Time Team S13-E06 Court of the Kentish King, Eastry, Kent

this is the village of East Street in Kent and over the years the villagers here have been tantalized by anglo-saxon finds a warrior grave came up on the back of this house behind there another burial laden with fines but the most intriguing discovery was made just down the road this beautiful gilded brooch dates to around 600 AD like some of the other finds nearby it must have belonged to someone with a bit of cash to chuck about so why did it end up here is this mysterious hill a clue to Easter is anglo-saxon past could there even have been a palace here as usual we've got just three days to find out in the seventh and eighth centuries the village V Street was one of anglo-saxon Kent's most important settlements according to documents it was a focus of authority a major administrative center and with high status finds unearthed at hybri Hill just a mile from eastery village it seems the site could have been at the heart of this Saxon power base Graham castles family have farmed the site for almost a century when did you realize it was something special I suppose really well from very young ages standing up here and playing you know you could just see four so far and just think well this must have some sort of historical interest had there been many finds up here there have been find all around the hill from various different timescales so yeah yeah there have been Mick are there why are we here because this Hill is very interesting apart from the fines that you've been talking about but are features on it and even on the earlier maps look look at that you see remains sly something out Dungeons & Dragons I mean the air picture you see like this one I've got soil marks or crop marks I mean you can make all sorts of things out of this we've thought of it as a big enclosure or several enclosures so you know something's going on here and we've got to find out what it is I've seen the gilded broach where did that come up that one came up from this corner here but in this corner here right opposite came what's known as a plated description she's a kind of sandwich as gold and silver really amazing find and so things are spread right across this whole field so I've got to have a really good look at it look it's a very hilly hill in a very landscape could it be man-made oh I don't think it's man-made but I think it's been used a lot you can pick prehistoric Flint's up round the edge just by walking across it it's the sort of hill that nobody's gonna ignore in the past for one reason or another so what are we gonna do well we're gonna do some geophysics across the middle of this see if we can pick up these ditches but I think even if we don't pick anything up but still put a trench across to see what these features are on the air pictures Trench one will confirm if the series of features is actually an enclosure that surrounds some high status buildings to pick up these features it will be one of the longest we've ever dug on time team running over sixty meters from the bottom to the very top of the hill trench two on the south of the hill will investigate these interesting geophys results because so many high status fines like this 6th century saxon brooch have been found here in the past we've also roped in an unprecedented number of metal detectorists to comb not just the spoil heaps but the whole three acres of hayver a hill hand rue and after just hours the strategy is paying off I don't know if you can see the look of satisfaction on these people's faces as some might even say a trifle smug we never find anything decent halfway through day one but Jamie what happened we've just been doing a metal detecting survey in the area and this was the first good signal it had a warning isn't it beautiful what does it help well it's an anglo-saxon brooch dating to the 6th century AD we think it's made of silver but we'll have to get it cleaned up by bridge and look it's got a garnet on it you can tell it's a garnet because of the way it flashes and glitters as you move it in the light it's amazing isn't it well you've demonstrated what you can do in two and a half hours by the end of day three I want the rest of this project but why would such high status fines be here on this hill what would their wealthy owners be doing in this area in Saxon times the name a street referred to a district the eastern region of the anglo-saxon kingdom of Kent this region needed an administrative centre and a place of assembly according to eighth century documents somewhere in E Street there was a villa regalis a Latin term that refers to a king's High Hall this major residence would have been a center for the community a wealthy power base and a regular home to the king of Kent so if there is such a major residence on hybri Hill it could explain the glittering high status finds a bridge um believe you've got something for me yes and entrench number two bridge has found what may be a key piece of supporting evidence look at this two bits apart Rebecca's got out of Italy just bit more like it what do you think um looks look Saxon to me are you sure I think so yeah um this is the rim shirt from a jar that's very typical at the early middle Saxon pottery you get in Dover the 450 to 850 okay what sort of science base or is it gonna be it's hard to tell it the handmade they're not thrown on a wheel if you're looking for the bubbies it's quite uneven but it's probably something