Time Team S14-E03 School Diggers, Hooke Court, Dorset

this is hook Court in Dorset and we reckon that most of what you can see here dates to the English Civil War in the mid 1600s but there are clues that there was once something much older and grander here take a look at this you see this huge moat that is in the back garden now as as far as I know a moat means a castle or a grand medieval house so on this island there could be something here from the Middle Ages maybe even from the time of William the Conqueror himself these days hook court is used as a school and the teachers would love to be able to tell the kids more about its history but you don't know very much about it do you Mandy no not very much at all and we'd love you to find out more so who is it the M's called in t and how long have we got to find out anything 3 days do you think we'll find anything under the grass JJ yes what sort of stuff brick walls and doors yeah we always find brick walls but not doors so often do we keep your fingers [Music] crossed [Music] [Music] the village of hook or La Hawk as it was known in medieval times gets its name because it was once located in the hook or bend of the river River hook Hort school situated on a ridge of High Ground would always have been a prime spot for occupation what's really neat about this place is that anything medieval is going to be inside the mo which means we can limit our dig to this lawn area here already we've got GI looking for any potential buildings under the lawn we've got Henry and Stewart over there they're trying to work out the full sweep of the moat and on the other side of this place there's Jonathan looking for evidence in the fabric of the building itself and we've got Sam uh historian trolling through the records what do we know so far we've got a lot of names uh some of which go back to late Anglo Saxon times via the Doomsday Book wow that but how it relates to this site remains to be seen we've got lots of bits of information you see of different dates but it doesn't sort of hang together I mean for example it looks as if the whole place is burnt down in the Civil War it is quite hard to talk to him properly when all this is going on what's all this about I broke another limb I'm afraid I did one of my plummets off a wall it's probably another excuse to prevent you having to do any digging Jonathan is all this from the Civil War well the thing is I think it's a good deal older now the the central problem is the victorians are too good at neatening things up okay here's a photograph of it take the porch out of the equation yeah the victorians added a porch and this extension but the big news is that Jonathan reckons this house wasn't built after the Civil War he can see traces of a medieval building you've got a whole line of coin Stones these are the cornerstones that tell you you have an original external corner right so you have those on both sides yeah yeah yeah there then what you left this goes up to about that high so you've got the makings of something like a block possibly a tower block an analysis of the different window Styles has enabled Jonathan to work out the story of this building I would guess that this whole area is a 15th century block um to which was added a chuda block there a bit of ref fenestration going on and then there's the 17th century upper story this is the Civil War this is the Civil War thing which neatens up the whole thing but these tiny medieval windows are the best Clues because they tell us about the function of the original building these are lighting small chambers of bedrooms these are garderobe chambers so it's smart lodgings yeah Jonathan reckons this was part of a medieval Mana house and he's got Victor to sketch what it might have looked like in the 15th century so which would be the bit that we can currently see we're standing about here looking at the remains of this but beyond that Tower well there are a whole array of standard features in a medieval house we've got for example the gate house there and that leads you through to a great hall but you know the gate house might have been on another side the hall could have been elsewhere so clearly this accommodation block wasn't destroyed by fire during the Civil War but it's the only bit that still survives our job is to look for the rest of the Mana house which should be in this area defined by the moat sounds quite easy doesn't it the trouble is they could be 500 years of different buildings buried under this lawn because the Doomsday Book records that there was a Mana here way back in the 11th century knowing it might be a tad complicated Mick wants to wait for geiz to survey a large area of the lawn before we decide where to dig this also gives us time to talk to Christopher Reed who was Deputy head Master here in the 1960s he's brought some photos to show us of a now demolished North Wing so over here this is where we were all looking at the front of the building this morning yes yes so what's this building here this is the building that was demolished crucially these photos show that the old North Wing was originally part of the medieval Mana house Jonathan what are these things here well beautiful tall windows I mean for the point of the arch I wouldn't be surprised if that's a 15th century one but is that the only one Chris in the facade no I think there are others along the way wall between these um butresses as you can see evidence of buttresses well here it is look it's