castle we've got these huge great big roof slates coming up as well and that's confirmed by Stuart's trench where phase picking up a range of timber buildings around a central courtyard this much is exactly what we're anticipating here there's a range of buildings possibly something called Richard stewards house which was burnt down during the Civil War there's a whole complex body stables and other buildings in this area but it's burned in the Civil War fake we see the influence of that ah well actually yes we can and that's where it gets really interesting over there on that surface practical evidence of burning in the stones but we've also got some musket balls coming up I mean this is terrific because this is the area then which the first siege the attack has actually got in and then got trapped and it literally got massacred against these buildings here and so this amongst all the excitement the dirt and the archaeology it's kind of really poignant isn't it this must be the spot where the garrison trapped and killed the first Royalists to get into the castle and it's easy to see why stuck in no-man's land with only smoking ruins around the courtyard for cover they would have been cut down just like Colonel Moore claims they were the Journal says that after their disaster in the courtyard the royal tactics they returned with more men gave the garrison one last chance to surrender and this time they meant business they bombard the outer wall of this castle with heavy cannon to try and make a breach in the wall yeah it says that they there they're shooting at the outside wall from nine o'clock in the morning till five o'clock in the evening and they hit it with ninety six shots by my maths that is one shot every five minutes which is it incredible out fathers isn't it I mean in the end it was successful did they did make a breach in that wall and of course they the defenders have rushed up and tried to stop them getting through at that point that the hand-to-hand fighting starts with the pikes and the muskets and the clubs and everything and they're they're doing that for two hours it must mean absolutely horrendous Stuart thinks the Royalists bombarded the castle from the high ground breaking down the defenses in the south and our analysis of the musket balls does suggest some distance away raining down on the men cowering inside the brick building look you just found the lead musket Baldwin can embed it into the brick it's fantastic because it's hid isn't it and then just flattened as it hit the brick wall it's actually still got bits of brick embedded in that side which is incredible [Applause] [Music] after being bombarded by constant fire with the attackers through the breach the defenders set the brick mansion on fire before fleeing to the tower a terrifying sequence of events which we found in both the archeology and the documents they were now at the mercy of the royalist commander Sir Michael Woodhouse and Richard thinks he's worked out how he forced them to surrender Oh run up the bank and attack that that looks like a door but yeah actually a window opening now they're trapped on the top floor they can't do anything about people attacking the bottom of the castle so this is another example of this building not really doing its job as a defence because it had a vulnerable window close to the ground yes because the window I decided the window the wall is only about that thick so it's dead easy to actually bash through I think what we can see there is what was done during the Civil War and that's what makes them give up because they think that they're going to lay explosives and they say it's better to surrender them to be blown up yeah extraordinary isn't it to see something so vulnerable from all those years ago that led to such a terrifying end it's ironic that the strongest looking part of the castle the tower was actually the weakest and everything we found over the past few days suggests that in both medieval times and during the Civil War Hobson was more of a country house than a castle it's turned our knowledge of this place on its head and explains why the defenders failed to hold on to it but it also begs the question why did Moore and his men defend a hopeless cause why did more refuse to surrender when he had three opportunities to do so it's difficult to explain we can only think that he must have been inspired by religious fanaticism or by the belief that God would come to his aid or because he was terribly afraid of the royalist army he'd possibly been reading the newspapers as well and hearing these stories about the massacre of helpless prisoners and he possibly didn't trust the Royalists offer of quarter what about the other side why did Woodhouse allow such a terrible atrocity to take place well that's the really difficult question to answer somehow we were off the map of chivalry and chivalry and honor did operate him most of these civil war encounters there were rules that you could follow like table manners the fact that the first offers of quarter roof were refused may have made him feel that they were off the map but I suspect one of the accounts of the massacre says that Woodhouse left his men to themselves for three hours it was normal royalist behavior but in this case they seemed to have been particularly violently inspired and that might be the course of the massacre but evidence of that Massacre continues to elude us with no signs of a mass grave anywhere else we were praying that we'd find one at the bottom of the cellar but alas as the day draws to a close we've got to admit defeat you can't performing the last rites on this trench there until tomorrow right now I am so completely convinced that's natural well look who's the bottom an award absolutely now I think this is a deposit that not even a parliamentarian or a Royalist ever saw but while we haven't found any bodies we're pretty confident our seller does match one description of where the men was said to have been killed it's unfinished without any plaster and it's also at the bottom of a burning building and what about it being full of stinking water well most intriguingly of all computer modeling suggests that our cellar was liable to flooding as well who knows perhaps this was their place of execution after all after the battle was over hot turn was left to smoking ruin Tower was badly damaged and fell into disrepair for several weeks a small band of men had turned this country house into a small fortress and held out against overwhelming and terrifying odds [Music] 400 years on we've pieced together their last stand and discovered the magnificent 17th century chamber block where they fought and may have died this morning near you said to me Tony the excavation of this trench will unveil the story of this castle has it done that oh it has the archaeologists worked out so well what we've now found is huge post medieval cellar it's about 20 meters long and above that you've got to imagine a two or three storey brick house and it's placed here to deliberately to replace that that was old-fashioned old news if you have money this is how you lived imagine chimneys fancy windows plastered ceilings this was all mod cons it is ironic that the new building should have been burnt down and the garrison retreat to the old one absolutely at the time of the war forget the word castle compton was a house and it was fighting was taking place in all sorts of places during the Civil War not just on set piece battle fields not just at storming of castles but everyday houses were being attacked and bloody murders taking place at close quarters it is frustrating isn't it that we didn't manage to find any evidence of the guys who died it is but I guess it was always a long shot but only exact a tiny little fraction of the cellar they're here somewhere they'll stay there for generations to come and in the meantime the story of their death remains it a little bit of a mystery and maybe that's no bad thing I think so [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 146,201

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, team team, archaeology, education, educational, history, british tv, british history, john gater, time team full episodes

Id: KrxrwxPro2o

Length: 46min 43sec (2803 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020