The Monk's Manor (Brimham Hall, Hartwith, Harrogate, Yorkshire) | S13E07 | Time Team

not bad morning is it lovely morning that's chris bradley this is his farm which he's been farming all his life and when he and barbara retire they're going to go off and live somewhere gorgeous even warmer than yorkshire well that's the plan anyway but chris has got unfinished business here for years this place has puzzled him for a start it's got a saxon name and look at this piece of stone and what about that one [Music] and then in the 1960s an archaeologist dug around here and came up with a couple of walls and a tiled floor so what's going on here there was obviously once a big and important building here but what was it we've got just three days to find out brimum the site of chris and barbara's 150 acre farm lies in a valley in north yorkshire close to fountains abbey in the 1960s a couple of trenches dug by colin platt revealed substantial stonework there's no record of the archaeology but we do have some photos of the dig taken by chris's dad mick you've got some evidence of the 1960s dick we have we've got some photographs that survive of various trenches look with tiles in and bits of wall and all the other holes with other bits of wall in what kind of period you're in well it could be medieval it could be post medieval but i mean these look like medieval tiles you know laid as a floor there's a thing that looks like a plinth here mark do these tiles tell you anything they're exactly the sort of tiles that you'd expect to see at fountains abbey which is only six miles or so that way and are they the sort of quality that you get at fountains abbott they are they're absolutely the best sort of quality building materials you'd expect to see in the first part of the 16th century good stuff it's not a bad start for day one is it chris very good do you remember this dig no great deal i was too young do you remember where the trenches went in oh yeah um one was over there by that gate and the other was down on that terrace there so we think we've got a good idea of where the trenches might have been but we'll still dear fizz this area to work out exactly where to dig but first things first these big stones need to be recorded and then safely lifted out of the way while we're doing this our architectural expert jonathan has an early look at them with phil there's no no obvious moulding on it really it's just yeah ah do you like that i like that's a lot all right so again why do you like that one well look we've got these two patches of mortars one here and then there's another one just there i don't think that's a lentil i think that's actually the seal so those are the seals and that's actually the window there and the window there you're following me so basically i'm in a room and i'm looking out through a window that's right yes and that's just the sill at the bottom of the window there unfortunately it's not particularly diagnostic date wise it's clear there'd been a substantial building around here colin platt's two trenches from the sixties were in this area one here and the second around here somewhere here this wall was uncovered relocating that trench and wall is our first target right then let's get this trench in oh bingo hang on a minute here well we hardly needed the digger for that this stonework just under the top soil could be the wall photographed in the 60s it's a good start in the field next door though chris shows mix something that's puzzling him the cows graze in this field yeah and they've been scratting away at the ground here look and they've exposed this big wall oh crack here it's a good meter across that isn't this good wall yeah well the obvious thing is to put a trench around this and see what it is yeah you're happy with that oh yeah great okay but first will giofizz this field there may be other stones beneath the surface and we want to find out if this actually is a wall [Music] but digging holes is simply half the story here the buildings themselves are intriguing when i first arrived here this morning i thought they were just these two carved stones and then stuart discovered this one this ripple effect is actually one that's eroded there's loads of graffiti old-fashioned graffiti dotted all over the place what's going on well it looks like a sort of medieval inscription doesn't it and because it's on on blocks in different parts it must have been off a structure that's been taken apart and the blocks have been reused why is it here well i mean it looks medieval it looks like a sort of thing you get on the front of a monastery or something like that but it wouldn't be a monastery here would it no but it might have belonged to a monastery and there might have been some posh building here like what abbott's house retreat house something like that it looks like something like that or it might even have been a granger it's a big posh for a grange what is a grave well a farm that belongs to a monastery that produces the the materials the food that's used you know they're often called ranges janet do we know who owned this area during the medieval period yes we do we know that brenham was owned by fountains abbey we've got a very interesting set of charters what this tells us is that round about the middle of the 12th century a very important nobleman in yorkshire called roger de mobre granted the monks of fountains a fairly small fairly modest amount of land sometime before 1160. but uh roger makes one important stipulation