been opened up so is that what you did to have a look well I didn't do it it just fell that's what they all say isn't it so what happened to all the stuff that they knocked out oh Cart It Away Cart It Away Chris has always thought this building must have been the Great Hall but Jonathan's not so sure up somewhere above these arches and you'd expect a hall just to be a single story building but this looks like it's two floors tell you what there wasn't only a medieval building that was lost was it some of some of the art classes finest works I I'll tell you who I know drew that it's this bloke although this block of modern classrooms has been built on the site of the old northwing it looks like it doesn't occupy the entire footprint of the old building so we're going to open up a couple of trenches here to see if any foundations still survive that can tell us a bit more about the medieval building that once stood here but right now the real excitement is in here John is this stuff as good as we thought it would be yeah absolutely fantastic look this is the resistance you can see clearly the moat there the building so high resistance is in Black so look at these wall lines it looks like we've got a whole range coming across on that line and then whether these are Walls Within the courtyard or not we don't know Gardens I suppose could they but but look look at the GPR the radar this is absolutely fantastic this is at the top and going more deeply into the ground again the walls showing so clearly what's that's only 12 CM down there we're doing it in spits sort of 10 cmet in size what's this Big Blob then well that's a large fireplace within the two walls the what's the distance between the two to the two side walls how wide is that range well that's 20 M we're we're talking 15 16 M that's a big building well as Phil will tell you there's only one true way to find out what's buried under here and that's by digging so taking care not to ruin the school lawn another trench goes in to reveal the hidden history of hook [Music] Court the legend is that there was a fire here in the Civil War and clearly the kids are hoping we can find out more about it others though are just as excited to see so much surviving in the ground oh there's so many on a right Ang walls and it's only a matter of seconds before Phil turns up the first find yeah maybe 16 17 there's a roof noce nail all in there look and you're getting this which is 16th 17th bit of bone as well 16th 17th something like that yeah that'll be a good good good candidate for when it's you know being heavily destroyed yeah yeah there's no later stuff either so well that's good let's carry on in please this is our house burning in the English Civil War but this isn't Victor's work this is Bridget age s and this one is Tom age six do we have very many more details other than the fact that it just went up in loads of flames um we know there was a fire the whole building might not have been destroyed but there was certainly enough Rubble to make it worthwhile paying a Mason and we have the account this is the Priceless information we've got paying a mas and five shillings to retrieve 1500 weight of lead from the ruin who owned the place at that time it had been just sequestered by Parliament uh from John poet the fifth Mark was of Winchester this is the guy who owned basing house by basing state which we dug what four or five years ago exactly yes a very interesting guy a great Siege dramatic moment in history and John poot was a very senior royalist figure and a focus for resistance to Parliament so was it burned down to punish him or was it already a Barracks or something like that um it would not be in their interest to burn it to punish him because it was a profet that they had acquired sequestered it but it may have been burnt while the war was still going on to deny its use to other Royal forces wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait oh look there's the there's a new break look at that full profile that bit goes on the top as well does it there you go mate does that go in no oh it's a spout and it yeah it's a big pansion yeah there's a spout yeah that's the sort of thing You' be expecting to see in the 16th 17th century away from the excitement of the trenches Henry's got the job of finding the complete circuit of the moat helpfully there's already proof that it continued around here along the back of the now demolished North Wing you're standing right on the corner right on the corner of the boat which went um alongside up against the building here so where's that on the here is on the photograph this is the heating system built into the moat and the steps are down here so where about we stood you're stood stood about here so you're right on the edge of the moat yes so we're not doing badly we've got a 15th century living quarters here and another 15th century building which we're digging the foundations of here and now we know that the moat extended at least this far around it because our mystery building's two stories high the thinking is that it's not the Great Hall Jonathan reckons that's most likely where Phil's digging on this side of the lawn but so far all feels discovered is masses of Civil War period Pottery it's all the sorts of stuff you'd expect to find in the kitchen there's none a posh table where here it's all big mixing bowls but we're getting things like glazed roof tiles so you know nice Posh roof bonus we've got 16th or 17th century