with the rim diameter of about that and sort of that's a shaped size of body so nice yeah nice probably cooking pot very typical of the Saxon period and the typography the position of this play is quite interesting cuz when a south-facing slope you quite often get early/middle sacks and settlements on south-facing slopes you're in the sunshine but you're out of the wind if you're on the top you're in the wind so it it makes it it's a nicer place to live I suppose it makes it a little bit more comfortable and so we could have a little Saxon settlement just on this slope if Paul's right and there was a settlement here this could be the site of Easter ease Saxon centre of power but no structures have yet turned up in the long trench where we thought there might be a substantial enclosure another less thrilling idea is that Paul settlement was just a few low status hats on the side of a hill hopefully these trenches will give us an answer but there's also another contender just down the road in eastery village eastery court is a grade 1 listed mansion in the centre of the village based on documentary evidence it's owner David Freud believes that it's his house not hiber a hill that holds the key to understanding Anglo Saxon eastery absolute is famous for it oh hey David can we have a look inside your wonderful house come on in it's a bit good isn't it have you got any idea how judges well we've got some clues and show that here let me go online listen Georgia Madison and here we've got a wall with some doors in it and the wall dates from there from 1294 we know the date because we found the bills and it actually cost the hall witnesses part cost and let all of 11 pounds and five shillings and something so this is the end of the hall where it's going into the kitchens and the parameters and stuff like that that's right cool do we know if there was anything here before that well we do know that in that year they pulled down the hall that was sitting there before so we know that it was continuously occupied right for a for a reasonable period before that and prior to that hall well the rumor is that before that it was an anglo-saxon palace may I think ten years ago I would have got so excited at the prospect of an anglo-saxon palace but the number of times we've had a play with those sacks and palaces will we find nothing exactly are we gonna be onto that this time well I it's possible we've got some early timber work anyway we're right next to the church it's the right sort of site it's a nice big flat site so I would be more hopeful here than some of the others we've looked at wherever the palace exactly is eastery would have been the ideal place to build one a major Roman Road runs through the village while the coast and port of Sandwich are less than four miles away and the building would have been pretty impressive our very own designer and trained architects race an is trying to reconstruct one I've started making a basic model here of a sort of Saxon and really now I could do with help it looks absolutely lovely um but one of the things it does immediately spring to mind is you're going to need a door in the middle of each long wall and it's going to have to be a door that's higher than the wall because you've got to be able to get through it without banging your head what kind of prestigious kind of entrance and the second thing is that I don't think the roof is high enough because we need to be able to accommodate something like a called room chain above a fireplace and how long was that time estimated eighteen feet the length of Jeff right when you've got to have the cauldron and the fire underneath it so really high building we are talking about a high hall visible from many miles around it's designed to be seen designed to be impressive shining out across many lands is wonderful stuff finding such a building is a real challenge with very few examples in the country let alone in Kent the real problem is this part of the world we have never found anything like this all we've got of these wonderful anglo-saxon cemeteries hundreds of them Randy one of the biggest concentrations Richard's concentration full of gold and all the rest of it and what we have in terms of the settlements virtually nothing and mostly where they have been found in Canterbury and elsewhere there are small sunken huts so if we can even find a big rectangular buildings as postholes you've really hit the jackpot but where is this palace is it down in the village at David's house or could it be up on Grahams Hill with the settlement we seem to have found it's gotta be out there so what the search means splitting our resources in bridges trench yet another find only adds to our confusion over here this is all that's what it looks like yeah but it is sitting in the same material that the sexing feature over there is cut into I mean this is the problem just because it's near something it doesn't it's the same day I mean I take your point about it being in the same horizon but I mean if here's a hole iron vessel and et's Saxon then that's very unusual for a settlement site something you'd expect to see in a cemetery now I'm not saying it definitely isn't it may well be but it's unusual yeah all you can do is blocking lifting x-ray as opposed really see anything we can do in the state that it's in yeah so perhaps the hill is a burial site not a settlement a kind of barrow a hill based cemetery this would explain the high status