Time Team S15-E06 Gold in the Moat, Codnor Castle, Derbyshire

somewhere underneath all this scaffolding and the remains of cod nor castle here in Derbyshire the medieval Knights who lived here fall in just about every battle from the Crusades to a zinc or to the Wars of the Roses but nobody knows exactly what it looked like this is the earliest picture we have of it but that's 18th century after it had fallen to wrack and ruin now though the castle is about to get a facelift which gives us the opportunity to find out what it looked like how old it was and whether it was a defensive fortress or more of a medieval show home and as usual we've got just three days Kadir castle sits right on the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire surrounded by countryside which has been parkland for a millennium over the last 500 years the parks been extensively mined and believe it or not there are even records of mines within the castle walls we have this big problem in that no one knows where the mines were or how deep they were so John and his team have been here since the crack of dawn trying to do the preliminary work for us John what are the chances of survival and I'm not just talking about the archaeology well I think you'll survive the problem is we still can't find any of these shafts if there's been mining here for centuries are we likely to find anything at all yeah look behind you Tony can you hit stonework between the towers and the grass above it that's the ground level inside there so it's above your head it's good six foot higher than out here and I guess what that is it's a product of querying a mining waste being dumped in there now that could act like a protective blanket seeding of protecting the archaeology underneath will the bits of the castle that survived tell us much yeah we've got quite a bit we've got the rather fine gateway here is Ivy clad but we can still see a lot from it and through the gap we can just about see the chamber block is this plan recent this is the best plan we've got can you see what the original Castle here but only certain wolves survived what's happened to these walls we need to try and work that out then the castle was extended maybe in the 14th century landing on the lower court and see where we're standing now and then around it all these earthworks what are these are the result of quarrying mining or actually medieval features so what's the first target then Neal I guess a trench in there now let's see how far down we got to go we're gonna go down six inches or six feet Dukes is like building trouble yeah we want to find out when cotton the castle was built and what it looked like so trench one goes in on the Apple court inside what's thought to be the oldest part of the castle and six foot below in the lower court we're sinking to more trenches just outside the old castle walls fills trench we'll go right up to the wall to see if there's any information to be gleaned from the Foundation's a few meters away Matt is going to investigate the Gateway to find out how the degrees who lived here entered their Castle and Stuart and Henry accoring some of the earthworks to try to work out what's mining and what's moat so cutting something plus 3 meters deep now the when we went for what rob that's an incredibly deep bit above the ditch in the upper court Neil and Raksha have had a very welcome surprise it's very mixed it just doesn't look to me like the kind of stuff you would get up cars from coal mining nobody that's quite promising though I think this looks like archaeology you know and if we right we're not even six inches dead well that throws a six-foot theory out of a window today so on the other side of the castle wall six feet below Phil is hand digging up to the wall what hey Phil that doesn't look like one of your normal trenches you're bearing a dog no no what I'm doing what we want to do is run out a trench that way but obviously we can't machine right up to the wall so what I've done is cut a little slot in here don't expose the Warren and we should just machine back from there Neil's working up there yeah just your soda wall Neil Neil it's Julius you found anything yet fantastic discovery Tony not six foot down not even six inches down two inches below the grass you've got medieval walking across the treats and rubble around it what it still doesn't resolve is that is the discrepancy between where you are and may six foot further Dame sure but as we dig down in an trench we should get an answer batching with it's a huge relief to discover that the archaeology hasn't been entirely mined out what remains of Cardinal Castle has survived centuries of mining and even attempts in the 1960s to demolish it but with complete collapse seemingly imminent the landowner UK coal has stepped in with English heritage to preserve and stabilize the ruin problem is if this is left much longer its roots will expand and split the war yeah the only way you can do it is to try and pick the wall apart so initially we take loose stones off until we can find where the root is penetrating into the wall when we got to a point where we can't take any more apart we'll cut the stump off poison it and then seal it in the in the wall cause when you finished it how are you going to seal the top to make sure the rain doesn't start coming in and the whole thing will start all over again that's always the problem with any ancient monument we'll cap it with flat stones