and that is he reserves for himself in the wood of brim all right to hunting all the wild animals the stags and the wild boars and the wild birds and so on so the monks can do what they like it's just that they'll be hunters tacking back and forth across the land that's right okay we know that the monks of fountains were here but mick was speculating that it might be a grange yeah well it is within a few years is it it is yes we've got a royal confirmation of richard the first uh so dated between um 1189 and 1199 uh in which brim is referred to as a grange it's one of about 25 ranges of fountain but as far as our stones are concerned i think what we need to do is to get a photograph or a drawing of each one and start to see if we can put the inscription back together and get them looked at to see what date the letter is and all the rest of it and it's going to be a lot later than the date you're talking about i'm sure of that but we should certainly get on with that and to find out what it says it's the trouble with this kind of history it all seems so early but the more that you look at a lot of the fines they tend to be later than you hoped well you remember this abby's going on until 15 39 something like that it could happen right towards the end of it yeah this is just where it starts yeah the fact that this farm was once a grange is very important it ties our farm into the fortunes of fountains abbey which is just six miles away for 400 years the abbey ruled the entire area it had 25 granges monastic farms which supplied it with all of its animals produce and goods our site was just one of those but knowing that there was a grange here is both good and bad news good news in that we now know that we're looking for medieval buildings bad news in that we don't know what those buildings might be are these things like monasteries in that they're so ruthlessly planned that if we find one corner we can actually predict where all the other bits are going to be no i mean that that's the prop that's one of the problems one of the problems is that you know you can't say yes because we've got these bits of war that's where the church is that's where the accommodation which you can do basically with with monasteries from about 1100 onwards most of them i have to say it sounds like we don't know all that much about them no we don't really there's very few of them in excavated because they're tucked under you know farms like this in many cases so the problem from our point of view is that even if we find a part of the grange we may not know it's part of the grave no no and we might not know what sort of building it is because it might be the corner of a barn but you only see a little bit of it you don't know it's a barn or the corner of a cow house something like that and as you as you're implying there's no plan to this to say oh because we've got the barn this is your spear where the accommodation is this is where the pigs are living you know it's not like that it's not predictable right so even if we find anything we won't necessarily be able to tell what it is there are no shortcuts here we're also photographing all the medieval stonework maybe the words will give us a clue as to what sort of building they came from but the latin does suggest there may have been a church here the whole farm is littered with medieval stone and the more we look the more we find even the field walls have got a story to tell it's all little bits scattered around but here wow that's something it's a really nice piece this is this is for very sad people who get excited by carve stone what you've actually got to visualize is that this thing will be rotated around can you turn it the other way out oh yeah and that bit is actually like a little shelf for a statue to sit on this is um a string which is what what you've got to imagine is there's a wall sat on top of that and there's a wall below it and this is like a projecting little band that runs around the building does that imply this was something of some size it does because you tend to use a string course as a sort of architectural device to define different floor levels so it does look as though we might have quite substantial buildings here with more than one floor i know this is only a first glance but what's all this lot telling you so far well what's interesting is it it's all of a period it's all seems to be late 15th perhaps very early 16th century so it looks as though it's either come from the same building or maybe a series of buildings that were all put up at the same time that field wall is here away from our main site back in her trench raksha's now beginning to think she's wasting her time what have you got man they're just a big random blocks of masonry there's one there and here but they're not bonded already in any way they're not in a structure it's just like they've just dumped this amazingly yeah well that sort of really goes with that there's no no come on there's no wall lines there oh it's just a massive block high readings i can't see that straight wall that they dug in the 60s well the more that we dig down the side of this the less convinced i am that it's a wall it seems that the 1960s dig got it wrong this isn't a wall it's just rubble so we close this trench down and phil opens another here he's looking for the other 60s trench where they appeared to unearth walls and a medieval floor next door where the cows had uncovered stonework the news is much better we can confidently say that