Time Team S11-E12 Roxburgh,.Scotland

it's hard to believe but just 500 years ago this picturesque and vacant pasture near Kelso under Scottish Borders was the site of one of the wealthiest cities in Scotland founded by a king a hub of international trade and holding a key strategic position Roxburgh along with barracks Stirling and Edinburgh was one of the four great urban centres of medieval Scotland but whereas the other three are still thriving towns ancient Roxburgh simply vanished all that's left of this once great borough are the few decaying remains of its castle so where is it and why isn't this field a buzzing metropolis like Edinburgh the answer is we simply don't know there are no contemporary maps documents are scarce and amazingly no archaeologists have been allowed to dig here until now so a whole city virgin archaeology three days can we do it and the clue but whatever happens it's going to stretch us to the limit this is probably the biggest site we've ever attempted on time team nestling in the crook of land where the river Tveit joins the Tweed it's a mile long and half a mile wide somewhere in here we know is a lattice of streets punctuated with civic buildings churches even a monastery but where do we begin and how on earth can we make sense of something as big as this in just three days make have we bitten off more than we can chew no I don't think so I mean whenever we come to a site we have a series of choices about what we can do in the time available and that sort of governed by what we want to know about it what you know what the particular problems that we pose and we could spend 30 years or more here but actually what we're interested in really is about the layout of this you know what where are the streets where with the town defenses where were the churches and buildings within it and we can get a great deal of that without digging a lot of holes actually you know because we can do it from the other sources the geophysics looking at the early maps in particularly this fantastic collection of rare pictures Colin's got would show all manner of features Colin is an author a lot of activity around isn't that very interesting what are all these features well here we've got a very obvious one which is the the ditch and Bank feature which we can see on the ground and a section across that I think it's going to tell us a great deal what's all this stuff here well all these little sponges appear to be occurring on on Church sites and I'd suggested that they might actually be recumbent stone slabs giving large marks but Stewart suggests more prosaically that they may be mole hills you know romancing yo-ho-ho what's this here : this appears to be part of one of the street lines and then the broad areas on either side of that would be where the house lines where yes and that has to be one of our main targets I think so if we can actually see something what the buildings were like with all the pottery and stuff that they're using and the dates of that yeah in other words the ordinary sort of people that we're living here okay yeah so we really need to do F is that area first I think John to get a bit more detail before we start that markup there is that big ditch runs up there Stuart's already worked out roughly where the parch marks are on the ground and soon we're on the trail of our first target the remains of one of rock's Burroughs main streets which Emmer appears to be trying to find with a couple of fluorescent light tubes whatsit dude this is a new and Kuehl gradient at the system John how come you've invested in this kind of stuff isn't the stuff that you used to use any good yes it is this is what you normally see us walking up and down the fields with but what we've got here is a brand new instrument and it does things twice as quickly and it actually looks a bit deeper into the ground as well if we need to because it's got this extra length to it that's right an integral part of the system is on the back here though that's just a counterbalance isn't good you know the weight of the water actually balances it and what does this machine actually do it's a magnetometer so what is it routing for us we're looking at magnetics and so that will pick up rubbish pits ditches and it will give us hopefully a streak plan historians believe Roxburgh started as a small and remarkable town in the late 11th century but its fortunes were transformed when one of Scotland's greatest rulers took a special interest in it David the first who became king in 1124 is credited with bringing stability to Scotland after decades of internal strife he chose Roxburgh as his power base he built a castle here and gave the town a Royal Charter it basically his principal seat of government he's witnessing issuing most of his great charters here he's holding councils here that are major meetings of church councils taking place here so if we're thinking of it in terms of what might have been Roxburgh could have been Edinburgh yes and there is nothing else quite like it in Scotland the fact that we're sitting right on top of the medieval town is pretty romantic yeah but there must have been hundreds of towns built in the medieval period yeah I mean you're absolutely right that the 12th or 13th centuries was the great time of town foundation town development and in fact most of the places that people think of as small market towns that they might live in or going shopping we're founded at that time of course that's the difference that they're still there we still use them whereas here you can get a snapshot and what life is like in the inside hasn't been mocked up by all the post medieval cheer the steward Victoria and all those buildings put on top and we're really lucky to be able to delve into this apparently pristine site because the landowner the Duke of Roxburgh has refused all previous requests to dig here it's a real cool but it