brooches buried with their owners Helen intrigued by the idea of graves opened a trench in an area of the east side of the hill when metal artifacts have been found but on the other side of the hill the metal detectorists are adding to their collection Tony look at that for most aliens gold in an object what you find it just down there hmm just from metal detector yep David you could that be Saxon it could be but I'd want Helen to see it it's just possible there might be more recent tantalizing so lovely isn't it beautiful stunning look at that isn't that good oh we hope it's okay Graham worth coming in last place is very religious it's maybe Saxon Murphy right but we'll have to wait for Helen so if the brooch is anglo-saxon did it come from a settlement a grave or even a palace while the jury is out Mick's still determined to test the theory that the palace may be in the village at eastery Court so GF is set off to survey David's luscious lawns meanwhile another extraordinary find has been made at however a hill look at this come on over it gives John Gator a reason to feel smug believing he's won a GF is jackpot this is a first you can finally found someone um yeah that is the first time we've ever found a windmill windmill well I've been told there's a windmill on top of the hill here we are on the top yeah where is it if you extend the trench a couple of metres under the digger what I think you're gonna find is the crosspieces the timber supports for the windmill do we know when it was up here well some of them are 12th century apparently it's for you to find out because if that's the first time we've got the windmill in geophysics you can buy me at point what comes in cheap I open and there then or here let's find the way melt after a few hours John Gator wins his pint off Phil because we do find the crossbeams of a windmill that once stood on the hill but it's medieval and doesn't help us in our quest to understand what the anglo-saxons were doing here I can't remember a first day on time team where we've had so many really good finds and yet the irony is that we've got no anglo-saxon structures no cemetery certainly no Palace what's going on it's been really hard for me to accept that it's not a cemetery but all day we've had no grace no brains so I've got to come to terms so that I suppose and what else it might be well have you got any I suspect the thing I'll come up with which might work is that I wonder if this isn't a meeting place one of these moot sites where people gathered for you know proclamations and trials and stuff like that so what are the fines well they're things that I'll get dropped at the time but there's no structures here how do you feel about a moot well it's quite a radical suggestion for the 5th 6th and 7th centuries first of all I have to look at the fines to see what the brakes look like could they have been rolling around in the plough soil for hundreds of years it was a mud hill what would be its association with the rest of the country around the very well you'd expect there to be as there was in later times a central meeting place to serve a big estate but because he's not permanently occupied you'd expect the the main residence the whole farm buildings possibly the church to be somewhere else on that estate so where might that be here well I think in this case it's probably down at E Street probably down by the church and a nice tree Court so the answer to what's going here could lie down there yeah yeah and that's where we should go work next I think tomorrow yeah you have four pies why it's a Shandy it's the beginning of day two and yesterday we were trying to solve the mystery a hi Brazil up there how come we were getting all these anglo-saxon finds could we have a cemetery might there be a palace we certainly weren't coming up with any structures and by the end of the day Mick thought that what we might have was a moot hill on meeting place and all the fines were just things that people dropped when they were meeting each other but he also thought that the key to the whole mystery might lie not up there but down here eastery court where John's been geophysical link could be between a moat hill and this place here well you'd expect the moat hill to be the administer of and probably legal center of a big estate you'll also expect another Center that was the agricultural center probably have the church and that sort of stuff and I think that's more likely to been down here where the later medieval church is so somewhere around here is where I'd expect the early center to be yeah but what do you expect us to find under the gardens I think right here there's going to be bits more of this medieval building we know this is a medieval Hall inside there's gonna be other structures going with that in either stone or timber I would also probably expect burials because the graveyard probably was bigger came further out from the church and then under that that could be sects and buildings and stuff as well so I think that's probably a whole sandwich of stuff somewhere in this area have you got anything on your GF is that by the remotest stretch of the imagination could reflect what he's just said well probably got all that and but I just I don't know where I mean it's a fantastic garden yeah but it's a nightmare from our point of view there's drains going through this paths it's been landscaped the levels have changed from what you've described to be honest I think