matt has found a wall matt that looks absolutely fantastic it's incredible isn't it yeah you've got just below the grass and you can see we've got a huge wall here yeah it looks a bit massive and good to just be filled with it well you'd need a good wide base to raise the wall up above ah right does this help at all well i don't think this wall goes any further in that direction look you can just see it here in the results yeah it doesn't extend beyond the trench much right if it's a building it might come this way a bit to sort of this sort of distance so we might get a return across here perhaps yeah but but look at the wider picture look this is where our wall is what we appear to have the red is high resistance a sort of series of rectilinear responses going with that alignment all on the same alignment but look at this area here high resistance is red again yeah so that's over here by the tree you can see the slight rise in the ground all right i think there might be another building here right so i think the buildings might go this way and then you've got not down that way i mean i'd like to test this okay i mean if we put a trench across here that would easily resolve what's going on yeah john believes that whatever's happening in this field stops in this area mick agrees and we decide to put a trench in here back in the other field things are looking up this is the wall that plat dug in the 60s after the disappointment of raksha's trench phil's been looking for other walls identified in the 60s it is so nice to actually find the edges of the trench because i think we actually do have the edges of the trench the top layer looks a lot more disturbed than the photographs why'd you write in the cause of that then uh that's probably the heavier tractors and machinery going over the bridge yeah that's it a bit of an anti-climax never is it no not at all it's good stuff i think it's phenomenal only is you know i think it's just really good that we've actually been able to pin down one of uh class trenches yeah and now we can go on from here and really find out what it's all about yeah you want a job shoveling uh brown stuff in the winter we'll have to do it or you're around [Laughter] phil well let me pull you a point well the first time i've ever had a decent offer from you mick well i know what the hell have you got on no paul people tells you on the label look mix monks brew yeah no cods what i could do thirst waiting for you before shed [Laughter] no it's not chaos but we're trying to four big things really we're trying to do a topographical survey the documentary server the building survey and dig some holes so it's a lot of work to do is there a plan yeah there is a plan i mean the plan is to pursue all those courses and see where they they lead us to and are we getting anywhere we are i mean the the excavation we've got outside the wall there is producing all sorts of interesting stuff look at these pieces of lead for example this is window came stuff you know from medieval windows this is roof material so it's got a lead roof and somebody's been melting lead down as well and this is posh stuff you know this is the sort of thing you get off a decent residence not just an ordinary castle shed or something so what about tomorrow well it looks to me as if it's all coming this way our most interesting stuff is over the wall there yeah and it's sort of indicating that we should come this way and look look in this direction does that imply what i think of implies i'm afraid it does yeah tomorrow we're going to trash someone's garden i'm going to trash it we're going to have to dig in the garden there i think that's my feeling at the moment oh you got to stay with us for that yes it's the beginning of day two we're in yorkshire looking for a monastic grange a farm for monks we found some walls but we've got no idea what they are yesterday evening we agreed we'd put a trench in there as you can see absolutely nothing has happened whatsoever we also said that we would put in one in the middle of this garden here and there's no disturbance at all apart from a few dirty breakfast things in fact the only sign of any activity whatsoever is over here what are you two doing on that building there's a little sign that says danger of death and there's a little matter of an 11 000 volt cable running right through where we want to dig and i ain't digging in there i can understand that but what about here in the garden well we haven't survived that yet well you know i'm reasonably happy i don't really want to dig it why well look how pristine it is it's just a beautiful garden would you want to dig that so you've landed up here yeah look we've got these strong responses here just below our feet it's just possible there's a building here so i think we should look at that while we're doing the garden happy with that well you know there's some really nice large bits of stone all around here my only problem is that in the garden it's a lot more lower a lot more level i'm going to be very raised ground here so we could just be looking at like build up and a rubble deposit but you won't know until you dig your anomaly so you don't want to dig there you don't want to dig there and you're reluctant to dig here thank you bridge what a great start today too well like it or not bridge will open a trench over this geophysical anomaly we've only got two other trenches open mats where he's trying to figure out what this substantial wall was once part of and phil's