comes at a price this is a scheduled ancient monument and we're allowed to dig only 200 square meters of it a tiny fraction of the overall area so every trench must hit its target and for that we're relying on GF is to produce really crisp results whether long faces well have a look at this tone and this is what John just produced is just describing it myself as trashed and certainly it's not looking like the town plan that we were expecting to see is it not at all what I'm wondering is whether we've got plowing these sort of lines look like old plow lines right we're expecting a streak coming here that sort of angle and it is clearly nothing like that at the moment so what you're at this great thing is John well it could be the edge of the plowing it's just possible that is the edge of the archaeology is there a hint of Summit running across there like that yes we really need to do more survey field you certainly need to come this way don't know if the streets down the middle I thought when we got the first printout we see the whole town like yeah yeah didn't we all yet all in all a pretty disappointing start and Mick's given John an hour to come up with better results but we don't need newfangled gadget tree to provide all our targets good old-fashioned eyesight was all fill needed to spot the work stone brought up by the roots of this tree it's growing out of an enormous earthwork bank which runs along one side of the site he thinks it's the town's defensive ramparts got the bank running across here so somewhere in here is probably going to be a war if you get the chance have a look in the route to that tree over those about three or four courses of stone built into the root system and then down here and the trench should come down into the bottom of the ditch with a bit of luck we'll get some water logged in also she'll stop in the middle of ditch that's right so trench one goes in here and its contents will be crucial to our chances of reconstructing the layout of ancient Roxburgh because not only of the town defense is a key feature in themselves they also mark the limit of its extent so John where do you want this hole in 200 yards to the east of trench one the extra hour of GF is seems to have paid off we've expanded the survey now and we have actually got this anomaly running through here and I'm sure that's what's on the aerial photographs so whether that's the road coming through we've got the ditch to the side ignore the lines going that way I'm sure that's later plowing and this is all disturbance the road if it is a road should come through on this alignment so I think just a small 5 meter trench at right angles across it so trench 2 goes in here in a bid to locate a roadside ditch I think the dude should be where's buckets going through now perhaps not quite the impressive target we'd all hoped for but it's a start till he dies absolutely and now John's more confident about his GF is he's in huge demand Mick wants to see more of the area around trench 2 in the hope a street plan will emerge and Stewart wants him to have a look at our third target another area of parch much somewhere on the western edge of the site where should we based it on well in really see least roadway that chills coming through here that tree the area is that one over there so you need to be between that tree and the hedge line all that area has got what looked like archeological features in it whatever the I feel mostly when we need to cover as much as we can yeah yeah I thought you might say that right yeah we've got to go right the way up to the fence okay I'm sorry John and his squad are off again looking for another road watch Mary once she starts that's it up till now though there's been a lot of looking on this side and not much finding so it's a bit of a relief when Matt in trench one finally hits some archaeology we're clearing what it's clay and it's perfectly circular features have just appeared and on the edges of it are actually still very much intact the stuff inside it's really loose you can see it just going straight down so I mean what we got a post which is gonna be what gonna be about five or six inches yeah yeah if you look at the stones they come up here in sections stop there and this post all right in line there so it looks like what we might add is a timber structure maybe padded up with this clay bank yeah at the front to make a really firm compact frontage to the bank with almost gravel yes flow in at the other side okay I'm Fraser this already looks convincing as a stout defensive rampart the next step is to find and excavate the ditch that goes with it and fill soon on the money and now look that that's going Dan's also beginning to uncover a ditch in trench two though his is a more modest roadside ditch he hopes it'll eventually lead us to a street with houses along it down is there anything at all there is there is we do indeed have a ditch I've got an edge coming in here and Bridget's got the other edge over there okay you've got a ditch but is it a ditch for a road well John's pretty adamant than it will that it will be unfortunate we'll have to extend the trench a little bit further in that direction to be absolutely sure about that these files from this trench down from the ditch film good collection of 12th 13th century medieval pottery 12th and 13th is what we're after isn't it what's this that's from a straight sided cooking pot and that's why it's smoked blackened on the outside probably stood about that high so are all these pieces of pot domestic basically yes but not necessarily from here they could have been well trained from it yeah but they're not very worn I mean I don't think they've travelled very far so that implies to me that they've come from a house nearby I wouldn't normally get very excited about drab stuff like this but right now these cooking pots are just great evidence we're closing in