Time Team S15-E01 Hunting King Harold, Portskewett, South Wales

take a look at this photo taken imports cuit South Wales this is Harold's field it's dotted with mysterious lumps and bumps and I reckon it's going to be a real cracker of a site picture the scene it's 1065 the year before the Battle of Hastings and Harold Godwinson soon to be king he's riding up this slope looking for a site for his brand-new hunting lodge fit to entertain royalty why here well it's always been strategically important it's on the main crossing point for anyone wanting to go from England through to Wales the Romans built here the Welsh had a royal palace here but amazingly no one's ever dug here up till now time team have got just three days to find out what really is under Harold's field [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] most of us know King Harald as a loser the Saxon King killed by an arrow in the eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 but what many people won't know is that he was actually a very successful warrior in the years before he became King as Earl of Wessex he owned land that bordered Wales and personally is a big fan of Harald I'm looking forward to finding out what he was doing here imports cuit the reason why no one's ever dug here at Harold's field before is that way back in 1928 it was deemed so historically important that they made it a scheduled ancient monument which means nobody's allowed to excavate it but this is Kate Smith who lives locally the only if ever the load-in said Brooke and Kate organized this petition would you like to see a professional excavation at Harold's field and very enterprising of you why did you do that well because nobody knows for certain was interred there under the field and we have a lot very curious villagers who would love to know so once we got this petition we had to contact Caddo were the Welsh equivalent of English Heritage aren't they very good Rick it seems a bit odd to me that this place was scheduled in the first place given that we don't really have any idea what's here well either look at our file strand for answer that question myself and the inspector came in the 1920s would have seen what we see the earthworks the position and so on but it seems to be the place name Harold's Harris or Harold's field that seems to have been the clincher to make this a protected site so we start with the name yes but we've also got a really nice piece of evidence from the anglo-saxon Chronicle and that tells us that in 1065 Harold came here and built a hunting lodge and but we don't know whether it is exactly in this field we know it's in port skew it the name itself could have been attached to it in Victorian times we've got this some fantastic drawing by the Reverend green from 1893 which shows our earthworks looking remarkably similar to the way they look today and underneath he's written remains of Harold's hunting tower at ports cuit look at this face that is undiluted scepticism isn't it I just wonder if they put two and two together you know they've got a field full of earthworks next to the church they've got this reference and they've combined it I mean actually very awful we don't know what the reason within a overschedule monument do we wear means obviously earthworks they draw a line round it nobody ever looks at it well the sooner we start digging the sooner we're going to know exactly what is buried under these mysterious lumps and bumps and if they've got anything to do with Harold's hunting lodge the first trench is being decided is going in here across the biggest most obvious lump in Harold's field it stands out so well in fact that we haven't waited for geophys to survey it instead they'll crack on to give us a picture of what's going on in the rest of this field half past 10:00 on day one and we've already got the first trench going in which is very good news unfortunately there's some bad news as well we've got a wounded soldier how did we do this we don't know Tony I mean this is a sort of temporary measure but I've done something to me riched what it means is I can't dig so what can you do don't use me brain I can I can still observe the archaeology yelling still interpret it it was just me not I'll get into other people's trenches and make myself extremely unpopular just like you do really well I'm sure we're gonna need Phil's experience but right now I want to hear more about the anglo-saxon Chronicle the evidence that connects Harald with ports cuit we've got a splendid reference to 1065 which is often overshadowed by of course during events the following year with his absolutely specific in this year before Hamas harald ordered the building in wales at ports cuit and there are too many goods gathered he wished to invite King Edward here for hunt meats so the implication is of a great hunting lodge so this is before his King King Edward is king why is he in Wales in the first place he's consolidating his military campaign in 1053 completely defeated the Welsh armies and the Welsh King there and it's it's asserting himself in what had been foreign land he would have been building the most wonderful building I mean he's immensely wealthy himself he's second only the king in terms of wealth and power of course and it wants to impress the king and the King loves his hunting even though he's quite an old man by now well it sounds convincing but it could be very difficult to