and mortar and then put turf on top UK coal are working on the chamber block the degrees private quarters which stands at the end of what we think is the original castle there should be walls surrounding it but two are entirely missing and running alongside the walls we're looking for rooms such as the Great Hall kitchens and servants quarters and we're hoping that the nating century engraving by the back brothers can help us he's so hard to make sense of it's absolutely full of doors and windows and the perspective is going completely mad normally they're reasonably accurate but they're a bit like a mock on my sketch you know all the right notes but not necessary in the right order oh there Helen and Richards mission is to put the notes in the right order and locate some of the important rooms this should be the north gable end of the chamber block but its internal ah that's a great big fireplace that yes and that's enormous isn't it yes so if that implies a room coming this way it I can't be a very big room in which case you'd be getting extremely hot cuz you're next to this giant fireplace or something must have happened to the land around here because look how it drops off this room must have been you know at least 15 foot 20 foot long and what do you think it might have been it's a high-status room of some description otherwise it wouldn't about a fireplace that size but it's some sort of a domestic chamber not the main chamber sort of an annex to it possibly so Deif is set to work to find the rooms missing wall meanwhile raksha's found our first bit of dating evidence near to her wall no that's late 17th century early 18th something like that that's modern the jug dates to the period just before we know the castle was in ruins do we know what it was built no we don't the first mention of the castle being here is in 30 no age and that's in an inquisition on the death of one of the Lords de Grey and all that tells us is that there is a castle with various acres of arable and meadow and mills etc doesn't give us any physical detail about the castle why might it have been built for that I think we need to look at the ranking of the gray family they're important Baron's in Derbyshire they're important on the national stage they're soldiers they're serving in the Kings Wars they're of that rank that we would expect them to have a castle it could be couldn't it that there was a castle here before this one there could be we don't have the evidence of yet and maybe you'll find that over the next couple of days but we know there's a park back in 1246 we have King Henry the third granting dear etc - I think it's then Richard de Grey so they've certainly got a big estate here at Cod no we might expect them to have a house to go with it but at the moment there's no documentary and no archaeological evidence for an earlier site so we know there was a castle here in 1308 and we're hoping to establish what it looked like but the archaeology entrench one's confusing Matt was expecting to find a path through the Gateway but instead you've got a wall just looking at the mystery I think it might be a little war might be post castle but it's early days yet you know let's see what it turns it mean it's pretty big as an excuse it's massive yes Matt isn't the only one who's confused by the masonry Richards finding the ruin quite difficult to date it's enough we're on the outside what what's that sticking right out into the moat well that's it's like a guard road Tower the toilet talent as big it's a pretty posh one yes can you put a date on this no well not at all not at the moment no I mean like any masonry structure unless you've got some mouldings that you can specifically date to a specific period then you're just learning with a masonry structure that could have been built any time in three or four hundred years although the masonry is difficult to date we're having more luck with the finds Paul yes my boy entrance that if I've got it right is probably 15th or 16th century oh yeah it gets quite pale and oranjee colored round ear light on in the medieval period my god is the early medieval that's very encouraged great stuff in it good stuff we'll have a bit more out here corneil when you're up here you get a real sense of the difference in floor levels between there and here they're here absolutely right Tony and you know I said the art could use to just glow the ground Sippy yeah for this wall face coming along there yeah so it's been chopped out here by quarrying a mining but we've got a really good face on this side and we're actuaries I think you've got something coming up there Rhett there's these two stone lintels one here and one off right right they're part of the doorway which the entrance is to be running in that direction so do you reckon that this wall here Richard goes with this one here so it looks like it's roughly parallel and that was obviously some sort of high status chamber with a properly glazed window so what kind of room could it be right next to the gateway so possibly porters Lodge this is great news we're not even at the end of day one and already we've managed to locate one of the key rooms in cottony castle where we're digging is right round the back there but even all the way over here there loads of what appear to be remnants of the castle just lying higgledy-piggledy all over the place and take a look at this presumably this is some kind of door post look what else we've