goblet that is pretty beautiful decoration around there possibly Venetian I don't know enough about these things to be certain but that's a posh piece of glass work that's not the sort of thing a peasant had been drinking out of I'll tell you but the stuff we're really after is turning up in our trenches in the schoolyard oh look at that oh that's great oh there is a it's a base yeah it's medieval um it's this flinty stuff the key to the early Pottery around here seems to be flint and lots of it and this has got flint and lots of it right what do we have to do Neil right just it's the first medieval Pottery we've found the first evidence of life here before the 15th century and Graphics have come up with a neat way to show the kids what it looked like and then I suppose expression's good isn't it feel the weight feel the weight as matter that's it feel it's really heavy it's out the way now oh feel that weight in your muscles don't drop it oh what is it that they're carrying that is so agonizingly heavy it's lunch it's a 12th 13th century cooking pot it's based on a bit we found outside probably got sort of thing that would have been put on the fire even a bits of s on the outside of it yeah 1 2 3 go whoops out on the lawn Matt's now opened up a second trench with some promising early results I've got your wall gentan good man that that's that's very definite isn't it yep quite a nice or very strong Edge across there it's pretty sturdy tell you what I was looking for Matt along there is the corner of that 15th century block yeah now we don't know how far it extended this way I was hoping that some way you'd find some way of picking up the footings as they run down here we have got the start of a cut going across there but I mean it might be a robbed out wall or something like that so there's something there it might be you've got a wall but it's the it's the wrong one no it's the right one it's just in the wrong place Matt's wall is also very different to the one Phil's now Unearthed in his trench they're obviously not the same building we're going to have to extend both trenches to see more of them but what's clear to me now is that detecting the buried walls with geiz is one thing but sorting out one phase of building from another is going to be a massive challenge over the next couple of days but it hasn't been a bad start and I want to use a bit of Graphics magic to show Mandy what we have sorted out here is the house as it is now and if you do away with the 19th century extension over there and in addition to that another 19th century thing if we get rid of this porchway just there it's gone uh and then there's this 17th century top bit just lose all of that and then we've got two 16th century things here and here off they go and then apart from fiddling around with a few of these windows what we've got left is the part of the building which is here now which was here in the 15th century that's fantastic not bad for one day is it no not at all it's amazing mind you that's only one bit of the house let's hope we find more of it over there [Music] tomorrow it's day two here at hook Court in Dorset and time team digging up our lawn we're looking for a forgotten medieval Mana house which we think is underneath the grass Connie that was superb thank you very much we reckon that this here is a medieval moat um and this slope here this is part of an island inside of which there ought to be a buried medieval Mana house except it's likely to be very complicated with lots of different phases in so the first thing that we need to do today is to pull all the archaeologists together to find out what strategy we need to adopt because uh how many days have we got left three two days can't get the stuff yesterday we opened up two trenches to look at walls that we thought might be part of one massive building the Great Hall but it soon became clear that this wall in Phil's trench is very different to the one Matt's Unearthed here Matt's wall there is 4T wide that's a sucking Great Piece of Kit and that held up a big chunky roof things we don't know what that building was that's well we've got some Clues haven't we look at the size of these roofs L that presumably there's something there that's really a roof to hold but the function what is it was it a hall I mean what what does this shape suggest I mean I'm I'm seeing it now at a slightly larger resolution and and to me there's a rectangle there you could interpret that couldn't you yeah um but but there's but there's another one coming in this way so what they're implying then is that this is a palest oh very good you learn it's lots of different walls from different period that's right and I think to understand these two we've probably got to link these two trenches up and actually see what the relationship of those are cuz they're clearly as fil they're clearly different do you think it's fair to say that there is a great hall here but we just can't see it it's somewhere in there rather than being the thing itself I think we might be looking at a narrower building than is was first suggested by the geofiz but I think Matt's trench is the key one there lies a large building and it's finding the opposite wall of that on which this roof once stood as well as looking for the other side wall of a possible Great Hall Mick wants to put a trench in to find the end wall but it looks very complicated in this area of the geiz plot so how do we go about digging it what would you put a