he's been re-excavating a trench dug in the 1960s that included two massive walls and a medieval tiled floor he's now desperate to extend his trench further to work out what's going on but he'll have to wait for the all-clear from gfiz with an 11 000 volt cable running through this area we can't be too careful bridge has already removed the topsoil and has hit important archaeology these tiles discovered just under the surface seem to have the same pattern as those revealed in the 60s in the area phil's now digging [Music] stuart's adapting to farm life pretty well and he thinks the landscape tells a similar story hey what's this then new form of transport that's a great way to see the landscape chris made me the offer so i took it up well you've got the height you can actually see all the lumps and bumps really clearly and it says making limbs as well so it's great so you can see this thing here kanye which is looks like a fish pond and except it's very hard i think well yeah it's it's a classic fish pond it's beautiful like the ones i'm familiar with isn't it you're supposed to spend more time in yorkshire it's a lovely rectangular shape yeah it's been cut across the the contours can you see that dip coming around the corner there yeah that's an old spring line comes down here then they've cut the pond across it so the water can flow into it and then down there's another channel where the spring line used to go away so they've just been really opportunistic and tapped to spring and fill the water up from that you call it opportunistic i call it thrifty we're thrifty in yorkshire it's minimum amount of work maximum amount of water have you got any other things like this on the farm yeah mate there's a couple in that field over there and there's a couple over there as well it sounds if you ought to go and have a look at these students what you think yeah go and get in your chariot then you're never going to get it off in there you know this fish pond and the other one we found are very big they suggest that farming fish was happening here on an industrial scale and it was all down to this place fountains abbey which owned our site at brimum for 400 years the abbey itself dates from the 12th century in the late 15th century this tower was added by abbott huby who went on a building spree in the surrounding area but did that building spree reach as far as the grange at brim when i first went to bramham you know it saw those inscribed blocks with the lettering on yes it reminded me of this tower with these inscriptions here sure was i right to think that oh absolutely um they're absolutely identical the form of the lettering the spacing absolutely identical so it could even be the same carver it's that close so if if uh hoob is paying for this to be built is it likely that he's probably paying for our place i think it's very likely yeah what is it that's certainly entirely consistent with the way we've understood the investment that the abbey was making in its buildings both here and on the outlying sites so perfectly good sense to employ the same craftsman on all those projects and do the other architectural details that we can see on this tower do they help with what we've got at brimroom as well they certainly do yes i mean if we look right at the top of the tower we've got that three light window i mean that's very similar to the kind of architectural fragments we've been bringing up of bremen yeah and then if we drop down a bit and maybe look at the buttress which has got these niches in to take a sculpture of some description yeah again we've had very very similar material at bremen inside the abbey in the warming house there's more evidence of a close link with our site these tiles are exactly the same as those being lifted by bridge in her trench it's probably now safe to say that abbott huby did build at our site the challenge for us is trying to establish just what his contribution to bremen was [Music] the community of fountains was made up of monks who did all the religious work and hundreds of others known as lay brothers and it's the lay brothers who would have been at our site doing all the farming work what was a lay brother a lay brother was like a laborer he worked for the monks he did all the manual and manual tasks what would his day have been like it would have been hard work early start in the morning about three o'clock in the morning get up say his prayers prepare the fires for cooking on and then out into the fields do all the menial tasks finish the day about eight o'clock matt hello have you been listening to all this yeah heard a few bits menial tasks and the like yeah it's hard for us to empathize really isn't it with quite how horrible their life must have been which is why uh you've been volunteered to live the life of a lay brother no for the next 24 hours got to do what he tells you what are you called i'm the novice master so i'll be looking after you and that makes me what brother matt brother other man when do we start we can start right now can unlock if you need to finish my hole nope we've got to start now off you go over in the next field phil's made remarkable progress he's now exposed both the walls that were found here in the 60s the geophysics results for this area have produced a large anomaly just meters from phil's trench so kerry and ian have opened up a trench over it and hit these enormous pieces of stonework could they be part of the structure in phil's trench phil yo you're practically in