prove it was here because even the Saxon building posh enough to entertain the king would have looked something like this essentially a timber construction leaving only post holes in the ground for us to find were still it may not have been here for very long because we know it was attacked by the Welsh the wheels back band together we have a great big gang that come and can kill the builders and seize all the goods that are assembled here by Harold for hunting and building so we're not even dealing with a complete building it appears so the Welsh burnt down Harold's the Englishman's holiday home yes little bit of a patent there's there but for the archaeologists this dig is about more than just looking for Saxon evidence this ridge of higher ground was on the main route for anyone crossing the river 7 and there are clues to suggest that this field was occupied over many centuries local pottery expert Steve Clarke has dug several trenches in the area and found iron age Roman and medieval finds all around the edges of Harold's field when you say you've got medieval pottery from here what sort of date is that well it's a job to say it's probably 13th century could be 14th but is it's not really closely dateable because there's not enough of it so not Harold yet then no sex and pottery there's there's no there's when sheared from southern Wales so if we got something Saxon that would be very story yes yes it would be really big key to understanding this site will be making sense of the lumps and bumps gyah fears are busy trying to detect what lies beneath them while Henry is collecting data to make a 3d model and Stewart seems to be studying them from every angle he hasn't spotted anything Saxon yet he reckons you can see traces of something that would be later in date a medieval Manor you see looking over there that big Ridge going across there oh yeah area between doesn't that on this area first graph that's this this Bank coming across here this is a very typical dam holding back water in this area in here the area was standing in so you've got quite a distinctive feature there showing up you got this ditch going round it see all these earthworks with in here so you're getting the feel of an enclosure going round so would that be like an ornamental moat that's right or a fish pool or a very typical decorative feature going with a medieval manor house the plan is to put in a trench to test you its theory well I've got a yellow digger I don't have to use my hand veneks and if we need any digging I'll get frigid to do fill and bridge are going to open a trench here across these earthworks to see if Stuart's right and they are medieval and no sooner does the trench go in at the bottom of the hill and straightaway Phil spots the first fine his eyesight is a shape you don't you don't need your hands to do archaeology just need your old Oh slides away so what we need now is a pottery expert ready you know what is manual I think it is when you say medieval in this instance what word refine that a bit more somewhere around 1200 oh that would be good oh yeah to say that early I don't know it could could Lobby a bit knows though an a it's a great start we've come straight down on medieval pottery dating to around 12 ad so Stuart could be right and there is a completely unknown medieval manor house here oh wow yeah is what goes on in now it's a bit it's a bit more degraded in there but there's definitely the bits of stone coming up it's a big old bit old stone there isn't it's a nice let's have another nibble in ear please it Ian what's our wonder well we don't know yet but that's what it's looking like up on the top of the hill we could be digging the very posh bit of Stuart's manor house because we've uncovered a massive spread of stones and Matt's got his first find of the day [Music] yeah it's comes it's come square looks like that squared off piece there fitted in the wall or something Maj reckons there's at least one large collapsed building here but at the moment it's hard to see because of all the rubble there are few pieces of very angular stones and the Topsail is quite thick then we came down it's always cleaning mortar there and almost we have an impossible and no revetment or wall there a few large pieces there but they're all very tumbled it looks like we might have another building at the other end of the trench and I'm glad I'm not the one who's going to sort it out that's a war and rest yes absolutely unlike all this rough undressed rubble this is essentially and that's the only bit of dress that's why I found quite but could this map dated 1777 contain a clue to what one of the buildings look like and look at the name of the field tell hey tower Hey yeah now I think that tower field name applies to the fact that these the big lumps and bumps on the top here and there was a memory that was a tall building or a stone town perhaps an old manor house but there's a memory of the stone building this field Stuart now believes that most of the bigger earthworks are part of the medieval manor house and this is an exciting discovery in itself it's possible that these lost medieval buildings could be very early perhaps even dating back to the period just after the Norman Conquest but as well as digging the manner we also want to investigate the pre-conquest history of this hill so where do we put our next trench in search of some sacks and evidence what we've got on top