on the street and the houses along it which is just the boost we all needed as the first day draws to a close the team go into overdrive in the trenches the archaeologists are digging like men and women possessed Stewart's tramping all over the countryside looking for more earthworks and the geophysicists have got not one but two new sets of results the bad news is the area over there nothing but plowing cutting into whatever is there yeah very like what we had earlier wasn't it but look at this this is where Phil's trenches here's the defences look at the regular pattern we're starting to get inside I think this is really nice now yeah that's much more like a town plan isn't it okay if this really is good what are we gonna do with it - no well I think we should expand this trench not only to to get the rest of the road but to go alongside the road and see if there's you know the buildings that are producing this and hopefully we get shed loads of this from the actual building alongside the road beginning of day two in our search for the ancient city of Roxburgh somewhere underneath all this grass and yesterday evening John Gator said he got some good news and some bad news the good news was that the geophys over there was looking really good so we were going to extend the little trench that we'd got there into something really big the bad news was that the GF is here was really indistinct so nine o'clock and what's happened we've got no work going on there at all and we've got this really long 15 metre trench over here shouldn't this trench be way over there no this trench is exactly where it ought to be Tony remember I showed you their photographs yesterday they got these clear marks that look like a roadway yeah yeah and they're also features coming off it which might be either back bound just to properties or buildings but John the geophys was really not good at all here was it well we've got lots of problems with the plowing that I talked about but it's really clear look it's tops on this line basically between the tree and the gate over there the plowing comes up to there but on this side we're clear and if I look at the geophysics now I've got a bit more time I can actually start to see the road features so is it fair to say you've written your evidence and found stuff isn't fine last night well I suppose so Matt what have we got in the trench well if we start with that any because you've just clipped the edge of the road that's where the can Gravlin Sandi's come in from there it's large dark areas where the ditch is the roadside ditch and they were onto these stones here these large flat stones some kind of boundary to the road and hopefully to go up here and clean up this end you might find the buildings of stuff coming off the road any finds Derrick's more medieval pottery Tony first piece of imported pottery that's from Yorkshire that's Yorkshire where from England interesting enough mostly this time from glaze jugs rather than cooking vessels so what does that tell you that suggests to me it's slightly later than the material we were looking at yesterday yr jugs later than plates because cooking vessels become they start making the amount of iron later on so what's all this starting to tell us we've got this roadway and we identify a road wherever they wear trench to is we'll have some idea of the layout between them and what sort of eunuchs people might have been living in fantastic but the big news of the morning and I mean huge is what Phil's discovered in trench one am i right in thinking you're stood in the bottom of a huge defensive ditch you're absolutely right this is one edge coming right up here and then it runs down into the bottom and then climbs up to an enormous Bank on that side there is an awful lot deeper than the earthworks suggest it must be what ten feet at least it's a very very impressive ditch if you're an attacker or anybody outside looking at somebody on the inside they are very very well defended so do you know yet what's going on inside the ditch in terms of defenses ah let me come up and I'll show you that now you see the ditch is going to be rising up here and then just beyond the edge of the ditch which we think will be somewhere there we've got this beautiful post hole in there funnily enough we've got another one just back there now this post here has actually been burnt you can see that way the play around it has been reddened by heat now that it's beginning to look as though we've actually got some sort of timber framing within the the front of the bank and that would perhaps explain why this once but and that one isn't because it would have been in the middle of the rampart so we can now put the first landmark of medieval Roxburgh back on the map these huge defenses ran along the one edge of the town not naturally protected by water if attackers managed to negotiate the deep and difficult ditch they were then faced with a stout wall built from clays supported on a timber frame and clad in stone it would have been an impressive barrier and as the evidence of burning suggests it was absolutely not just for show in fact the city was besieged on numerous occasions the most traumatic period in her history was between 1296 and 1318 when she found herself caught up in Edward the first wars against the Scots attacked and occupied by each side in turn her inhabitants faced almost daily threat of invasion since one in 1313 when the Scots deliberately attack during the feast day so the English will be taken on Aware's and they sent her in quite right what happens is Sir James Douglas dresses his men off in black cloaks and gets them to go on hands and knees it's nightfall and the sentries on the walls think that they're looking at the cattle string they break in overwhelm the few of the garrison that were still armed a few escaping to the great tower but they don't supplies they don't have