australia aren't you i know it's a lot warmer down here it really is but it is a cracking trench and we're solving some of the problems but jonathan it is a zonking great wall isn't it this isn't some old barn well actually um you do find that even barns and and other agricultural buildings are quite well made so it could easily be a barn or even an industrial building we know it's got to be of some scale because when you look at this chamfer you can see it's actually returning here and that's because on this corner there was a thumping great big buttress to hold the wall up so we know we've got a very big building now you see this wall here we can say now is definitely the same phase as this wall we can tell that because the joints are actually bonded in together you see here the stone disappears behind there but here the stone is disappearing in that way so they are actually meshed in together they're the same wall but the thing of it is this wall is not the same as this wall there are totally different alignments what do you mean they're going in different directions yeah this one comes straight across here past here and is in fact in the same alignment as that one there and hang on hello professor aspen how are you doing you come around have a look all right come on it was nice to know that you were still working silently away out of camera shots cheeky devil you see these two big blocks here yeah they've just been standing on i think that's part of that wall that's on top of the other wall through there in other words it's coming along through here and it's turning more or less under where the wall is now this is the top wall the top one why what do you think's going on well i'm wondering whether we haven't got a mill here whether phil isn't in one part of the mill building because if you look back that way you see the the lump the bank to the right of the tree yeah i think that's probably one half of a dam and the other half we go across the stream if you imagine that gap full of clay yeah then it's going to pond the water behind and you could then tap a channel off somewhere where all those branches and things are bring it through here coming past you by the time you get it to here you're a good two to three meters above the stream that would give you enough fall to drive a mill wheel which would then power stuff back in the mill but why have we got two walls there at slightly different angles well presumably i mean like so many of these structures they go through rebuildings alterations and we've got an error in a later phase how are we going to work this out well i think what we should do is probably clear about two to three meters each way here just by taking the vegetation off taking the loose stones out and see what these walls do do they come through here have we got a channel have we got something like a wheel pit and that lands it one way or the other all that's fine but just one thing what's that we still haven't trashed chris's garden well we might still go that way because there's still a lot of stuff in that direction good god you're sitting vandal a mill seems as good a suggestion as any but can we prove it and can we find a date matter day or apron our own lay brother matt is now getting to grips with day-to-day life on a medieval monastic grange and it's not easy it wouldn't be too bad if it was just constant praying but lay brothers also had to look after the animals and do all the other farm work as well back in the trench matt had been digging we started out with one wall raksha's been working on it in matt's absence she's extended it and now discovered other big chunky bits of stonework have you got on then raksha well we opened this trench to see if we could actually get this wall coming in through here right to get the return on the other side of the building we managed to pick up these two whacking great big stones and i do actually think that this is the corner right you don't think it's the base of a field wall going this way ah no because if you come over here mick if you look in the corner over there there's huge stones on the corner the rest of it's very impressive in it very impressive warning the problem is we still have no idea what it is or what date it might be we don't have any fines at all lay brothers lived a frugal life and a hard one there were over 400 of them at fountains abbey and they had to carry everything by hand to and from the various granges outrange is six miles from the abbey the trench we opened to look for evidence of a mill is causing concern now there's a bit of head scratching going on that's not really quite what i expected jonathan you've got two big blocks of stone but it's not really good quality stuff is it no it it doesn't compare to what we've had on the other side um i'm just wondering if that's a thickening of that that wall they've just built up with rubble yeah it doesn't look like the end of that building but they might be reinforcing that bank won't they exactly yeah it also isn't quite what i expected if there was a mill elite coming in bringing water to a wheel i'd expect something rather more even than that well yes i can appreciate that perhaps if we took another bucket full out there do you think yeah it's not by this stage matt's really praying for a break i mean okay actually getting better because it wasn't just the constant praying the animals and the farm work the lay brothers had to do all the repairs around the grange too [Music] all afternoon there's been a