our best target of these responses here they might be wall footings and that's just here it's close to the church close to the buildings let's give that a try I think anywhere in this area would be useful to us so you're happy to put in something absolutely yes I hang on a bit David stop lurking watching us working this is your house your lawn do fancy helping us dig the trench yeah yeah yeah you'll have to put on some older clothes than that wait you look far too smart I'll see you later okay we'll see you later I want to see him sweating drive him hard Mick puts in the first trench right next to David's house while hopefully this will give us the archaeological story Stuart sets off on his own mission to find out what the landscape can tell us studying old maps he's tracking pathways and routes to find evidence of a royal anglo-saxon site he's particularly interested in the location of eastery church although it's medieval the original Church on the site might have been anglo-saxon around the time we expect a center of power at Easter II in the seventh century Christianity was spreading in Kent and a new church would have been at the heart of an important estate for Stewart the present church could lie right in the middle of an anglo-saxon royal enclosure and if there's a royal enclosure here there would have been a palace here to David's now sweating away ruining his own garden trying to find evidence of this palace Stuart thinks this is a small price to pay for the promise of a very rare building it starts to get really exciting because gots 1841 tide map right showing that the plan of the village so where are we now we're in the ground where's Gardner just there yeah there's history core can you see that yeah big shape in there like a big breakfast announced rectangle in the middle eighties its influence a layer to the whole village yeah that's been preserved as a shape if you look at it on the aerial photograph it's all that old air in there we're starting that that garden there down this side is a stream valley down that side is a valley but what you've got is a big plateau here with this very distinctive area of ground which has never been encroached on I think this is exactly the sort of place you'd get a Saxon estate centre and then the church sitting inside it but it's not just the landscape that suggests there was a palace here there's also a legend of persecution and treachery in fact our earliest reference to a palace in eastery comes from the six 70s from a story of royal betrayal and bloodshed David assumes sam knew that we were coming here he went oh great there was a murder here a murder what was it ah a royal murder of two princes Ethelbert and ather are two princes of Kent murdered by their cousin undoubtedly the background story is dynastic feuding and he murders them secretly at night and thinks he's got away with it by burying them in the Kings Hall but because of shafts of light that radiates out the murder is revealed so what's this white light all about it's an indication of a miracle it's a miracle like God's light and it means that we've got safe so it's like a hammer Laura that the light comes on yeah exactly interestingly the bodies were moved to the chapel and if the medieval Chapel is on the remains of an earlier Chapel we're now sitting bang on where the weather two princes were buried so there could be a pair of little innocent sweet darling princes buried somewhere under these flag stones unfortunately we you won't find the murder victims because we know from the Saints life tradition that they were translated to Ramsay in Huntingdon chef so nobody's uh almost certainly not but you might find the murder weapon perhaps oh I like on day one we found a spectacular brooch on hybra Hill that seemed to be anglo-saxon not only that but the brooch appeared to be high status now after a little cleaning it's time to hear the verdict all morning the diggers up on the site have been saying is its axon is it Victorian helling you're the specialist what is it well it is actually Victorian ah yes look give it away they're really big giveaway as a soldier on the back of Victorians added separate fixings to their brooches and the anglo-saxons didn't especially not in a gold piece secondly ovals in plain wire wrong should be twisted beaded wire on something anglo-saxon and but the real clincher the most obvious thing is on these balls around here they're dented so the hollow anglo-saxons did not make things with Hollow gold balls on them everything was solid so I'm afraid it is Victorian what I didn't understand is there must have been 20 trained archaeologists out there thousands of pounds of taxpayers money this is an education and yet everyone was really tentative about whether or not it was modern or anglo-saxon why well I did my PhD on this kind of thing and I still was a bit nervous about it it's because until it's cleaned up you can't see the details and both the Victorians and the 7th century Anglo Saxons are both copying Roman designs of jewelry they were both trying to look as classical as they could and both doing pretty well actually so ultimately they are going to look very similar back at hybra Hill there's still no sign of Anglo Saxon graves or buildings it clearly isn't a Barrow or burial ground Mick's idea of a meeting point is the only theory still standing but at least Matt has found some evidence of the structure at the bottom of trench 1 Matt what do you