weapons and give up after two days all this begs the question why was Roxburgh so desirable of course its strategic position in the borders is part of the answer as is its political importance as a royal bearer but the real reason is money it's in one of the most ideal locations for the production of two of the most desirable commodities of the Middle Ages wool and cattle hides they're being produced in bulk in this area you've got some of the biggest corporate producers of the Middle Ages and they've been traded probably through the great fear of st. james's that's held here end of July beginning of August every year where you have traders merchants coming from all over Northern Europe dealing in the wool and then it is traded down from Roxburgh I'm through barrack and Brock's Britain really gets rich on this the sale of Scottish hides and wool to Flanders was in fact so lucrative the Roxburgh became one of the wealthiest cities in Scotland on a par with Edinburgh Mick's becoming increasingly confident that the layout of this medieval money-making machine is within our grasp he thinks the street plan emerging from the geophys results is actually the very heart of the town and this is where he wants everyone to focus he's asked John to survey yet more of the area he sanctioned a massive extension to trench to which he hopes will expose a large chunk of Street and some of the houses along it and he's dispatched carrenza to search the medieval documents for references to the people who lived there but dark forces are at work in the shape of Stuart Ainsworth just keep going along this track for a Worthen this taking us away from everything he appears to have kidnapped John and forced him to drive to the other end of the site about half a mile away to tempt him with a completely new target see how it dips off here towards the failures and then beyond it's a patch of Nettles it's sort of all in this this area here are not know all the nettles are indeed so you're joking and Stuart thinks they're covering something much more exciting than mere streets and houses he thinks this isolated spot could be the site of st. James's Church one of the most important and substantial buildings in medieval Roxburgh it's rough position is marked on 17th century maps but its precise location has long been a mystery I don't know whether it's those earthworks it might be further round there it might be further round there we don't know specifically on those earthworks you don't like metals bi it's just the fact we're just starting to get a good plan we think of the town yeah and if we stop halfway through and come over here I prefer to argue the case with Mick I think if we go beyond the fence in the end Stuart reluctantly selects a small patch of the earthwork for John to GF is and for the time being everyone's happy again well relatively oblivious to all the strategic wrangles going on around them Carrie and Matt have been quietly scraping away in trench three well we felt we're looking for looks like we've got a building at this end so you would actually be standing inside the house so we've got the beginnings of the town in town yet how do you know this is a building and not just a load of old rubble well the stones are failing as regular if you look down underneath the feet down here we do actually have small pieces of mortar which would have bonded these stones together and if we move along this way the edge of the house here we've got is rather nice little gully way here just here yet that really needs to come and sleuth out anything from that from the house cleared up better still the house is full of very striking pottery face mask jug that's lovely isn't it what would it have looked like I think probably more than one face mask maybe two or three and handle spanked on one side our first real evidence of international trade and is this pottering which is French and that's again from very high quality glazed water or wine jugs these pups would have been expensive and as Matt digs down the size and construction of the building confirm it was once home to some of Roxbury as wealthier citizens along this side here we have this wall up of the internal wall and you can see these stones bonded with this lovely yellow more to learn right yes and this is clearly the wall that we picked up in the air photograph would that be other side it there though I think it could well be and perhaps we've got a row of them yeah so that mean but that make this house about er what 20 feet wide in just a few hours Matt's put our second key feature firmly on the map a road that no one ever knew existed which was lined with large high-status stone built houses it's like a posh suburb inhabited perhaps by people who'd made good in the wool trade Phil though is after more ordinary folk and in a now massively extended trench - he thinks he's getting very close to them how are you getting on here oh pretty well you want to come and have a look well here we got this road we think it's probably running short and more less north-south really then as we come this way we come over this bitty hefty roadside ditch now as we come on again we've got a much narrower ditch we think that might be a fence we've even got features in here that are going perpendicular to the main road so we might actually have buildings fronting onto the street right and that road is running north-south that's right well in that case it must be Market Street I should know that but we know there are two main streets in Roxburgh one and runs east-west that's King Street and the other one runs north-south and that's Market Street and I suppose you're now gonna tell me you know exactly who lived here and what their addresses were but I can give you some of those don't each other seriously I mean possibly with a bit more research we could try and work out whose tenement this is well then we are beginning to get the