feels like a look like a big courtyard but their areas in here where there are much lower earthworks which don't quite fit that that same Pat Barry almost interesting because they're blank in fact yeah they're blank and they're very low and you just don't feel the same substance as the other one the geophys survey looks like it's showing more medieval buildings but it could also be natural sandstone the only way to find out is put another trench in you see I think the problem is in a way we don't want to know about the things we can see because these are going to be medieval or later stone or or solid structures whereas if we're talking about something early there might be timber built the sort of things that would be contemporary with how old you know late Saxon early Norman there are they going to be underneath these or are they going to be in the rather more blank areas so in a way we want to be looking like you're saying in the blank areas because that's where we might see the post holes and timber slots of earlier structures trench three it's decided we'll examine this geophys blob but also extend into a blank area to see if we can find any trace of a earlier occupation so Trench 3 gets underway on top of the hill and it doesn't take long to reveal the source of the gfs black blob there's been some water coming up a spread of mortar and rubble probably from the medieval manor house I don't think they're in situ but we can take those out then yep in some ways finding a complex of posh medieval buildings here isn't surprising because manor houses were often built on important Saxon sites essentially it was a way of showing that a newly conquered area was under new management Harold in fact may have chosen this hill for his hunting lodge because it had long been the site of a Welsh royal court we could be digging the top of many layers of history in this field we've talked a lot about the medieval manor and about Harold's hunting lodge but before that we've got this possible welsh royal court which was here for a lot longer what would it look like well we don't quite know there's been a lot of work done on these sites in the north where what is this thing called fleece the royal seat of the kings of Gwent once again we're talking about a fancy wooden building built possibly as early as the 7th century the evidence for it comes from a historical text the life of Santa fayus which tells how the king of Gwent went in search of a new royal site the king is on his horse which he rides without riedel or halter so the horse miraculously is guided by God to a spot as the nearest we get is well nigh to the banks of the seven but more specifically when he arrives here the horse scratches the ground and lo and behold a spring bursts forth and at us at that point in the life we have a little bit of verse inserted which is often an indicator of a much earlier source so it's it makes the whole thing much more credible observe the signs of God here the horse stands here is the place to abide so God is by God to find a place here a very good horse that's like a champion the Wonder horse yeah there isn't a spring here now because they all dried up when the seventh tunnel was but it was described by antiquarians and it's shown on this 1777 map yes here's the church on here yes and there's this label the springs yes and the lot and there's the real now Dam is somewhere down here well it sounds a bit dodgy to me but the archaeologists seem to believe it but the problem Tony is is you know it's the usual one of how'd you find timber buildings of that early medieval period yeah another clue to why this site became an important place is in the name itself port skewers which in Welsh means the harbour below the woods hard to imagine now because the village is half a mile inland but in ancient times it's thought there was a tidal Creek here linking ports curious with the Severn Estuary tomorrow we're planning to try and find the creek but it could be that Phil's trench here on the lower ground has already picked up some evidence of it well across the whole trench is this clay as clay is the alluvium this is Water Lane deposits and look what we've got down here now that piece of tall yeah is actually in the alluvium steel you got any idea what this is yeah it's seven valley where it sits wrong man its second third century hmm it's quite distinctive stuff do you want to get yeah sure go yeah you're not allowed to touch it I can do it with my left hand but I can super boys so it's really flag II this guy isn't it all peso and I hear do you reckon this is in situ or is it just been dumped here at some stage the Romans were here and it's got dropped in to the silt and they're gradually the silt was build built up and up and up it's so gluey I'm glad it's not my wrist that's doing that here we are it's coming away people take photograph now we start thinking ah hello you have a rest I got the rest of the phones out well this is our first sign that the site was occupied in Roman times my beautifully excavated bit of pot comes from a 2nd to 3rd century Roman storage jar that would have looked like this I said I thought this site was going to be a pretty good one and it hasn't let me down so far we started off with these earthworks underneath it it looks as though we found the medieval Manor and there could be all these layers underneath tomorrow let's hope we can get at some of that early