think this is now well we've got down to the top of this chalk and it looks basically it's a road of some sort a huge Flint nodules have been packed in what the bottom and then chalk has been tamped down all the way across it but the most the strange thing about it it's like that deep so far half a metre really solid Road yeah so what kind of road might that be well let me show you what one that was dug up in Yorkshire that I think really sort of explains what we've got there they had a hollow way that had worn out over the years with Catalan people walk along its island got so deep and presumably so boggy that in the end they decided to put properly built road of boulders and stones in the bottom of it and I think that's probably what we've got here we've got a hollow way which has then been reinforced with a new road built up and I think they're probably doing it because this is probably going up to the mill on the top of the hill he's gonna get a lot of use it couldn't be Saxon I don't think so I mean Mills like that don't come into the 12th century anyway so if it's going up there it would be later I mean at the moment my guess is that this away might be a bit earlier it could be you know might even be Roman or something like that but the filling and everything's probably late medieval so where's the anglo-saxon well we've got various finds from across the site but what we haven't got is any structures at all to go with them by the middle of day two hybra Hill hasn't revealed any more of its Saxon past in fact apart from a high-status brooch the finds on the hill have been almost entirely prehistoric and medieval even the iron pot which we'd hoped was a Saxon cemetery vessel turns out under x-rays to be nothing but a modern Paint Pots perhaps it was bang know near with no burials or structures other than a bit of road mix left with only one course of action Mick why are we closing down the hill because I think we've done all we need to do week and up here and we need to work elsewhere you know our ideas that we've got about it won't be helped by more holes what I did well you know we have this idea there might be a meeting point a moot hill where similes were held another possibility which has come up is that it might actually have some sort of but we don't have a term for it a sort of symbolic centre I suppose because if you go on the Roman Road along then you look back across to this it looks like a great barrow and I'm just wondering whether the name that we've got now Rodin's borough which is a village over there didn't actually apply to this and it wasn't thought that it was where that road was buried or worshiped or something like that and that's why the finds are here would the name really have shifted from one place to another well I think it could it could have happened in the 18th century when there was this amazing find apparently consisting of 30 glass vessels at Wooden's burr and people might have said what could have caused this oh maybe the place names in their own place but this must be the word and cult center and just moved it as if this is a cult center then it's even more likely to have been a meeting point as well that's documented in lotsa other this is typical time team isn't it none of us are gonna be able to prove this but we all think it's a really plausible theory at least in eastery village stewards found some solid evidence of a saxon enclosure and this fairly ordinary looking pathway yeah I think is a remnant to the boundary of this Saxon estate thing to have been our eyes being looking for because just when you get to here you seal it it drops off on that side just a couple of meters high yes I think this this look we're on top of is a remnant to the bank that defines the western side of this enclosure that sides the village yes that's outside the enclosure that sides inside and we're on top actually walked along a big broad bank yeah yeah it's this that's been preserving this boundary yeah forgot those how long in fact that is but not far away the first trench at eastery court hasn't shown up any sign of a palace or any anglo-saxon finds promising geophys results persuade mick to open a second trench at the bottom of the garden and the third trench near the church ripping up even more of david's norm if that looks alright I definitely replaces that I'm a Dutchman you're gonna be very happy dennis is going to be deeply miserable affair despite the lack of evidence from the trenches Stewart still banging on that the garden is in a royal enclosure Stewart all day you've been saying we're in the right place we're in the right place we've done loads of trenches now and we haven't found the palace and I'm going to carry on saying we're in the right place now if you look at this photograph we took from the helicopter this is the the area of the enclosure there's the the church there this bit of highlighted in white that actually survives on the ground it's a footpath now what makes you think that just because we've got a bit that's extent there that there were all those other bits there because there continued in the mapping you can see their boundaries are continued through the different generations of maps and they're still exist to this day more there's so much space it's a very big enclosure for a relatively small palace yeah I think that's to again design for status reasons you know you want your buildings to look impressive with lots of open space around them rather