archaeology associated with these people because look at this one I mean they've got big stones there and another one there we reckon it might be a well or something well now then if we can get some finds out of that we can perhaps tell you what sort of lifestyle your inhabitants were living you do your job and I'll do mine right brilliant which fulfill means extending trench to yet again to reveal more of the house I'm someone's keeping an eye on the square meter edge because we can't be too far off our limit corinthis jobs a bit less physical but that doesn't make it any easier why have you drawn all these people's names on little tacky bits of paper well what I'm trying to do is get my head round this sort of thing Margaret the wife of rod chair had a Chantry William Baz Vil are joined on the north side a tenement belonging together to Melrose lay on the south side of that which belong to the wife of the pious Roger no one's attempted this before and I can see why it's a brain ache but we'll put him here right a tenement belonging to the abbot of Melrose lay on the south side of Roger some make the most of it there's the river John evidently won his battle with the nettles on Stewart's mystery earth work but the things you're probably interested in the high resistance here as a certain regularity to it you would say high resistance that mean it might be stone below the ground there yeah it could be stolen it could be rubble well rubble will be good because we know from a documentary sources that the church was robbed in great stones were taken away and so on and what you might expect to see is rubble thrown backing into the place has been digging so that potentially could be very exciting couldn't it as some James's church is our best bet for a really solid bit of architecture we all think it's worth a trench which Mick decides to put in here and bingo just inches under the surface is a mass of stone another big dress Priya turning up there which Bridget appears to be excavating single-handed this is what I love about Miele archaeologists what they come into the trees to help and then they just stand there with a shovel and just watch the machine eventually the blokes get the point and everyone soon scraping at the stonework so architectural stone you might expect the church here it's everywhere the individual pieces are huge and look as if they're either floor slabs or gravestones and amidst these megaliths carries uncovered the find of the day it looks as though just dropped out of the sky and landed there that's fantastic can we come in yeah come on in what do you think it is well shape of it it's wedge-shaped it could be a boudoir from an archway or something of that kind remind me what I lose Juarez it's one of these segmental blocks that fits into an arch looking at the phone you've got this stepped base that could be the base of the cross what here here yeah so it could actually be the cross arms the tree on which Christ crucified do you still get a thrill after all these years when you find something as beautiful as that every time I find something like this especially this is absolutely brilliant end of day two and what a cracker it's feed every trench has produced fantastic archaeology and we can now add the main road through Town Market Street and some James's church to our plan we're not celebrating yet though because there are Suede's of this site still to explore and loads of new targets including an area the archaeologists are calling the old burrow where the founding fathers built the city's very first housing that would be your hunch where slap bang in the middle of that field can you see that earth work there alongside the river this long strip of a field here yeah I think that is part of the defense's you might put round the edge of a small town that's the castle betcha just as we fly around it it is very narrow and it might even be too narrow they might have had to come out onto Cape ray if that should be on the top of there so you've changed your mind already somewhat fly wrap just to make sure we circle the site once more and Stuart spots a third possible location I like the area between West James's churches with located and the castle over there nice your mind again it's not easy is it no it isn't ideally we'd like to dig a hole in all three of Stuart's sites but we've only got time to GF is one so mix plumped for K Bray an area of high ground between the castle in the main site and with every passing minute four pressures building Henry just come here a second William right Tony last night you told me that we were allowed to dig 50 square meters so we could possibly have squeezed two trenches out of that yeah is it 50 square meters but things are change of reassessed actually down to 20 20 square meters yes all we've got left and we've got three sites and we've got to make a decision within the hour thanks mate okay one bombshell at the start of day three is bad enough but Stuart just dropped another he thinks the stone working trench for while clearly ecclesiastical isn't part of the church building itself of course we've got to find out what it is part of but in the meantime Stuart's identified another earth work about 20 metres away which he thinks is a much stronger contender that's the feature it's found in the trenches if you do a sketch of these earthworks here you've got this lovely regular east-west platform got a big bank out here which seems to define an enclosure which might be a churchyard or something and at first pass I have thought this would be a good candidate for the primary church building it's now 11 o'clock our hours up and if we don't dig our final trench now then we never will oh and Henry's just told me he's recalculated yet again and it isn't 20 square meters that we're still allowed to dig it's 17 and a half now Mick the archaeologists have given me four different potential