diagonal in to look at that I prefer an owl shape like no don't laugh I never laugh at you Phil look you do all the time look now the fact of the matter you want to go right angles across a wall so I think so anyway yeah so the first job is to extend Matt's trench to see more of the big wall and also to join it up with Phil's trench which hopefully will reveal another 4T wide wall to locate our Great Hall you can see the date we've got the pieces of paper with the date of it all on all the Potter has been put into a timeline for the kids and the bulk of it comes from the 17th century when it looks like many of the buildings were demolished after having been damaged in the Civil War tell any ideas why you think there may be only a few pieces of pottery here JJ possibly they have enough possibly they might not have dug deep enough anybody know what that isip yeah that's right some of the tobacco pipes date to the 1640s precisely the time of the Civil War and the kids are fascinated by them you could always tell them between a gentleman and a and a laborer because these pipes originally had really really long stems yeah some of like 3 ft long now gentlemen who didn't have to work for a living would keep their pipes long so they'd smoke them with the ful length stem workers cuz they had to keep their hands free to work would snap the stem off near the bowl and clunch it in their teeth like this that's it would be working with a pipe like that and you dig up skeletons and you sometimes find a big Notch worn into their teeth because they spent their whole life with a clay pipe clenched in their mouth and actually wore a Groove into their teeth on pipe notches yeah and joining up the trenches is revealing more finds by the minute can you still see The Clapper in there it's inct it's an animal Bell you see them in paintings by people like Bole this one's got decoration on it that looks like it's yeah possibly jaab Elizabeth and jaab typical kind of thing you see on wood carving as well and there's a tiny Shield do you see that there so it's possibly a little stamp of the person that the animal belongs to possibly for a horse or something perfect condition okay there's another lump just here yeah there now is that Arrow above the blip yeah yeah yeah so that tells you that that blip on the screen is is where the wall is so you could actually put the cane in like we've done and mark the position of the wall although geiz are detecting walls belonging to many different phases of building at hook Court our basic aim is to work out the layout of the manor house which may not have radically changed over the centuries we know in the 15th century that there were Posh living quarters here and another as yet unidentified medieval building here with the moat going around it yesterday we we opened up several small trenches in the school playground to find out more about that mystery building and one of them has paid off this small trench has revealed the remains of a spiral staircase although it's difficult to see there's only the base of its left can you see the curving face of the stones running around very very slight you're actually looking at the outer casing of a spiral staircase so we now know that there was a spiral staircase linking the two medieval rang es but the trenches haven't given us any clue about the function of our mystery building that may not matter though because mandes dug out a plan given to her in 1994 by an architect who lived here as a boy his dad in fact was the butler here in the 1940s so what the butler Sun saw is it yes so this is what he could remember of the arrangement of the building exactly Jonathan can't believe his eyes this is a detailed plan of the now demolished North Wing hey now that's interesting look you see he's got um two buttresses there and between them just there he's got what he writes as guarde opening this is a Lou in fact in the wall so what that means is yeah the guarde shoot for human waste spilling out on that side of the window that's right and he did talk about that as well he could remember that it was there remember using it no no okay all right so the presence of medieval lse tells us that our m building contained living quarters where the biggest windows are in in the in the sleep with the position of the privy key to sorting out the layout of our Manor House Jonathan's gone to take a look at some that still survive a few miles away at Woodford Castle so um looking for well that'll do that'll do look that that's a garderobe opening right there you can get your arm in there wow under there yeah it's still there it's blocked up now but that's a shoot coming down from presumably that chamber mhm and everything comes um hurtling down here and is either uh collected at in in buckets and tipped out elsewhere into various mids or spread on the fields aov job or it's um or it's scouted out by a moat I'm not sure which in this case the guard robe was next door to the room where you kept your clothes oh yeah Beauty it's a lovely one wow it's wow look at that it's got a restored seat hang on we need to need to there they are oh my goodness little practical demonstration how amazing and you've got a lovely little light um for for for reading perhaps or put put your hand over here oh it's freezing freezing to feel the dra oh my goodness I can see right down it wow I mean it's almost still usable but think about how this would work though if you're storing your clothes in the room next door