like you know Buckingham Palace isn't ending with lots of other buildings it's it's got nice spaces around it emphasizes the dramatic size of the buildings in the middle but if the Royal Saxon enclosure and Palace are in eastery village and mix right that there is a Saxon ritual center on hybra Hill could the to be related can we borrow those right mind he had now do Stuart now on a roll must have had a shot of divine inspiration he's got yet another theory Oh clever look so we're over a hill from here can you see that pylon well the sites just to the right that pylon it's behind the trees there let me show you on this portable interactive digital workstation anything happen we're here on the church t3 and hybra Hill is over there now they look detached up there you can't really see any connection between the two but what's emerging looking at the landscape it's a very network of parallel roads established in this landscape long before the Roman peered I've started to mark them up in in pink coming through here we thought you can see one of them over there cross going through the middle of those yellow fields of Ray the green the green road yeah and there's another one crossing over the hill of there that Green hedge light coming coming over the top yeah well what's interesting about one of these roadways this one here it actually goes right by hybra Hill ie hybra Hill is on a major route way so a mix idea of a meeting place make sense because all has been on the road yeah we've also got another one which comes out of the corner of this enclose your Easter egg and it heads out the back and actually takes you up towards hybra Hill I think hybra Hill is on a major network of roads but also we've got a connection between this enclosure and hybra Hill itself and remember that bit of road that Matt found on the hill earlier in the day thanks to Stuart we now think this very road is part of the one that runs between the hill and the enclosure and Stuart's got yet another idea now another interesting aspect is that we've got a little corner inside this enclosure here which is just down there it's now called the recreation ground it's a nice open green space and it's always been within this enclosure the village has never encroached on it so the chance of it being disturbed by later development a quite thing so you think it will answer you trenches yep absolutely the recreation ground Stuart wants to investigate is in one corner of the enclosure but with jumble geophys results their mix instead putting all his resources into eastery court gardens with trenches clustered around the other side of the church fueled by his conviction Stewart tries to persuade Mick that opening trenches in the recreation ground is a priority but Mick's not having any of it it's all very busy here me but we haven't forgotten about the recreation ground every no but when I had a look at it I was very worried about all those earthworks over the top of it where there were later cottages or whatever hmm whereas this had rather nice geophysics either so I thought we'd stop here right I'm very keen to look about area because they'd be fines up from the arocs within this enclosure I'm a bit weird we sort of forget about that side we need to sample over a big area we've got three things going on in here anyway so bit long sided it's on this side of the church now we've got enough on our hands for the moment all right but we will go over there what way I mean I'm sure we'll get to that eventually it's not a promise like no that's not by the end of the day we've moved all our resources to eastery court in our search for the palace but having not yet found anything how far has that goddess in a way I don't feel that we've advanced at all from where we were at the beginning of day one we knew that that hill had got some amazing finds and sure enough it's got more amazing finds so we have moved on because we've now got a lot of holes open in the village you know so we're well on the way to sorting out what's going on to restring but the Hell itself has been pretty intractable isn't it yeah it's been terrible I feel really inadequate because as you say I don't think we are any further on with it and I thought it was going to be so easy no but we are because the local archaeologists have been saying to me this evening that they now know more about that hill that idea what the context of those finds are so they don't feel it you know we have moved on they now know a lot more about the hill yeah but we haven't got the link between the hill and the villages but I think we have I think looking at the pattern of roadways it fits into a pattern which link it with eastery which is where the core of the activity yes yeah yes but links the hill to what well the centre activities in eastery which we shall get hopefully when we're finished in all those holes in the middle of em finished up we've got a large enclosure that I think we're confident we're digging in the right place for the right reasons we've dug in one pit and we've got a great opportunity to dig into another bleep that's the recreation ground and we shall start back tomorrow you've been putting it off of me oh yes I have today but we shall start it tomorrow yeah yeah yeah so can we find the heart of anglo-saxon history will we find it underneath the recreation ground yeah well no tomorrow yeah Cheers made beginning of day three here in Kent and we've had some fantastic fines up a hybrid