history day two here at ports cuit in South Wales where we're trying to work out what all these lumps and bumps are about yesterday we found what we think is a medieval Manor right on the top of that hill but this place is called a herald field so we're hoping we might have Harold Saxon hunting lodge underneath the medieval Manor but it's more complicated than that there's so much history here we could have a welsh royal court under the saxon below that a roman villa below that something prehistoric but what really intrigues me is that we've discovered yesterday that in this low ground down here there used to be a creek which flowed into the river 7 so once he sorted himself out Stuart's going off off you go my son in order to try and map the creek later on we're going to put a trench in somewhere around here we've got our work cut out today we've got three trenches underway so far and in Matt's trench we've unearthed two buildings which we think were part of a medieval manor house but we don't know how old it is or when it went out of use it looks like we might have something else coming through here you think these big big stones because behind you they're all quite small and rubbery and they were just cleaning up these it looks like they're quite they're pretty hefty I think we have our second second wall in the trench Phil's trench was put in here to investigate the earthworks at the bottom of the hill yesterday afternoon I excavated this beautiful piece of secateurs Roman pot from over there but Phil said that this end of the trench where I couldn't see anything at all had got more potential were you right absolutely Tony the reason this has got so much more potential is we've got more layers here we've actually got stratigraphy and this is one of the crucial part of the trench is going to be you see your piece of second third century pot came from this alluvium down here there the important thing is we've also had pottery from up there medieval pottery dated to 1200 the point is we've got all these layers in between they'll tell us the story often when you to say that there's photography I can't see anything but I have to say even I can see that you've got one layer down to there then you've got this dark layer here and we've got this mud below it exactly so what we want to know is what is going on in the middle bit and if we can get more bits of pottery we can actually fill that gap in between the Romans and the and the period of 1200 so part of that gap would be our Saxon Herald hunting life but it would but I mean you know let's be a bit cautious because we have hell's own difficulty finally stuff between the Roman and the medieval anywhere well that's great isn't it we've got a trench here that's cutting into the hill and allowing us to see the earlier history but Mick's telling me that we might not be able to prove that one of these layers is Saxon I don't really understand why won't we get any Saxon fines well certainly in terms of pottery which is you know archaeologists rely a lot on pottery there just doesn't seem to be any about 4/6 well right from the earth period right from the end of the Roman Empire through until Norman time why what happened to the pots after the ramiz's well it's a very interesting question and we can give you a very feeble answer again is the market economy the Romans had a number of centers where they mass-produced pottery in Oxfordshire in Dorset and so on and those disappear I think a lot of it is due to the fact that they were using wooden vessels we trot away which rot away I mean where you get a wet a wet context that preserves wood the vessel of the wooden vessels are there or mass so if we want to find evidence of the time between the Romans and the medieval manner what are we likely to get the most satisfying thing we would get is is either some post holes or timber slots or something like that which were demonstrably after the Romans and before the Norman period we'd be with radio car but with something like bone or something that would give us a radiocarbon date that would nicely come out at 900 plus or minus 50 that would be the ideal but you know we're all cynical enough to know that that's that's a long shot well they may be cynical but I'm not giving up on Harold yet surely there must be something Saxon to find if the hunting lodge was in this field we're certainly checking the finds very carefully Steve our pottery expert is examining everything under a microscope and this is the earliest medieval pottery we've found so far so how do you go about identifying a piece of pottery like this well firstly it's cooking pot you can see that there's sort on the outside lying on the inside from the water from the water the cooking yes they put them in the fire identifying pottery is all about recognizing the shape type of clay and the various extras added to it this has a purple tinge because of the high iron content in the clay and it's typical of pottery made in hand Green near Bristol sand has been added to the clay as a temper to prevent it from cracking in the fire of cooking pot and that's what we can see up on the screen isn't it leave these rounded grains and things are obviously obviously sand and once this great lump it's also look sound as well it's it's a quartz grain which is sub-angular but these leaves here which is we got really excited because in Wales these are generally twelve century this cooking pot