which is why you need a big space just for washing your hands you know and you had and the draft comes straight up the ammonia come up it's going to be through your clothes isn't it it's it's going to keep those moths at Bay so makes a lot of sense actually and and you get a splendid view as well you could stay here for hours it's lovely it's my turn remember to put the seat down yeah you're right oh gosh is drafty it's terribly drafty back at hul court our historian Sam's trying to piece together the history of the owners of this manor house he reckons it was Sir Humphrey Stafford who built the Posh living quarters after his marriage in 1406 and with the help of this graphic featuring one of the teachers the kids are reminded of how different life was back then they're especially interested in sir Humphrey's grandson who was executed for not committing his troops during the War of the Roses in 1461 he was actually beheaded had his head chopped off at Bridgewater presumably while trying to get back to his safe Enclave down here in Dorset uh but it was not so there must be a head somewhere mustn't there meanwhile out on the lawn our joined up trenches have turned up more walls but have so far failed to find the Great Hall we've got at least three separate phases we've got the first one here which is this is a stone bit there and then across here and another bit here it's like a sort of little compressed H shape that's the earliest then we've got this wall here little bit of it by where Phil is and then that long bit there cutting through it we've got this thing here which is really odd cuz it's curved and actually we've got a a fourth phase too haven't we cuz we got this early stuff at the bottom that's right that stuff there could actually be earlier than our stones that could be a Timber phase uh 12th century and it's all covered in material from the 17th century when it's clear these buildings were demolished Bridges trench in fact may be turning up the first evidence of the Civil War fire but what we're really after is finds like this this is a very Posh medieval Flor tile now I don't yeah of course now I don't if you can see there's like a pattern impress as well yeah we've got so curved lines straight lines yeah well I kind of taken a rubbing of it with a pencil just to give you an idea of what was going on if you can make this out so intricate isn't it you got the geometric pattern coming around the outside and then there's sort of bit of nut work in the middle if this isn't from a great hle or a chapel I'll eat Phil's hack this decorated tile dates to around 1500 part of a design that when complete would have looked something like this what's just dawned on me is that our manor house probably included buildings both old and new this is a coxcomb tile that would have adorned a roof built in in the 14th century it's the first evidence we have of the Mana house at that date and even better it ties into the only document we have about the early buildings on this side we've got a splendid uh document known as a license to crenellate issued by uh Edward III in 1344 to Robert CEST King's yman to crenate his dwelling place at hook Dorset that's great and so that implies we've already got a a structure here we've got a king's yman here who has given a license to crenel it that is to fortify his dwelling with battlements battlements specifically uh but also May imply a moat the moat could have been created in the 14th century the only dating evidence we have is a 14th to 15th century dagger that was found in the moat in the 1920s interestingly it's a type of knife used by a knight to finish off a wounded opponent meanwhile Jonathan reckons he's found a vital clue to the layout of the manor house having already pieced together a picture of the old northwing from the photos taken in the 1960s he's now got his hands on a painting that reveal some important details about this side of the building he's taken the trouble to show an arch there little bit of another one too but that's a tall one and it looks like it was a route through into into the courtyard it was would bring you bang online with the low end of a hall wouldn't it you're thinking of gateways yeah I'm still thinking of gateways yeah that that square as well with looking at the entrance into the complex as a whole which seems to be the way we drive up the road from that way in yeah and and through the gate where the kids come through just there so now we know the old North Wing was actually the gate house the entrance into the site bizarrely in the 15th century you were often welcomed into a courtyard house with lodgings with L and A draw bridge you have to make your way past the bugs to get in the front door this is an important Discovery because typically the Great Hall is situated opposite the entrance so it should be in the middle of the lawn more or less where Bridge has opened up her trench given this news bridge in fact is wondering if she may have found the Great Hall she's got bits of Decorative Stone from a medieval window and this stone slab that would have supported a large post that could be the Crown Jewel of the entire dig if it's in situ now the most recent discovery that there's a wall coming through here has got our expert thinking so after a few calculations if we're talking about 16t units which is your regular medieval pole that a Mason might use to set out a building and occurs time and again what you've got from that stone to this wall is