lot of debate behind the scenes about the structure in phil's trench is it a mill a large domestic building or a particularly impressive barn i'd just like an answer so we sorted out this mill yet no we haven't we we can't see a channel or anything there yet we need to do a bit more work down there hang on so are you saying it might not be a mill i wouldn't i may not be we need to do a bit more work clearing up to see whether it is or not yeah i'm sorry mick i'm still i've been really skeptical about whether or not it is actually a mill now we're trying really hard to look for a mill that's not quite coming and i'm really concerned that we don't lose sight of the fact that what we know we must have here is a building of memorial status you've got this lovely masonry that would fit that bill very nicely let's not turn it into a mill when it's really a manor house but i think the geophysics may help we've got phil's two walls here and it's just possible we've got return at this point so if we drag a trench back and see if we've got a wall below our feet then that will give us the size of the room okay it gives us the size but is that going to help us to decide exactly what it is well hopefully what we'll see is the position of doors and window openings those kind of features and that'll give us some insight as to the kind of function we're looking at for the building what about date what date could it be well currently it could be anything between 1200 and 1600 but but i think we got a solution because if we can get a better look at that plinth and its profile that will give us a date how come oh you get particular plinths at particular periods basically so that should pin it down so all afternoon we thought we had a water mill and it looks like we may not have one maybe we've got a manor house it's an ecclesiastical site maybe it's a chapel and what about dates 1200 1400 1600 take your pick we'll find out tomorrow celsius ascended this omnipotence it's the beginning of day three and i have a very important piece of paper in my hand this is the geophys of this area here and because of the big blob in the middle of it we're gonna have to dig you don't mind if i butcher your what if i can reach it tree yeah we'll cope with that ah right and as soon as i've finished can you reach that one as soon as i finish doing that then we're going to put a test pit sorry about the apples put a test pit in here because of the the big blob i've seen how they do this on the telly have you yeah sorry how long have you had this um uh this particular lawn down um longer than i've been here anyway but i'm feeling that's not gonna last no i don't think so they're the best you can do don't take the mic just watch and learn mate pick up a few tips there's a good reason for digging in the garden this blob in the geophysics suggests something substantial so despite my valiant efforts i leave it to bridge to get on with it we've got three trenches open and they aren't yet giving us the answers we need in her trench raksha's got a large square stone building we don't have a date and don't know what it is kerry's uncovered these large pieces of stone which by themselves don't tell us very much except they must have come from a large building the other interesting thing is that these three stones here are still morted together so it doesn't look like it's demolition and it doesn't look like it's been carted here yeah we we've got a huge great lump of articulated masonry here haven't we it doesn't feel like demolition rub because i can't even imagine if you're trying to demolish a building you just try and you know take down an elevation like that you try and knock the stone off and reuse it on something else and then there's phil's trench yesterday we found these two stone walls they exactly match what was found here in the sixties this is undoubtedly substantial built to impress and definitely medieval we just can't agree what it is theories include a mill a barn or even a manor house but what would a manor house have to do with a monastic site in 1200 you'd have a situation which is the conventional way we'd look at these armies of lay brothers you know being organized by bailiffs and stewards and so on doing the field work by 1400 and 1500 that situation has had to change why what happened then well then you get something like between half and a third of the population dying off killed off by the the black death and it either changes by um leasing the land out and when you lease it out whether or not it's a formal minority structure certainly the lessee is going to think of himself like that he's got a farm in a nice place and he decides what's going to happen here he's going to think well i'll probably order the banner here or you could have a situation where they've got to couch it in those terms just to have a legal explanation for what the status of the place is so even though the place is still actually owned by the church the people who are living there think of themselves as a new class of landowners bit flash with their new houses that's right so maybe we shouldn't be thinking of it as a manor house at all just like a posh house yeah it's really the big house you know the posh house in the area that's that's why we should think of it down by the stream there's now no evidence of any structure no one's thinking mill any longer the plinth though has now been revealed and we've got a date well you got your plinth jonathan does that help at all well i think it does um