got Henry and Stuart what are you doing down here and I don't know if you know it but this ditch is standing in here might be the moat going round the building it seems to be defining something like a rectangular boat around the the buildings that you're up here and so what we've been doing is coring it to see whether ever had water in it whether it was a proper amount anything so far Henry oh yeah I've caught a few few areas it's consistent that it's over four meters deep and also the deposits in each places are the same and what is implying is basically that it's it's held water and that water has been flowing very very very slowly but the really interesting thing is what if you go up there and follow this ditch line down actually seems to be turning a corner if it does then it would have gone through whether lower-court is down there and the archaeology confirms that the ditch or moat runs right along the lower court and in front of Matt's wall I think the the main discovery since we were last here is this Worr wall here we returned coming off this one which is built into it as a part of the same structure yeah we don't have another side to it yet so it makes this may just be a guy I kind of pit here and then if you carry along the line you can see just in the corner there looks a little but just here yep coming back this way as well and that would fit possibly with of being a drawbridge here with a drawbridge pit underneath it oh right but the problem is that the it doesn't line up with this turret very well this says she's begun underneath the turret that's hard at the moment to think what else it might be despite match reticence this is a huge surprise a drawbridge means a much grander entrance to the castle than we ever imagined oh that's nice and the fines aren't too shabby either that's what we call Cistercian where it's made by monks no right it was cause the station workers it was first found in excavations of all the great Abbey's in Yorkshire oh you gotta call it's nicer than you don't bollocks something yeah it's a beautiful little thing very delicate little Cup just the rim coming around whether this under have like up to eight handles on them very peculiar little things Matt and fay have found some rather elegant carved stone work on the other side of the wall but it's thrown them into confusion this angle coming off in like Stanford yeah going down this that's one work stone there with the corner in it and it's coming out this way I'm just being happy I've been feeling up here animatic and let's plug it comes out further this way but the fact it doesn't line up properly listen to do you think do you think it could be a completely different structure something earlier yes that is a strong possibility of listening so the challenge will be to find out if the drawbridge belongs to an earlier building but as if we weren't busy enough right at the end of the day GF is come up with a new target I think we've come up trumps we've got this fireplace in the end of that building in the geophysics you can now actually see this wall line I think we've actually got a room that goes with that fireplace I think there's a wall line that comes along here and then look this strong response here is that another building on that platform there well that big blob could just be coal workings couldn't it well he could couldn't there what do you think well it's obvious isn't it's a big wall and it's rotten the edge of this really steep slope so could it be that the actual building range comes right up the end of the castle so this is the primitive wall could there be another towel so put a trench in tomorrow oh definitely first thing right through there coal miner Castle we'll know tomorrow we can even day two here at cotton the castle in Derbyshire nobody knows what this place originally looked like and it's our job to find out but first you've got a lovely little fine field ash little buckle fitting gorgeous little thing made it a copper and I've got a lovely decoration and some of us still have the decorative buckle fittings on our bond are bouts today a little surprise yeah where did it come from it came out of the ditch here hang about let's call that black stuff in the bottom which we got over there which we thought yesterday was evidence of coal workings that means that this ditch was filled up after that war was built and I don't understand that well well Phil does his trousers back up let's go have a look over at this trench which is also another puzzle because you see you've got this tower here and you've got a tower here and in the it's blocked up and presumably that originally would have been some kind of passageway but this wall here doesn't really align with it properly look if you have a look at this this thing here to align with that you'd need to shove it over about a metre or so yeah MIT's puzzlingly it's puffing in a good way isn't it I mean what we're wondering is whether this might actually be an earlier instance cow up with predates these two round towers and maybe that feature could be drawbridge pick so what's the plan today we've got two objective one is the pullback in this direction a short distance to try and see if we can get the matching splayed side you see over there Tony yeah yeah so hopefully that should come back here and that will prove conclusively how this relates to those yeah hours and secondly it's on a radar survey out over there and we think the moats about