about 8 ft 8 ft a bit of measuring that's 32 and the real realization that we have another wall coming through I didn't know you even had a wall here well I didn't realize that Joe had already started cleaning it until I just up here Joe your achievements are very understated Jonathan's now thinking we may have found our Great Hall although its position seems different from what we expected for the last two days we've been looking for a great hall and we thought we'd got one in Phil's trench going all the way down here pretty long this is there was a big pad here for a big column to support the roof there going right down to there but just in the last few minutes our ideas have completely changed why Jonathan because I was looking for The Logical solution of a hall going in that direction but Bridget has turned me 90° and persuaded me that it might be to do with practical expediency of an old Hall sitting on firm on this site while the rest of the Mana develops around it with a wall there and and a wall there you've turned Jonathan 90 degrees this is your theory right and you're absolutely convinced that this theory is right I'm determined that this theory is right John what do you think of this Theory well I hate to say it but I'm not for turning who's right we'll find out some more beginning of day three here at hook Court school where we're looking for a medieval manor house uh and the kids have been keeping diaries about the dig this is from day two SEMA wrote this today it was really cool because the six of us went to wash the pottery we also saw a cow's jaw which was interesting and disgusting at the same time and this one from Connie they film me saying they hope to find a forgotten medieval Mana house I found it quite hard because there was a big fluffy thing in my face that's your fault Steve but the big news for us on day two was that right at the end of the day we thought we'd found one of the major buildings stretching from here right over to here except that giia fizz disagreed John everyone was so excited and you bought their dreams crashing to the ground what was the matter well it's just the interpretation of the Great Hall being here I think it's where Phil is where all the action is that's where all my strong signals are I do have things coming out here on the geophysics they are clear but not as good as over there last night you were very quiet on this debate yeah I was thinking a lot about it and I mean I think you for what you've just said there I think we've got to join these trenches up here anyway which ones this this one that Bridget dug yesterday with the ones that the far in that Matt was digging I think we need to see the whole of that so we'll link that up anyway but that's not going to tell us anything about what's going on no no I think we need a hole on that actually that's the only way to resolve whether it's what you think it is in the in the in the ground or not is just pop a hole in and have a look so we're opening up a trench here to look for the other end of what might be a great hall running in this direction and we're joining up our other trenches on this side of the lawn our basic aim is to work out the layout of the Mana house so far we've established we've got a posh accommodation block here and a gate house building with guest lodgings attached to it just here now we're investigating the idea that the Great Hall might be aligned north south instead instead of east west as normal Jonathan's looking at how this might work in terms of the other buildings if you do that you see you've got to get in one side of the great hole so it's not easy unless you stick The Buttery and Pantry at one end of it again okay let's move it up a little bit that's it right now you need the kitchen to be fairly close by to service the great hle so where's that going to be well Phil site came up with a Potter so if you stick the kitchen over there so more in that corner yeah whether we solved the puzzle or not the kids are simply amazed at how much history is buried under their school lawn the roof tole I think is it is it yeah it looks like it and these tiles are sort of 14 15th century but they're in a 17th century deposit so it looks like the late medieval roof still standing at the time of the Civil War and a whole shitty match comes down you know yeah the school timetable has been amended to allow the kids to help as much as they can something some of the older kids are having a go at Advanced geophysics who knows they might be able to spot something we missed or maybe that there could be actual building and that could be a water inside it yesterday they helped to survey this area of the lawn and today we're opening up a trench that they'll help to dig it's targeted on one of the clearest anomalies on the geiz plot well that's the circular feature on here look oh wow very very obvious feature there's been a lot of debate about what it might be and I think my money's on it been a dove cut using the magic of Graphics were able to show the kids the scale of the medieval buildings these two are walking through what would have been the entrance to hook Court back in the mid 1400s anyone entering the site back then must have crossed a bridge because we now know that the moat came around in front of the Gat house but the big news today is that Stuart doesn't believe the mo ever completely surrounded the Mana house in fact he doesn't even think this is a moat well what do you understand by moat well there's