could have been brought here as early as 1150 ad less than a hundred years after Harold built his Lodge here and it was found in Phil's trench so gradually we're moving in the right direction we're making progress in Matt's trench as well it looks like we're starting to get some dating evidence for our manor house yeah what have you got that we've got sauce right styles so fairly standard medieval tile bit thin for roofing tile isn't it I do think it might be from a half or something like that not floor tile and it's not floor tile it's far too too thin hopefully we'll find more clues but at least it tells us we're dealing with a manor house that was here in the 13th or 14th century thanks to some 21st century wizardry Henry's 3d model of the lumps and bumps is helping to show up the extent of the manor house it illustrates quite well on the top the rectangular nature of where those big lumps bakka with a building scale oh yeah exactly defined that is on Henry's non-related oh it's good isn't it show sharp corners to it don't ya it's very definite but what it also shows if you can swing it back Henry things starting to pick up various earthworks down here there's clearly more going on in this area tell us something about the history of this site so yes it's been really helpful Stuart's main challenge today is to find the sill tdap Creek that once connected port Skua to the sea so there's the site just in there and that you see you've got the coast out here with all the mud flats you're these lines on here these are medieval strip fields I this wasn't flooded in medieval because we're able to plow it but they're areas we can see stream channels and areas that don't have plying on could this be where you can bring boats up to our site the theory is that there was a tidal Creek known locally as a pill running close to our site it may well have looked something like this one which is only a couple of miles away Phil's going to help with the search for the Lost Creek and he's wondering what the harbor at Port skew it might have looked like I mean we've got these sort of well modern jetties and bits and pieces like that would they have had that or where they've just literally let it sink down in the mud it would depend we we have got examples of medieval key size big stone establishments but probably the majority of times people would come into these small pills and there wouldn't be a major facility they'd have a boat that they could bring in on a flood tide and settle on the low tide unload then wait for the next tide to come in and flood and go out on the next tide our environmental archaeologist Emma is taking a series of soil samples to locate the creek it's tough going but already she can tell us there is a silted up channel here and it's four meters deep in places where now also digging a new trench based on Emma's work and it's been positioned here to look at what could be the edge of the creek [Music] meanwhile Phil's making his way out of his tidal Creek into the seven estuary and he's learning just how much local knowledge and skill was needed in handling one of the most difficult stretches of water in the country what makes this water so special it's the speed at which the tide comes in and goes out and early sailing boats cannot overcome the speed of the tide it tighten that up to 10 knots and even more on spring tide and aboard to us three to four knots so if you don't get it right the tide will just take over you go down backwards have you made those sorts of mistakes okay sorry yes I think we all have there in drops then you're entirely left to decide back in Harold's field we're making real progress unearthing the medieval Manor I've been looking around the sides of this hill for most of today because quite frankly the archaeology up here on the top was so complicated I wanted to give the archaeologists time to have a really good look the big news is that Matt reckons he's revealed a doorway into one of our medieval buildings that's not Lea isn't it door jamb coming out there's just come up now making a nice space for the timber door cities or in there we've got a doorway here into one building and we've also uncovered two walls that are clearly part of a separate building and both walls bizarrely have been made without using mortar if you build a good solid stone wall carefully we actually hold it in place for you without having any mortar yeah with no water until it begins to fall down because then it seems to crack right down the hill gravity assisting in its collapse on top of it yeah Ian's up to his neck in rubble but he's also finding a lot of medieval roof tile underneath this rubble here we had this layer of roof tiles which i think means that the building was actually didn't fall down it was brought down demolished they took the roof off threw away what they didn't want then it's at the walls down and threw down all this rubble on top of the roof it's taking a lot of time but we're slowly making sense of medieval buildings and up in the helicopter Stewart's ready to report to Mick he reckons he's worked out where the creek ran up to pork skewered the church sits on a little promontory of high ground yeah the end of that yeah the low ground you can't race in a channel out towards our electricity players I can see kind of custom Vale you see the channel to the right kay no that's the line of the original Creek Phil's boat at the moment is here and