nine meters wide we're gonna do is excavate a trench for over up there nine meters us for that one two three four but to here no no that's that's very short meters you must have short legs right out here this is a hell of a distance isn't it that's a heck of a distance there maybe even there's a central stone pier and perhaps even with a second bridge or even like a stone causeway coming out there wouldn't that be great be wonderful to find they're not that short just above the drawbridge trench inside the round towers of the Gateway Richard has managed to find some dating evidence to help us work out the chronology of the castle what an amazing looking place and you know yesterday we were saying there's not much to date in the masonry here we've got something these tops these lentils are quite distinctive these are called shouldered lintels right and this is a kind of cantilever that block there I see hold a flat there right and they're also called Caernarfon arches because they first really come in when Edward the first is building the Welsh castles of Cunard no 12 ATS and they're used for about 50 years so that ties in really nicely with the documentary reference as well so we've got that first reference insertion air h which is bang in the middle of the theories yeah exactly right okay let's go look some more interestingly the building of the Gateway corresponds with a period of royal favour for them evil lights who lived here Henry the third is said to have kissed Richard to gray ingratitude because he and his brother were the only nobleman to sign up for an unpopular crusade and in 1294 Edward the first paid a royal visit to corner an event so momentous he could even have prompted a rebuild so the Gateway could have replaced the drawbridge that Neal now thinks was surrounded by at our measuring back 28 centimeters before it starts if we go back and measure a crop to prove it we need to find a similar chamfered edge on the other side stone lying at an angle is it Kemper is it uh-huh I think so look are you jammy thing have you got it Mac there it is you in either go start the a let's um let's do a quick check Mac you hold your type over the top of the chamfer and I'll make a hill let's go measure out the drawbridge pit a hundred and sixty centimeters if we go across to the other side and you just hold it on the edge there Matt yeah hang on there about that yes so I guess what it's showing is isn't it that we actually have a symmetrical but our and on either side of the drawbridge pit and I guess it kind of confirms that this is clearly unrelated to that yeah excellent so this is the earliest part the castle we've seen the date although we don't yet know the exact date of the drawbridge we know it was surrounded by a tower and crossed the moat running around the original castle on the upper Court around 1300 it was replaced by the Gateway that's still standing but the walls on the west and north of the Apple torte have disappeared Phil moves his team to the north of the castle to find out how much has been lost so that the wall should run through there he's looking for the wall and tower on the geophys which he hopes will be the other side of the room with the big fireplace on the end of the chamber block oh that's better there that is nice we have another little course in underneath you yeah there we go no that one is not over place look we ain't gonna hold it against the end for that so and then there's a yay yay yay yeah we're in the business nope oh hey look at Wade oh look at that oh yeah literacy foundation what the hell while Phil works out what he's found Rach char and Paul have pretty much finished up in the porters Lodge it's great when there's a little hill next to a trench because you can see the whole thing in plan like normally you never can yeah and there are some fascinating details emerging what's this war one can you see these holes right here are they joist to support floorboard you'd think that by spoke to our local friendly castle ologist and he tells me it's something called wainscotting it's where you put Timbers on the inside of a building it's very posh so it's high status it goes with the castle another fantastic thing is there's this very very tiny grey spread just here and that's our earliest occupation layer and we've also found two pieces of pottery in there or if you got a pool and we have this stuff comes from Stamford down in Lincolnshire huh let's stop making it about 11:50 you're kidding no really but that's ages before the first record of there being a castle yes that actually start making me render by the time the Norman Qwest so it could be that early in theory well that's a bit exciting there innit this date takes us at least as far back as 12:01 when Henri de Grey married is auld a norman heiress who brought into the family cod nor its part land and some money and it looks like we've found their home and the entrance might have been Neil's draw bridge over the moat that looks the neck as if you might have an intention dressed own face that's very similar the core of the structure we have over there look at that look at that mean that's hefty stones is here shall we measure the distance back to the front of the bridge abutment there yep so Neil gets his tape measure out again to find out how far the drawbridge would have to span to cross the moat that is seven point four meters okay and if we go I'll go back to where the radar picked up a big block of