knights in armor outside and they're trying to get into the house and they can't because there's this big defensive feature yeah that's the problem I have when I came to this everybody used the term moat I mean I prefer to use the term at the moment a water filled ditch strictly speaking a moat is a defensive ditch but Stuart thinks this is designed to impress people rather rather than keep them out this was dug inste the late 14th century people aren't really digging defensive Moes any way because they the nature of the buildings are changing the nature of the society is changing and you're starting to get people thinking about decoration and ornamentation and Gardens even we've been drilling holes into our waterfill ditch and discovered that it's much deeper here compared to where it bends around the site what's now clear is that this arm of the ditch must have been an extension added in Victorian times because it doesn't exist on this tithe map drawn in 1840 so that arm of the moat really potentially only appears between 1840 and 1889 the strange shape of the ditch shown on the tithe map has got Stuart thinking about the earliest occupation of this site our historian Sam has been piecing together the early history and amazingly we've got the name of someone who was Lord of The Manor here nearly a thousand years ago alfrick who we know from other references in the great survey was a king's thing that is a a a a warrior who ow holds special Allegiance personal allegiance to the king indeed this estate would have been given to alfr by King Edward the Confessor himself but what's particularly interesting about him is that he is still a king's say in 1086 at the time of the survey in other words his Allegiance switches from Edward the Confessor to the new Norman King William that's rather unusual isn't it get letting an Ang tax and stay on well you might think it whether you the way some people go on about the Norman Conquest but there was a lot more continuity I think when we actually look at some individual test cases and as often assume the case so we've got some high politics going on here too we have in the backround is the implication there then that alre would have actually lived here I there's a possibility of a Saxon residence here that is a very reasonable inference to make not least because we've got so many good analogies for what are called fle residences which are often the basis to later Norman strongholds and we know from analogous sources you may have heard this to that a fley residence has to include a major gate house and a belfrey curiously enough which implies a stronghold yes steuarts thinking it's possible that the ditcher shown on this tithe map might be part of the early Saxon Manor and we'll hear more about that later Phil meanwhile still trying to solve our puzzle of walls belonging to the medieval manor house do go with this now don't you well you know it's it's it's the mhes and mhes and masses of pottery yeah I mean look this that's all the same pot yeah it's all the sort of same sort of 16th 17th century stuff we've been getting from all around this area is it at least this trench has turned out to be relatively uncomplicated as Mick predicted this is the remains of a dove popped in there yeah mind on the plastic you know we call them doas but he for pigeons hello you know why they would have kept pigeons um wouldn't they use uh they they would eat some of them yeah and wouldn't they um used uh the droppings as manure very good yeah and the feathers for pillows and stuff like that PO in there you see how it's made up okay so how old is this um Dove cut well we've got a record of of a dove cut here in 1361 okay so that's very old indeed so 600 odd years yeah it's about right it's about right so I've been here 6 years and you're a mere young whipper snapper though you see yeah things seem to be going well over in the middle of the lawn too I think it is it is it is lovely it's the second piece of medieval glaz jug we have a whole one by the end of the day you hope so well we're looking for the other end of the Great Hall and it looks like we found it whether it goes that way or he's coming this way we should need to actually no it definitely does that right comes underneath here and then turns it's still a question whether it's the corner of the Great Hall well that's right it's pretty massive though it it sounds massive meanwhile at the other end of our possible Great Hall another intriguing find is about to emerge from the soil it's not a bit a copper pipe is it War pipe or [Music] something e y it's a tu it's a t look at that this is actually a very rare find Mick reckons it could be as early as 15th century I think this is the best find we've had on the site don't you it's the best F we've had for years that is you really think it's that important I think it's very important yeah we're so used to them we forget that until the 19th century they're very very rare you know yeah this tap is likely to have been used with a system like this it means there was running water here and our manor house is even posher than we thought but now it's late afternoon and time to start wrapping up some of our trenches I should taking the eggs and the the young birds out yeah into a sack or a bag or something you just push yourself around on this Central post all right so you can rotate your you can go right the way around the middle you see the essential finds here were these pigeon bones and we can now