locations for this final trench you've probably got half dozen other ideas we've got to make a decision in a way we have yeah yeah and we've just been discussing that I think we're duty-bound to put one in upon quebra up here why do you say duty-bound well because it was in the research design to see whether there was the early burrowers up here but you don't even think that the old burrows up here doing Skye you said it was or else I think there's one of three possibilities is cabe ray this is the area between the church and the castle and this area immediately below the castle so I don't think you know that we're nowhere to put this strange project we've got some of our best results from up here I mean look at this this is the magnetics and it looks as though we've got buildings and four buildings to show in magnetic sea is rare I mean they could burn down on a burnt on a rocket fee no I'd like to put a trench in just on there I think we'd use some of our currency up to do that some of it how much well I know for bit Ruth you know three by five something like that well that's it really I got a minute you can do five by three that leaves coupler square meter that's - that's Tekken is right up to the wire that is quite fond of a church down there I think it'd be really nice to resolve what that platform is next to the ecclesiastical stuff we've got in the trenches you don't like using the maximum allowable area - it doesn't seem very good practical I do like test pits yeah that sounds like a decision trench five goes in on top of cabe ray in search of the old barracks sway a little bit phrase up brilliant and Stu now has to decide wearing his platform to dig a one meter test pit that'll solve the mystery of sand James's Church and what a mystery it's turning out to be the voussoirs to day we thought was part of the inside of the church has today been identified as something completely different a grave slab from the cemetery which is lovely but doesn't help us locate the building and the rest of the stonework still not a clue time to call in an expert um um it does seem very very strange in detail so I'm alone I thought you got something extremely interesting but extraordinary puzzling thank you that's exactly what we thought I'd find a special opinion though right up to the pay gap amid the hurly-burly there's one oasis of quiet to get everyone in the right frame of mind we've organized a medieval market of our own it's going to open for business at the end of the day and these good traders are busy preparing to part the archaeologists from their hard-earned cash they'll be selling every day medieval essentials food leather goods like shoes and pouches wooden artefacts woolen clothing and arrows for nearly 400 years people like this would have lived worked and traded up and down Market Street the road in Phil's trench he's hunting for the remains of their houses and workshops and he's doing very well if you remember here we had this linear arrangement running perpendicular to our front trench yep which we thought actually might be a property boundary well now you see here you see where the photographic stick is yeah we've now got this what we think of the back of a building running parallel to the ditch and to that tenement building so this is one big building as it we're going like that that's all right and across like that starting from over here probably coming round along here and then return him back along here Phil's tenement would have looked like this a fairly basic structure made mainly out of wood it was a bit like a modern Terrace divided into several properties similar tenements would have stretched out along both sides of the road so what have you got to beat that well we're going to beat it but um the document we have here Accords three properties which in fact carrenza splayed a blinder drawing on the geophys results she's worked out that fills trench is right next to the junction of Market Street and the main east-west Road King Street and using information from the document she's established the names of some of the people who might actually have lived in Phil's building we're on the the West Side Market Street if that's north so I suspect this building you found is either William Boswell's building William Skinner's all the abbot of Mel Rose's do we know whether any of them were craftsmen because within the finds of this stone line pit we had a hint of some of the craftsmanship in this street Derrick looked at that earlier on and he's pretty sure that is a piece of kiln furniture from a pottery kiln do you have any any idea what date that like this well it would have to be 13th or 14th century well the document we have here is round about 1330 so perhaps that's the house and perhaps this kill was a little bit later than that after the house of gun that views either way filling carrenza have managed to produce a snapshot of the heart of 14th century Roxburgh this is how it might have looked on market day a buzz of activity is William the Skinner huge red the Baker and other residents of Market Street plied their trade / still exists and umbra still exists berrak still exists why of all the great Scottish medieval towns is this one the only one that's underground well I think it had bad luck I mean it was in a very very vulnerable area in the joins and froze between Scotland in England because it's so far south yes and and no one had really decided whether this was a bit of Scotland although this was a bit of England probably the decisive moment comes when beric falls into English hands again and remains in English hands the king is not going to allow Scottish merchants to be trading through an English port because he won't get the tax precisely the revenue goes to the English port instead and that happens when that's 1482 with bearing in English hands Roxburgh had no gateway to the markets of Europe and no