i mean we've got this lovely shampoo which we saw earlier on and it comes down and it just drops off onto this square bit yeah and then they've got this beautiful block in the corner which is carved to resolve that squared off piece going into the other chamfer on this bit of the projecting building so that's actually quite a complicated stone to carve isn't it to get around that corner oh it is it's a bit of an unusual way of trying to reconcile these two bits of structure does that help you with data tour well i i think it starts to push things back a little bit and perhaps we're looking at the late 14th century yeah so we're into the 1300s rather than 100 years later yeah i think so we're talking about grange buildings this is in a different league to that isn't it oh yeah this is a huge great big domestic building the plinth at last gives us a function and a date this is a house and it's early one thing puzzles fill though there seems to be a square bit on the corner we have a few thoughts sticking out you've got solid wall there you've got solid wall there and right at the intersection you've got a hollow yeah well weren't you thinking of this as a staircase or that that's right well we had that we had two options didn't we we had a staircase yeah or we had a guard robe or bulk really blues yeah yeah but looking at that straight edge yeah i think we've got to go for a bog the bog option so where philly's now he's actually standing in the loo in fact i i think perhaps we've got a couple of shafts in here which are taking the the waste home from the actual guard road proper which is up there somewhere ah so one of these could come from a seat somewhere up here and the other one's down this level and they'd be separated by a mid-spine warp as you try to keep them apart i'm i'm happy with thinking this is a guard rope right and i'm standing in it exactly story of my life it looks like it fell [Music] the toilet block would probably have been something like this toilets at different levels with the waste working its way down to the base on a more spiritual level our own volunteer lay brother matt has just about reached the end of his tether matt your time's up thank you look look at this can you see that his back is actually red raw is it hurting it is starting to sting a little yeah how long have you been doing that too long too long thank god you saved me i certainly did well come outside you've got your your rewards on this earth sit yourself down ah and we've got you a cup of tea our home comforts and your little reward thank you very much so how was it what was it like a three to be a lay monk you basically have to be like a shy horse you're lugging stuff around the whole time it's really really hard physical work and the grain lugging was really difficult the dry stone walling really made my arms here some of it was okay though it was quite nice in fact what did you like um i quite enjoyed milk and goat actually i've never done that before um yeah i'm going and collecting firewood and generally being outside it's pleasant and what about waking up in the middle of the night how did you cope with that uh well i've been up now for god knows how long that was probably one of the worst things about being a monk because when you get up three hours before it's even light and so you've got the whole day to do all this hard physical work but you're still getting up before you can really do anything was it a religious experience at all i certainly feel enlightened in some way whether it's just incredible tiredness and too much flagellation i'm not sure what was your boss like him up there was okay he was a bit of a pain eat your cake the archaeology is at last giving us answers and not all of them positive in my trench in the garden all we got was some rubble that had been dumped there so we record it and shut it down and in bridge's original trench the one just outside the garden the story was the same despite the tiles more rubble but it's a different story across in raksha's trench where mark now thinks he knows what's going on we think with a wall of this substantial nature it's to take considerable height above it yeah and if you think about this as a square structure how does the idea of a dove cook grab you oh that sounds very reasonable actually because we've got no doorway or anything haven't we there's no doorway although we've got some paving now around the outside no sign at all of the door i mean often the door's a little way up the wall isn't it so you just sort of get in and help yourself to the birds and the eggs the other thing of course is a dovecot you don't get lots of domestic rubbish knocking about no fines at all to speak of and no fines at all to speak of is pretty much what we've got in this trench so that fits pretty nicely so we've no way of dating this but at least it's good to know what it was when you see all this stuff the filming and the recording and the heavy metal and all these trenches it looks like getting towards the end of day three on every other time team and we're just in the process of winding up and pulling all the information together but there's one big difference this time it's this it's these buildings and it's what's underneath our feet because most of the archaeology is here and so we've got to use other methods to tell that part of the story we know that these buildings all went up once the earlier medieval buildings were demolished but there's still a lot to learn from them chris and barbara