he's looking from water level or what would once have been the entrance point into the creek so literally everything that's forming the shore now is showing up yes it looks like featureless mud flat but in fact that's changed with the new many evil sea wall coming in and could have been our Hill during the early medieval period : if you were coming into a harbour here what can you can you tell me would it be a favorable place for harbor well yes first of all the tide would have pushed you nearly right up here having bounced off the English stones and then the last little bit with the westerly wind as we have now you to just sails straight in which is exactly what we're doing and if we go very much further we're going to be on the shore with my picture ready go back anywhere well that's great we've located the long-lost Creek that once connected ports cuit with the seven estuary allowing boats to reach here from places like Bristol just across in England and the wider world beyond but was the creek still flowing when our manor house stood proudly on this hill the news is that we've got enough pottery now to date these medieval buildings good idea because the the pottery is a lot of it's from Bristol and it's it's a type of pottery which doesn't come in until the second half of the 13th century and gun goes out in the 14th and how does late 13th century time with history well actually very very well because the water and only reference we have two ports cue it after Harold's time is here dated 1271 survey of the Forester went wood and one Matthew Deneb and is resident here in a house at Port Stuart and he's got three privileges House boot the right to cut timber to build houses hey boot the right to cut timber to build fences and fire boot the right to cut certain types of timber for his house fire well now we really are getting somewhere we've got a 13th century manor house on the name of someone who lived here at the time we also know it was pulled down in the 14th century well before the creek dried up in our trench here at the bottom of the hill much of the day's been spent investigating this ditch which we can now confirm also belongs to the medieval manor but it's meant that we haven't had time to investigate the layers Phil pointed out to me this morning with Roman pottery at the bottom and medieval at the top we could have a layer of Saxon history in the middle I've been promised we'll definitely find out tomorrow day three here in ports cuit in South Wales and our last chance to find evidence of Harold Saxon hunting lodge thought to have been in this field what we've learned so far is that many of the big lumps and bumps here belong to a 13th century manor house which is causing a lot of excitement at the moment there's all this work stone can we found this lovely work bit there we took that out thing it's rubble and underneath another one the same and another one the same all stacked up what about what about that as well oh oh yeah there's two more layer look so good well that's that's that's that's fantastic that's the side of a doorway over the floors our door the door jamb yeah one yes and you you've presumably got a stack of them these stones were part of the door slowly we're starting to build up a picture of what these buildings look like he says oh yes yes so I guess maybe those or similar stones would have been out we've been on that would make sense is that's the doorway there and you're coming into something this way yeah and if you're coming into something then presumably this earth work and this part grass is is the inside of it oh I just wonder if this isn't the tower yeah the fields named after well away from the medieval rubble we're going to have one last stab at finding some earlier structures on this hill our last trench is going in here if we're lucky this bit of the field might not have been built on in medieval times and we might come straight down on some Saxon evidence that's nice nothing was that is no smelly evil it's very nice 13th century of it still early then yeah there's so much good archeology here but Phil will be happy whatever we find but personally I'll be disappointed if we can't find anything to prove the Saxons were at least here in 1065 ad I'm told my best chance is in this trench here we've exposed a series of layers in the slope of the hill that could allow us to gather any Saxon evidence if it's here mmm so are we getting on then Tracy that's looking interesting yeah it's not what we expected we're peeling off this redeposited clays forming the terrace yeah to find the earlier ground surface is it coming off easily at that level if it's just peeling off of this oh yeah oh that is definitely the level and it well we didn't expect who was this yellow degraded sandstone the top layers which have now been removed dated to 1200 AD they were put down to create a terrace on the side of this hill and it looks like similar terracing has been going on in much earlier times could this be evidence of activity here in the Saxon period Mick tells me it's rare to find Saxon pottery but we have to hope for some dating evidence as Tracy carefully unpicked these layers a worn coin of Harold what do you my best thankfully I'm not the only one who's optimistic about finding some trace of the last great king of the Saxons our historian Sam is backing me all the way oh absolutely and looking at the historical context it I'm sure he was