Hill we're still putting in trenches down here a nice tree Court but could the center of our anglo-saxon royal estate be here in this little recreation ground fell I see they've got you working here at last well somebody got you otherwise would never find out at eastery Court digging continues in our search for the palace with a new trench opened next to the house just when we thought the hybrid Hills story had ended mixed now having easier bent by John Gator who's determined to excavate some unexplored GF is anomalous the thing is big on day 1 I've got this very distinctive area of noise yeah we've got anomalies that extend for 20-25 meters across the hillside here yeah at the start I didn't know whether it was cemetery or whether it was occupation we don't quite sure what the occupation is and it's very odd it is well I'm I think therefore too you know abandon it not knowing whether we've got Saxon here because we haven't dug some of the features yeah it seems we haven't answered the question I think we need to get dating material out because at the moment all we've got is a couple of sheds of medieval so we haven't just got two bits of medieval pot we have got medieval pot out of the stitch here we've got a medieval pot out of the pit down there as well this is one load of medieval stuff that's coming out of all the features up here except for two bits of sex sex and pot' that were actually stronger flee above the medieval in one of those pits so they'd arrive I usually on the timings if you're happy to ignore this then and dismiss that as possibly being anglo-saxon you're saying it's all yeah I'm evil you know why in the time we've got why don't we just strip another area and giving you a worry about dating evidence dig whatever feature we're on top of in there so that we get some more dating evidence of one sort or another but we don't strip that big in the area that we can't handle it in the remaining time that we've got Micke reluctantly agrees to go along with John's idea and extends the top of trench to while in the recreation ground films pulling out all the stops in the hunt for the palace but with the lack of any hard evidence our palace remains a virtual one with help from our historians race and finally reveals what such a palace may look like when people looked at it in the surrounding countryside how do you think they would have felt about it well it's the great ideal that it the equivalent of Camelot in 7th century Kent as a great building that is the the focus rule that is good and Noble it's a place of identity and solidarity if you are a football supporter it would be your great Stadium where the great action the great dramas took place I can see that it's dimensions are really grand but would it have been the colour of a garden fence a very interesting possibility is that they would have had some gilt paint it parallels the description we have of the temple of old Uppsala which could be seen shining and there was something we've described as a golden chain around its roof that's shown from miles around so there could be some kind of decorative frieze yeah exactly exactly I think that's what I do hire one of those would you put money on there being one of these in history from the documentary sources which as far as the 7th century go are very very good emphatically yes Tony I'm absolutely convinced that it was here and looked like this the search for such a building continues at the Recreation Ground well yo you're the palace in your trench no not at all I mean we got to scruffy-looking features as one in there and there's one in there they might turn out to be something but apart from that absolutely nothing Stuart you've promised me a royal palace we're going to smell the mead and the rose more well I still think we're in the right place for the right reasons domine that's the critical point here that doesn't seem to any debris modern or postnatal debris to me that implies that the village hasn't been allowed to spread into this enclosure that we've identified which implies that somewhere around this it is something very special make why are these palaces so difficult to find because they're built of timber posts and stuff like that and really you need a large area to see whether the plan of post holes and slots makes any sense and so where they've been found it's been in gravel pits we kept a large area and see what the plan ability is it's you know it's difficult with little holes in an occupied area to piece anything together but this is this is incredibly clean and it that is the most amazing be in the middle of a village to be in the village and find nothing yeah it's always great on time team when they get really enthused about finding sweet Fanny Adams isn't it what are we supposed to do I think we dig more holes much to Stewart's relief Mick opens a second trench in the recreation ground over at hybra Hill John's fight to reopen the dig has paid off well sort of was it worth it well I think so look we've got more features that we didn't know about and we've got Saxon pottery what's that feature well we've got a ditch Tony that's running up there's brown material up towards a hill and round in that direction what about the pottery John where did you find that well it came from the ditch did so can we now say we've got an anglo-saxon dish well if you want to see the pottery yeah tell me if this is evidence of the Sexson community its Saxon 850 ID this is the sum