are on a whirlwind tour of their own farm to find out more i'm sure you're intimate with this uh this doorway yes the actual stonework is a complete medieval window a window when this barn went up there were complete medieval buildings dotted around on the site where they could just pull this stuff out in its entirety uh those those are core balls stones which are designed to support beams and they actually don't like medieval you've probably got a medieval seller and that when they rebuilt the house in the early 18th century they just kept the center it's the seller to a substantial medieval building that's orientated this way and then heading up towards we've got where we've got these two extent post-medieval buildings that is a string course a band of stone that runs around the building and it sort of defines the next level so it's definitely two-story building it's two-story building and it's a very big one as well do you see that locked doorway at first full level there yeah well we think that linkedin with the medieval building when it still existed i think that is just a addressed piece of stonehenge quite dull by today's standard i think we're really looking at a date which is possibly in the late 16th century yeah late 16th century 16th century oh yes that's a lot earlier than we've been led to believe really yeah yeah and still in use today it's doing yesterday and then there's all that fancy stone with the writing on it unfortunately much of the lettering was too fragmented or just too worn down to make sense of what it said but we now have no doubt it would have come from a religious building probably a chapel but where was it well the stone inventory in the field walls has thrown up an interesting pattern most of it came from this area so we did some geophysics right at the end of day three and the results were tantalizing clearly there's a lot of stone built up on the bank but this has to be something different it's on the right alignment it's east west it's 10 meters beyond the the field boundary i mean i'd put i'd put some money on that might there have been a chapel in this area here sometimes you pray for a day for phil yeah we've come to have a look at what you're doing well you will not be disappointed come and have a look at this oh but we're actually beginning to get an idea now of what the site is all about you know we had so much trouble finding whether this was a wall or not we've now got it continuing right over towards the digger so it definitely runs that way it's massive it is absolutely massive but you see on the corner we've got a wall coming across there it then returns round there so what we've got on the corner here is either a turret or perhaps a toilet uh tower well you know they had to go somewhere didn't they you know right by the stream yeah it's right by the street mind your posh floor for a laugh what exactly of course these tiles are original but they've been actually been relayed you can see that the pattern doesn't actually marry up but you can see i mean somebody obviously thought well there's some noise tiles we'll have them and you can't blame them hang on phil if you're saying that this wall goes all the way back well to here at least at least yeah and could be much bigger well mick we're talking about a heck of a size for a building yeah and very posh with this plinth along the front so are we talking about a manor house or a posh residence well let's stick with the posh residence and if the abbot's going to come and live here and he's got a nice big building looking down the valley with either a little turret in the corner or lou in the court and that strikes me as really high quality accommodation exactly because it could extend under your house yeah you could easily i don't think i like the sound of it yeah house has got to go yeah this building certainly would have been very impressive bigger than anything we expected it had two ranges out the back and was huge in terms of size there is one good comparative site this is what it may have looked like king's manor in nearby york it really is huge look at that lawn barbara you hardly know we've been here would you uh just one slight downside this huge hole here but i'm afraid that's what happens when you get a 600 year old abbott's house discovered in your paddock how do you feel about that i think it's fantastic i had no idea the structure was so substantial uh it's far bigger than we ever imagined far bigger we also imagined a simple story of being a chapel with a few uh laid brothers houses and that would be it it's a bit more complicated than that [Music] the story of chris and barbara's farm certainly is complicated for 400 years the monks of fountain's abbey ran it as a farm a grange in the 1300s they built a huge house and rented it out as a manor house in the late 1400s it's likely to have come back to the abbey for the use of abbott huby in the 1600s chris and barbara's current buildings began to spring up as the older medieval buildings were knocked down their buildings bear the signs of the upheaval from 500 years ago when the monasteries were dissolved and today everyday farming just carries on much as it did then [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 528,154

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, The Monk's Manor, Yorkshire Dales, Brimham Hall, Harrogate, Yorkshire, Fountains Abbey, National Trust

Id: K20BfA6lf5k

Length: 47min 55sec (2875 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021