here I've just went for the archaeologists to prove the yeah exactly it's not our fault they're a bit slow Victor's got him hunting is that just because he built a hunting lodge what did he really like hunting oh he undoubted like hunting it was all part of the territory of being a great warrior and a war leader because it was such great training for mobility over land lines of approach all this sort of thing that's why it's always associated with with warriorship and rulership what we all remember about 1066 is him losing the Battle of Hastings but in fact after he became King at the beginning of 1066 he started off being really successful militarily oh he did very well one of the greatest victories of all time over an invader was the Battle of Stamford Bridge where he defeated the Vikings exactly Harald Hardrada it was it was an all-time success but of course overshadowed by the dramatic events of only a couple of weeks later at down at Hastings and he nearly won at Hastings I was such a close-run thing it was like a last minute goal really but yeah if it hadn't been for that stupid arrow in the eye Harold could well have won and would be now as famous as Queen Elizabeth or Henry the eighth yes it would have been the beginning of a great line and he just looked up at the wrong moment one thing we have found that was here in Harold's time is the old river Creek that allowed boats to reach here from the sea and the soil survey has shown us that it was at least four meters deep and likely to be just as wide this trench put in to test Emma's results found this edge of the creek and is now working here trying to find the end of the creek but I'm a bit confused stewards told me there was a huge pool of spring water in this area held back by this causeway that acted like a dam well haven't I got that right that's absolutely right but we think that causeway going across there is a late much later than the Saxon period well into the medieval period but before that the creek came up through bits of take that away yeah the creek came up here and what you've got is this the land rises up where you get to to where the the fence is over there yeah and this area here looks beat to be where that creek comes through and joins the land so what a stem is you do some all green to see what she could find and what you got advanced and Santoni very happy have to say and there we go yeah that's exactly what that's beach that's beach sand so this is the place at which the water would come up to where you would bring boats up to drop them on the beach settlement growing around around the head of that just exactly what you've got this is actually brilliant stuff that Emma's done rediscovering the tidal Creek has allowed Henry to create a 3d model to show the approach to port skewers in Saxon times we actually saying here is the 1940s era photograph over the top the topography but what the work that Emma's been doing is on the mat were students been doing is shown is just how wide this area of wetland with creeks for any through it would have been running right up to our site here you did being able to bring a vessel up this Creek up here right into the landing foot spot there in the Indus experiment piece no doubt about that at all it's fantastic but then so is the news from this trench because a few minutes ago Tracy turned up guess what two bits of pottery from one of the lower layers of the trench could they be Saxon it's just said to me that he's been cautious but excited and we've got Holies these books here of stuff called Chepstow ware and lots of little fragments of pottery why are you excited because the fabrics are so distinctive really under the microscope there's limestone angular limestone this quartz but that fabric with the quartz with the vertical rim is identical to thee to this one in chepstow okay so we've found something that is like something that's been found in chess just a what's the significance of it well it is the dating and what is that dating later Levin 32 are sensitive I like it yeah we want are very close to the conquer late 11th century when you say late 11th century could it actually be before 1066 I wouldn't have thought so but it's it's almost certainly Norman anyway it's a rare find unfortunately the wrong side of the conquest but it means the lair it came from dates to the late ten hundreds and traces still digging down into what could be earlier layers the news from the trench we open this morning by the way is that we didn't find anything Saxon just a couple of ditches dating to the 12th century but that may not matter now because this trench continues to surprise us all are indeed it looks like we've got another bit of potential Saxon pottery [Music] it's back to the microscope I have to say I never thought I'd be so interested in a few scrappy old bits of pot and Sam in the excitement has turned into a geologist it's oolitic limestone tempered what's the names eggs little eggs my eggs dynast I need lots of tiny tiny little eggs from ancient tropical oceans that form these limestone geological layers that the Cotswolds see that that's avoid that's that's a very distinction we ever yeah yeah so that might may well have been where there was a new list oh they'll like say I don't know like you definitely would say that with you oh yeah but but you see the Saxon and the Norman have all lights and we we don't see that Saxon pottery in Wales so this is