total of our finds in your trench John another triumph or GF is at least this is better than what's been found in the trenches at Easter e-court Gardens absolutely nothing oh hi Alan in a newly open trench at the recreation ground at least there's a glimmer of hope I don't get too excited it's probably not the biggest piece of pottery you've ever seen but um it's a piece of decorated early Saxon pottery that's amazing Miney it's easy you can just see those those kind of grooves what do I mean it's combing it's the sort of thing you get the classic anglo-saxon urn with the combed panels with the stamps in and that sort of thing it's something along those lines I think so does this mean accessory vessel in the grave or a cremation or could this be the kind of thing that's used on a second in sight hard to say I mean decorated pottery tended to get mainly used in graves but you do get it on settlement sites as well it's not very common on settlement sites but you do find it might indicate a particularly high status site you can't really say that from the bottom from that now it turns up on sites of all sort of different sorts of status who well either is pretty exciting starts isn't that absolutely dreams but another minut piece of pottery seems little consolation for having found no evidence of an anglo-saxon palace in any of the trenches so why haven't we found it ah that's a good question if you look at this photograph that took them from the helicopter and put these yellow dots and see them these are the trenches that we've dug in this yeah they say area I've done something similar over the top of this is a roll anglo-saxon fallacy in the thumb belong here and at the same scale I've drawn on dots which match the spacing of our trenches and look we could have done like lattices thick we could have done that mr. Taylor's are going to be done on Miss it could have done 50 trenches and carried on missing it yeah but we've only dug in one section of the enclosure why didn't we excavate there and there and there and there and there and there oh that was a bit frustrating that because all this area in here we just couldn't get access into it i'ma let us continue so yeah so we've missed it by bad luck well that and the fact that we really need to strip large areas as they've done when they found polishing other sites to see the patterns of post holes and Timbers lots more rest of it it's difficult to do in the village that still lived in the still occupied can't bulldoze it all out the way by the end of the day no more fines or structures have been found in the enclosure so yet again time team has failed to find an anglo-saxon palace but we have found out something about Anglo Saxon eastery in the 7th century a community would have thrived here in eastery near a Roman Road and the coast it would have been an important and powerful Centre for East Kent high status finds on hybra Hill led us to think the palace was there we now think it was an anglo-saxon ritual center where valuable offerings were made through Stewart's investigations we've revealed that the hill was on a network of ancient roads linking it with an anglo-saxon centre at Easter Eve illage we now believe that it was somewhere in the village that the palace was once built inside a royal enclosure with history court at the church and recreation ground and it's heart but there are still questions our land owners want answers to Graham was playing on that hill when he was a little boy what can we tell him about it given how emotional these three days have been for you Linnell well it's still it's a mystery wrapped in an enigma that hill it is producing the most stunning objects which look like they must have come out of graves we've carefully excavate the areas around them and there aren't any graves I do not understand it so Helen what would be your best guess as to what was going on up there well I think actually mix idea about it being a cult centered devoted to Woden might well be the best hypothesis we've got which we just need to then go out and test in other places because we really don't know anything about culture so if they produce this kind of range of wonderful metalwork and I think really the answer might be that next time you go up on the hill you just offer up a little prayer to road and good harvest for you a few answers for us what about the village that's what David's interested in well I think we know an awful lot more about it now and we've got this wreck enclosure in the middle inside that is your house and the church I'm sure that's the center of the saxon palace complex if there's one thing you would like to know from the work that we've done what would it be I'd really like to know this is the site of the original saxon palette and where the murder was done I think almost certainly - either under your house watching just immediately to the east of here but we won't actually know unless you take your house down and we can have a look underneath it I'll call you okay the Nick Broomfield Week starts on more4 tomorrow night with a premiere of his big white cell phone which Nick returns to South Africa to meet Eugene tera Blanche cats that from 9:00 up next here on for Mike and Susan face a crisis in Desperate Housewives you

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Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: z5_ok5aYo2U

Length: 48min 23sec (2903 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2013