masonry which is about here what's that difference Matt that's thirteen point nine well seven and fourteen in round numbers yeah they may be with what we've got here is a central here yeah I think O'Brien was saying that the longest span you could have with wood is about eight meters so that would fit perfectly one span to this feeling exactly doesn't it and in the north in the upper court the line of stones feel found earlier looks like it could actually be the castles perimeter wall but it's a stack of mysterious semicircular stones that's confusing him edge all right come here I mean you don't know what it is either I mean yes it's semicircular come here he's supposed to be showing another seen look at that what are these things Oh appear base it's not just one thing thing no they're in layers look there there's one there I can even squeeze me trowel in amongst it and then there's another one in there there's pretty about inch inch nap thick and then there's another one there and a fourth one going on down and there's still going way way down and they're semicircular I loud in your trend yeah yeah what nor contentious a whole grief good grief that Center so I thought they they they do appear to have to Lin yeah broccoli made em think of two possibilities one is a kind of a demi column it's it's against the wall as they are now stack up or perhaps if the turn 90 degrees it could be coping so it's not that top of a wall and there is just a nice waterproofing thing to go over the top of it sheds the war yeah exactly I mean they don't seem to have been ever used because they're not been they've not been exposed to a lot of weathering yeah there are some of things on this site where it looks like things are planned or never finished or planned finished but then sort of scrap very soon afterwards while Phil gets to grips with the northern wall back at the drawbridge trench it looks like the pier that Neal thought was in the middle of the moat might actually be the other side of the moat the more this material goes back the more likely it is that this isn't the Pierre he's actually the solid abutment of the bridge spanning across the with a drawbridge period I definitely got where the anomaly is are we in no it's underneath my cab so we just got yeah we do just going to pull it back and see if we actually hit that really big anomaly and see how it relates to this material so this means there would have been a wooden bridge over the moat under attack the de grâce could have burnt this as a first line of defense then there was a drawbridge over the pit which would have raised on the pivot and if the intruders got this far they would probably have been a portcullis this elaborate defense seems to fit the image of the de grâce because these were soldiers who featured in every battle from a zinc or against the French back to the Scottish Wars and the Crusades and we're hoping to find some of their rooms alongside the missing west wall where phase digging yeah well I think you've got here is part of a plaster wall surface it's got this nice plain surface on one side I need to turn it over you can see the impressions the wooden laths that the plaster would have been attached to if you've got that what could this feature be this kind of semicircular feature coming in is that butter up against the wall yep looked very like maybe a circular staircase yes I was so hoping you're gonna say that that's fantastic over the last two days we've discovered so many bits of walls and windows and fines from different phases of the castle that my head's spinning it's time to take stock of what it all means well it kind of a bit of flesh in that picture we can get someplace we've got the earliest part of the standing structures of this posh and gate front here with a round towers now from the diagnostic evidence is quite clear that's around 1313 20 something like that and going on from that we know this wall here of the lower court because it butts against that tower it's going to be late and maybe 100 years later behind us the big chamber block here isn't as as modern as the brick fireplace limits because those brick fireplaces 1,500 say have been inserted into an existing fabric ah so that's probably around 1,400 as well so we've got those two basic medieval phases at least if this red is round about 1300 that ties in very nicely doesn't it with the first reference to a castle being on this side but what about the archaeology well we've got raksha's building here the sort of porters Lodge that pretty goes from that red phase they're in Phil's trench we've got another room of that building perhaps Evans the curtain wall and over here we're phase digging just like the Evans of a structure but what really excites me tell you actually Evans of earlier occupation inside the porters Lodge we've got some pottery that seems to take to the 12th century from the floor now that doesn't go with the red phase happy an earlier phase because we've got our much earlier gate tower that predates the round tales in that frontage so the archaeology is suggesting earlier structures before 1308 what kind of building like that be could it be another castle Castle fortified Manor or just look at that instance Tony now that's a monumental entrance it's got a drawbridge it suggests a major structure to thee definitely yeah the archaeologists were hoping that phase staircase might be part of this structure so that if that's the arc I mean it's