show the kids what the dovecot looked like in position on the lawn and inside it we reckon it could have held a thousand [Music] Birds I thought I'd try and give you a different perspective on the place and that's Stuart's ready to tell Mandy how important this site was way back in Saxon times but first he's got to break the news about the moat that it wasn't always like that on the ti map of 1840 the moat came all the way like down like that I don't know if you like that idea or not but it's much more interesting if we move out from here and look at it in the wider landscape this is footage that we shot from the helicopter yesterday and the the moat as it were is in this area here and you can see as we come away from the site that you're at one end there of a of a long ridge that comes down here can you see yes it's very clear you've got a valley down here and the valley down here which is totally different to what you would think it's a very realize you don't do you until you get up above it and see it but steuart's Keen to point out that this is the real boundary of The Manor Estate the house and moat only occupied a small part of it the road bends around the edge of the Mana classic piece of of landscape analysis but what he's most excited about is that the ditches recorded on the tithe map is probably Saxon designed to stop anyone coming along this Ridge of Higher Ground this is a classic location for a residence of somebody quite important in in in the Saxon hierarchy so there's a very strong chance that under here somewhere is that Saxon residence oh so the what was the ditch of the Saxon um fortification as it were became was reused in the Middle Ages as a garden feature as part of the H Court as it were and this is Victor's picture of what that Saxon stronghold might have looked like but right now I want to know about our medieval Mana house have we found the other end of our missing Great Hall Lads if we're going to work out what's here we're going to have to do it fairly quickly aren't we all right bottom line is this we do have a medieval building where we're standing and it turns out that the 16t grid that medieval Builders loved was used it's 16t wide and it's 48 ft long so that's very neat indeed it's probably two stories cuz there's a pad with an oakst supporting the floor deck so I reckon two story building and which way does it face it goes south to North so it's not going to be a chapel and it's it's and it's not linked as far as we can see with our surviving Tower so it's a mystery isn't it it's certainly not a grand hall though no no not I mean that's the main thing unfortunately so does that mean you do have to eat Humble Pie or don't have to eat Humble Pie i' have said 50/50 pie but not very humble medieval great Halls typically looked like this and are open to the roof although the structure we' found is of the same high quality it's two stories high and narrow having consulted his books Jonathan suggesting that this could be a rare example of a first floor hall a few have been known in Dorset this would mean the end of the Great Hall would have lined up with the arched entrance into the manor house some of the team aren't sure about Jonathan's latest Theory so where do they think the Great Hall is I don't know I don't know I think there's a very very big building going back that way which I think is what I was saying last night do we have time to put in a test pit or anything what's really needed on this site is to open the entire lawn but of course that's not possible in 3 days what we're suggesting is that perhaps this corner here is the corner of a big building that runs back down there and that all this Rubble in here is actually the fill in from where they've actually taken the stone out if feels right then the Great Hall would be situated here Jonathan though doesn't agree he thinks this building is more likely to be a large barn in keeping with the pottery finds from Phil's first trench which turned up lots of big dishes like this this is a settling dish for making butter we have to go with our experts conclusion that this two-story building was a first floor Great Hall giving us a manor house that looks something like this our reconstruction shows hook caught in the 15th century the period when we know most about it but we think this is pretty much how the Mana house would have looked at the time it was set on fire during the Civil War soon after all these medieval buildings would were demolished leaving only the Posh lodgings and the gate house building standing these it said were much repaired in 1647 by this man the Duke of Bolton once the family had their lands returned to them after the Civil War finally there's a small presentation to make well you want us to find out about the history of Hooke we may not have done the entire history but we have done the entire own a hook coure in chronological order fantastic the genealogy of your school thank you very much it'll have pride of place in the [Music] court they're on a mission to unearth Britain's history time team's Tony Robinson dishes the dirt on digging up the past press text Page 410 coming up next here on Channel 4 sun sea and an ex-marine to fight over Shipwrecked Battle of the [Music] [Music] islands

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 372,886

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season

Id: brbk8AiMeLE

Length: 48min 14sec (2894 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2013