one of two types this is either oolitic limestone pottery from the late Saxon or if it's another type it's early normal eggs yeah we don't know which yet note I made the inclusions may be too leached for me to say you know you need Allen Vince on this let's hope the inclusions aren't too leached if you visit our website you can find out more about Harold and probably more than you'd want to know about Saxon pottery but right now we're running out of time the villagers who invited us here are turning up to see what we've been able to discover about Harold's field and in Matt's trench we're nearly ready to tell them we're down deep enough to find the floor of this building Oh at last excellent what they make us stone yeah it's sandstone these are harder either limestone yeah strengthen it don't seem to be it seems to be lower than the the bottom of the wall there doesn't it this is so typical of you Mick Aston we're all working away in the freezing wind over in the field and you're sloping off to the church working away on the church Rick reckons we can tell the villagers when the manor house was built this church dates to the early eleven hundreds and he's noticed it's got similar stonework to this bit which he's lugged across from Matt's trench well I mean I would suggest that you could put it almost yeah exactly into that doorway it's the same type of stone he's other college they don't only to same block size yeah same detailing the windows have been added in the early 1200 and they too are a match for some of our dress stones suggesting that our manor house was altered at the same time so that one yeah we're comparing with this one yeah so we can by comparison where this window suggests that perhaps in the early 13th century there's a significant alteration to that great tower that Matt's work so big what do you think is the relationship between this church and what we've got over there I think it's it's a very direct relationship we should see all over the country which is the manor house has the church next to it and that's usually because they start out as the private property of the people in the my house it's only later they get dragged away and become the parish church the church and manor house were probably built by the same stonemasons but can we now say which bits of the manor house we've been digging up I think what we're looking at here is the doorway into a 12th century tower on there is magnificent inside you've got the floor and then you go out through the doorway over the threshold that's that big stone down that's that big stop there and then you're outside the building out and then are Trench turns right and goes down the hill what if the trench is done as cut through a range of buildings along that so yeah which are later 13th century and I think probably likely to be a stable block they've got a essential sort of walkway going through it will got no later 13th century pottery from there anyway so it's not domestic no I don't think it is so we know these big earthworks sketch long ago in Harold's field and not the remains of Harold Saxon hunting tower and we can now reveal to the villagers what was under the lumps and bumps the main building we unearthed was a Norman fortified tower house likely to have been three stories high next to it there was a stable block and these earthworks unlikely to be a courtyard with ancillary buildings set around it encircling the hill was this deep ditch and the impressive route in was across this causeway with the creek on one side and a large lake of spring water on the other this was the home of the local Lord but not the center of power as it was in Harold's day because in Norman times their base was at chepstow castle down the road but what I hoped for was something to link this field with Harold did we get any pre-conquest pottery we've got some of the earliest medieval pottery ever found in with us really it's very exciting but is any of it proof that the Saxons were here we've just got a fragment out now it could well be pre Norman they're almost certainly but which pits that it's a very small piece there no it's not too fanciful then to say that this could be from the time of King Harold no not at all because we know it's that much earlier in the sequence well it's not much but finding this from a time when there simply wasn't much pottery feels like discovering the Holy Grail this is chaff tempered ware and it's Saxon I can hardly believe it we can tell the locals that we found evidence of activity here just before the Norman Conquest and for me it's proof enough that Harold was here a historian Sam is convinced that Harold would have built his hunting lodge on this important hill intending it to stand out as a symbol of new power to anyone arriving in the creek below so basically what we've discovered is that this is a really classy place yeah and if you didn't know it already you'll really push people to live you [Music] for more information about this week's dig as well as exclusive time team video clips games and information on how to get into archeology go to the website at channel for comm slash time team the Channel 4 News is next [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 521,903

Rating: 4.8650136 out of 5

Keywords: time, team, full, episodes, season, argeologie, archaeological

Id: 6veaHrbV804

Length: 48min 13sec (2893 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2013