much larger than a stairwell isn't it that's four meters conceivably if you project the line so with the light fading fast day to end with yet another puzzle we came here looking for a castle now we've got loads of castles and tomorrow we're going to get down into the moat to see if we can find evidence of one of the earliest phases and up here we're going to shift our attention to inside the castle to see if we can find the rooms where the degrees actually lived and all that's tomorrow beginning of day three here at cotton a castle in Derbyshire and we've got a drawbridge the first drawbridge we've ever dug on time team this hole here is the pit in front of which the drawbridge would have sat and you can imagine in the medieval period before that entrance was blocked up with stones the Knights in Armour charging through it and across the drawbridge except if you didn't imagine that you would be totally wrong because that part of the castle is much later than the drawbridge Neal how old is the drawbridge and how does it tie in with all the rest of the archaeology that's what I'm going to find out today Tony all we know is the castle experts tell us that those two towers date to the early 14th century so therefore this must be earlier in the 14th century so we got to get some dating evidence and what we're gonna dig into the moat so can you see where Matt's digging we got all this rubble from demolition of the tower we're gonna get through that to the bottom of the moat and get some dating evidence to go with that bridge as the rain sets in Neil and Matt is searching for the bottom of the moat between two stone prints the suggestion is that these could be garden features from the final phase of the castle you know what is that a bit of marble the marble cores no idea when you always wonder if I come from a statue or some deer from the garden yeah this dig has been so rich but it sometimes seems as if the castle has been bursting to tell its story and it's inspired Victor to create our answer to the Bayeux Tapestry following the fortunes of the de grâce during the 13th 14th and 15th centuries but the most colorful character of all was Henry de Grey who managed to survive fighting on both sides of the Wars of the Roses and was granted a license for alchemy oh so that's what we're seeing him doing here isn't it he's in his lab with with all his books and his pestle and mortar and his crucible yes and I guess this is in part going to be do with the extraction of mineral resources from his estates yes I suppose so because we tend to think of alchemy is all about turning base metals into gold and so on vote really it was it was just what we might call chemistry these days wasn't it the sad thing I guess is we come to his death in 1496 he's got through three wives he's had a number of illegitimate children but he leaves no heir behind so we have the end of the line so that's where his luck runs out after Henry died the land passed to the zhu xi's who created an industrial empire and Phil's uncovered some of the changes they made to the northern end of cotton a castle where he's found the perimeter wall and an explanation for the blobs on the GF is what we've got is this circular thing here but on the other side of the wall as well there's this other circular thing there not a tower but I think their garden features I mean it could tie in with this peculiar sort of toys chivalric landscape and we thought miniature turrets or something overlooking the landscape I mean what it means is is that at some stage this end of the castle went out of use they knock down that wall and they they then converted this area to Gardens yeah that's a little view mound you've got cracking views over the valley there from here yeah the castle in the landscape have clearly changed dramatically over the last millennium and Stuart thinks he knows how this is one of my more ridiculous moments on time team doing play school in the rain with Stuart presumably this is some kind of demonstration sand castles absolutely between the 12th and 16th centuries the D Grays built and rebuilt the castle but it was the zhu xi's who had the really big ideas at some stage I think this is the early 16th century we start to dig a small lake in this corner over here create a huge Bank on this side and then this ditch goes all the way down here and again all the material goes on the outside to create a big Terrace on the end they create sort of mound featured which is a Belvedere so it puts like a viewing platform to look over the landscape and they do the same at the other end and the whole thing is becoming a very grand fashionable garden and its style is all typical of the early 16th century now what I've been able to see is that these garden earthworks never fully finished it's almost finished but not quite why didn't they finish it you think they ran out of money or something I think what happened is it got so ground they simply almost bankrupted themselves doing it and so the castle felt a wreck and ruin losing both its north and west walls and fields now joined Fay on the west wall where her latest theory is that her feature is a turret Oh Fay if you know you've been telling me you add plaster in this rubber ear yes well I've actually got it on the wall there's the plaster there's the wall it's just a very very thin it's a very very thin veneer but look it's white it's a white plaster but you think about it if the if this small turret was