money coming in the inhabitants gradually drifted away to other cities like Edinburgh and Perth in search of a living and by the early 1600s Roxburgh had ceased to exist two and a half hours ago we said we put a test bit in over there and as you can see absolutely nothing's being done about it over here we said we've put in a three by five and they've only put in a 3 by 2 and here the archaeologists are now saying they want to extend this trench although I thought we'd already agreed that we'd gone up to the limit of what we could dig Mick at every single decision that has been made seems to have been overturned and yeah you could look at it like that why well and here we don't think we can resolve this now without an extension on each enry not to mean we can't resolve this well because we've got a big mass of stone work which we think might be a wall of the church and we need to see if he's got doorways on it and will the door tell us if it's got doorways then we'll know that's the north wall and these stones and slabs in here inside the church then that will help a lot to understand it but that doesn't explain why they haven't started that test Padova no well there we're waiting for the geophys results because we if we thought we could see some you know like arrangement underneath and we might not even need to do that here oh yeah right look that's where the trench has gone in we've extended the survey now over Stuart's earthworks yeah and we're getting indication of lots more masonry no clear wall lines I can't give you a plan of a church no presumably given that geophys you still want to dig your test pit Casa do Nick we're not going to be able to hit all three targets are we well we might be able to if they don't need the extra square meters up there yeah Nick - Dan what if it'll open at the moment up there down it's a three by two make it six meters squared what have you got any tip you got any date harbour area yet no we've got the storm all the geophysics predicted but unfortunatley so do you think you need a bigger area to resolve that I don't think a bigger area to resolve anything McNair okay that's actually the right answer 11 encouraging it certainly isn't this wall might still be part of the old borough but the lack of time and resources mean we've simply got to let it go instead we're going to use up our remaining trench space to untangle the complexities of some James's church which with just a couple of hours left is going to be a real scramble first up Stuart's test pit so your thought if it goes wrong sprayed it yeah it did still work we'll get get get rid towel Ian cleans it up a bit so John and Stewart can make an assessment we've got another one of those things over there what a gray slab yeah you see the way beveling is it part of the church is that same line the same alignment as that one yeah but it the line of the you know it's not T it's going that way it's east-west Lisa saying orientation does that are yes but that's like that and that's like that to resolve the issue Mick sanctions are rapid one meter extension to the pit which yields instant results 30 what do you got there well take a look what you think right when it looks like t scales to me these skulls are the end of Stuart's earth work theory they're not covered by grave slabs so can't have been buried inside the church the test pit is in the cemetery which means everything now depends on the extension to trench for they hope it'll prove their theory that this is a doorway in this the north wall but it's quickly apparent their theory is wrong it's exactly the same as the other end it's not a door and this is not a wall it's actually part of a much larger detached platform but all is by no means lost because Richard now recognizes it as something much more magnificent than a mere wall it's looking increasingly like it could be the bottom of one of these big monumental folk tunes we don't really have anything like that no we don't I mean that would be unique for Scotland I mean there may have been things like that around but I mean that though I'm gone you're harm if Richards right then this is a remarkable discovery monumental expensive they laborat altogether much grander than the graves in the cemetery it was the final resting place of a wealthy individual quite possibly one of the great political leaders of Roxburgh and it means we've managed somehow to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat because tombs like this were built inside churches so now picture of medieval Roxburgh is complete where once there was a blank on the map we can now insert at least the bones of a city this is Market Street and it ran from Greyfriars in the south past K Bray to some James's Church in the north it was intersected by the other main thoroughfare King Street this Junction was the heart of the city and the whole area would have been packed with houses shops and workshops at the peak of the city's fortunes these would have stretched to the defenses in the east and to the river in the West along here probably connecting King Street to the castle ran Mac's nameless road which we think was lined with the homes of rocks Burroughs wealthiest inhabitants the digging may be done but there's still some unfinished business the medieval traders are tempting us all with their fare an appropriate way to end our exploration of one of the great commercial centres of medieval Europe when I first drove down this field three days ago all I could see were a few green bumps and some silly sheep but now I know that if history had taken just a slightly different course I'd now be driving down a street as grand as Edinburgh soil mile you

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 368,120

Rating: 4.8804889 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: yKBZ9F418Wk

Length: 46min 55sec (2815 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2013