plaster you'd have had you could have had gleaming white walls all the way around look at that no look I think that could well be a stone floor Helen's been searching for rooms and features in the castles ruins in an 18th century engraving by the Bucks and she thinks she's got a breakthrough this opening here is clearly the same as this one over here yes it was me and that makes this stub of wall the same as this one it's just we've only got half of it surviving and then moving on much much later I mean that's not the early 20th century a space and luckily we've got the opening us there so now I've got a photograph we can go back to the building and say this is definitely that opening there so that means that this thing this opening is probably a doorway yeah because of these joists holes here that's right it shows a definite a flaw in that position and although we now know that the chamber block is this part of the engraving where the door lead is a mystery but Helens on a roll she's managed to locate the wall in rack chars trench so that big tree there it's grown directly in this doorway which means that the wall is presumably that one is them yeah yes it must be I say it's all ties in there yeah so how much further do you reckon we've got bailiwick and probably another half maybe meter almost nil and Matt are finding it tough going as they dig into the moat to find the bottom of the drawbridge tower bottom of the moat almost there to yield its secrets with such a vast amount of material coming out of the moat it's important that we search the spoil heap thoroughly and this is why my hands shaking why not taking her gold coins gold hammer coin look at the hand come here look at look at that hold it still I'm afraid I can't believe you're still on two feet I only fell over then I'm just shaking you need to sit down okay yeah strong sweet see and it's a big one too given how soft gold is and how big this is it there is absolutely quite incredible okay let us all calm down for one moment what do we do with it what we do is we clean it up which is a pretty simple process because because gold doesn't corrode yeah so we we earn is in such fantastic condition we would we'll be able to get a good date off it where was it found just here in the spoil let's come out the bottom of the moat Daniel is that the ditch that's it's out its out of the ditch so is this is this a primary silt here is this something winged eyed yeah I mean it's afraid it's a great content because this has come out of the really thick silt at the bottom of the moat so let's really hope you know I sang to you earlier on me what is dating evidence of what date is that tower if that coin is coming out of the primary silt it's in a great position if not just a date though I mean don't forget that this is it's not just wonderful dating orders it is a gold coin it's going to be a very very high value it we've been talking recently about how the people are maybe not that rich and you know they're pouring all our money into the building they're very fairly really just let me bring you around here for one second look at all these people golfing around here have any of you ever found a large gold coin before as archaeologists this is a big one this is such a big one but not everyone's down tools to gaze at the gold oh there it is all stone me that is a gorgeous edge isn't it Phil and faier determined to find the other side of the turret does it cook look and actually look at that actually look that that's actually no surface on there ah what what a little gem right sure this is quite a busy day for you looking at fines isn't it yeah we've already found a gold coin now still gone yes listen this isn't a silver pendant on the back you can just make out that it says Rex scattering so it makes it a Scottish penny and so we look fit with these little stone pointed stars on the back it appears to be Alexander the third so what on earth is a Scottish penny doing lying around here well we know that the Grays were fighting with the English King off in Scotland in the early 14th century so they could possibly brought it back she made this look like she wonder what we're gonna find next with time running out Neil and mater desperate to get to the bottom of the moat in the drawbridge trench oh you have a look at this we've got a bit of pottery that's come out of the right at the very base of the ditch watching it will kind of date might that be oh well that looks proper medieval that's your kind of 13th 14th 13th 14th century we're getting there and we now know a little bit more about the other find from the moat you've been looking in books you've been on the computer you've been making frantic telephone calls what have you found out well it's a gold noble which is a the big gold coin of the of the periods he's a really high status thing and on the front it's got this complicated design you can see a king there and his head is kind of poking up through the through the sails he's holding a sword up pride and he's got a shield with the arms of England quartered with the arms of France standing in a ship it's exquisite little design actually doesn't mean anything it certainly does yes apparently it's symbolic of the power of the English Navy an amazingly early date when you might tend to think of the Navy is being Nelson's own but but this apparently refers to an incident at the beginning of the Hundred Years War in 1340 and then on the on the back you've got lots and lots of symbols of power your crowns and lions and fleur-de-lis and a big cross and right in the middle of the cross is the initial H and that little H gives you a clue as to who it is on the front it's Henry is there but which one there are lots of Henry's it is it's Henry the fifth actually that very short-lived King ah that's a zinc or isn't it once more into the breach and all that absolutely and what is really fantastic of course is that we've got that ashen core link one of the Lords to gray is on the ashen call muster roll and you can find out more about this on our web site over the last three days we found more than we bargained for and phase Westwall is no different okay so there's that kind of line up with thee just about it's pretty much in line with that lower court wall but the most impressive bit is this block of masonry which comes all the way around here and he's sweeping round like that so it's actually a round tower that's been stuck on to the curtain wall and and you can see look at the foundations they're going down and down and down it's massive this way its massive down that way inside our round tower we've got loads and loads of burning and originally we thought this was kitchen but the thing that really checked made us change our mind what was this feature over here which appears to be a fireplace you can actually see that it's later because got all those bricks in it just as lightning account for all this burning definitely don't quite understand Phil is it what you're saying is that the tower is added on to this wall I can see that's a very clear but joint isn't it but down there the towers are actually integral with the wall so how does that work well I think that front bit is the most important bit of a castle you don't want you to look like a bodge job much look at proper rebuild this is a side of it first not so important so you've got round tower added onto it Richard thinks that the tower was added to the west wall a roughly at the same time as the second gate house possibly fed with the second visit in 1322 and he's not done yet we've been looking for the most important rooms in the castle and just before the whistle blows he's found one of them now you know I've been blithely refer to this as a chamber plot yes relays I'm afraid of had a rethink oh yes I think we found the Great Hall oh my goodness because it's such a tall building I thought naturally it was of three storeys chamber above chamber above undercroft but when you start looking for the floor joists it's a pretty important you got a set a floor joist there yeah for the first law not above so you've just got this one huge room at first floor level and we even know when the door is oh yeah over there I don't believe it we've been staring at that door so hard that's a lot of the Bucks engraving inside and said call us that explains like such a vast great door doesn't it no this is more than we could have hoped for it's the 13th century first floor Great Hall where Henri de gray entertained King Edward the 1st and the date ties in with the romantic entrance of the drawbridge oh I'm done a lot of work in the moat area today and I think we've just about got a good story now excellent um we've exposed the front face of the tower yeah got a hole that's been crudely bashed through the wall mm-hmm it might be similar that's the dream for the broad rubbish behind it for what should be an accumulating the other hats are involved in this this had help to drain it back it into the ditch okay then at the very bottom the good news is up Matt's ready to expose the yellow natural clays and that is the bottom of the tower wall coming back we've got the moat mummies big you know it's six and a half meters wide and it's three meters deep further back up we see here now we've got the abutment on the other side of the moat you know really well built mortared wall and so coming up here you know you get a really good perspective of just how impressive back Tower is and goodness knows what you're standing seven eight foot high if just think none of that was visible yesterday so this is how Henri de gray and dissolved his wife would have entered their castle in the 13th century across the moat over a grand drawbridge passed the porters Lodge and into the Great Hall but in the early 14th century the castle was rebuilt with towers and turrets on the perimeter walls in the 15th century they extended into the lower court but it was the zhu xi's in the 16th century whose extravagant plans bankrupted the estate and left the castle a ruin we were all really anxious that Cardinal castle might have been almost completely mined away but we needn't have worried an earlier castle a moat and a drawbridge and a Great Hall and a tower all came to light and even the rather sad final phase of gardens that bankrupted a family certainly did us proud oh and of course we had one rather special find which I'm glad to say is going to end up in the local Museum in Derby now that's something you don't find every day and if you just caught the end of this amazing time team channel four plus one is about to show it again right now do stay with for though the laters Channel four News is next

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 691,372

Rating: 4.857409 out of 5

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

Id: K-M3yn0o4aE

Length: 48min 11sec (2891 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2013