Time Team S16-E02 The Hollow Way: Ulnaby, County Durham

this is a Limi haul farm in County Durham and we've been invited here to explore the village that surrounds it or rather mysteriously doesn't because at some point in time al-nabi village was deserted and almost completely vanished almost because this field contains the remains of the village in fact it's an absolute maze of mounds look at this photo you can see Homes Gardens streets absolutely acres of archaeology to dig so will this field give us a window into the world of the medieval peasant the life that you or I would have lived in the Middle Ages will that's our challenge to tell the story not just a one house or a chapel or the manor of the whole village ellaby hall farm lies near Darlington in County Durham today its 17th century farmhouse is surrounded by fields of grazing cattle and freezing archaeologists but it's what lies beneath those fields that's got Mick champing at the bit I don't think I've ever seen a filled with so many lumps in it it's absolutely fantastic in it I cut my teeth on sites like this so well-preserved there is one thing that worries me though this is a big field we've got three days it's a whole village how do we know what to target but we can pick certain bits of it that I think that'll answer certain questions like you know what's the origin of the village when did it first start here what'd it look like when it was flourishing and of course why did he disappear you should be able to learn all of that Stewart I think we're gonna need you to start us off great last time we read like that we're really lucky on this site because last year English heritage undertook a really detailed carefully measured survey of all the lumps and bumps on this site can you tell what this stuff is though cuz to me it just looks like a blokes facing needs a shave you'll see in all these lumps and books you can see patterns of things starting to emerge you can see straight lines down there you see regular divisions of things these are patterns that we can recognize so as far as you're concerned we don't really need to bother to dig in at all though I mean realistically the one thing we don't have is date is this all going to be about foundations I want to know about the people well the will be foundations because we can see the outlines of buildings when we note out at the back of the heresies we're going to get rubbish pits and dung heaps and stuff where we get pottery animal bone food remains and that's what'll tell us about the daily life of the villagers and usually for time team we seem to know a lot about the site before we've even started digging to Mick and Stuart's expertise these lumps are clearly the remains of collapsed walls and reveal a road a village green and individual house plots but what we don't have are any dates for the village or indeed any evidence of the people who lived in it so we're starting with two House plot Stewart's identified on the edge of the green and geophysical to see if we can pick up any rubbish pits or other signs of occupation and it doesn't take long before John thinks he's identified a house but that black you say is a building yes but not a stone building I don't think there's no indication of clear wall lines as such I think you may be looking at sort of mud walls or something that sort of order but you see the value of these geophysics they may not show very much but if we are dealing with mud walls and and clay walls at least it gives us an indication of what we're going to be looking for it's gonna be a lot more difficult to find than stone walls but I find this very very valuable information I'm sure you'll manage so the archaeologists take up residence digging our first trench bang on top of the building John's identified on the gfs and while they're searching for dating evidence in the ground we're also turning to a wealth of local documents for other clues serious reference we've got too lonely it's not exactly a reference but it's the place name that'd be why ending is a norse term for a farmstead so that name would have been coined probably at the end of the night for the early 10th century so does that mean we're looking at a Viking village well not necessarily I mean it could be but you know this name was coined for settlements somewhere in the vicinity but that doesn't necessarily mean to say that it it refers to the settlement we're digging so when do we know that it was established as a village well the first reference we've got is from 1198 when one William Greystoke was obliged to provide a knight or the equivalent amount of money and in service to the bishops of Durham in return for holding land at Connors cliff and it on the beach so does that mean that there was definitely a village here in the 12th century no it means that there was a manor here in the 12th century now whether or not this village well we can have to dig to find that out so back to the trench and Phil's hunt for the house which we think will be made of turf fur then again maybe not Matt I look at this and John promised me there'd be no stone in here so you've won your father's pounds already Wow eleven o'clock day one and it looks as though we might have our first archeological hint of a house but although we've barely scratched the surface of this target it seems Mick's already switched his attention to something else it's only about five minutes ago that we started putting in this trench but this being time team over here you can see the strings down there's people bouncing up and down trying to do some dieter f---ing it's the second trenches they did indeed why and why so close to that one well when you look at these plans there are almost certainly different phases of development to the village here what are you in different phases well if you go in a village today you'll have you know Georgian houses in one place - there's another place you know the place was developed gradually it's developed over a period this is almost certainly the same from the look of the earthworks we think that area over there might be earlier so that's where that trench has gone in and we think this is part of a row of farms so you think this might be later at the moment I think I'd put a cheap bottle of wine on it yeah you chuck your money about before Mick starts getting the drinks in we've got a lot more digging to do and our second trench has gone in over another possible house platform Mick and Stuart think that this second house is later than Phil's house their theory being Phil's digging a possible house which forms part of this plot they believe that his is the earliest dwelling in the village they think this because it's cut through by a bank which forms the front boundary of the second plot they're incredibly confident about their interpretation of these lumps and bumps personally I'd err on the side of caution until we get some dates but mixing a pretty persuasive mood it's so regularly layered I think it must be planned so who would have planned it well probably the lord of the manor at the time so would there have been a model some kind of template that have worked from well if i draw a little sketch look if you take that earthwork plan we've got a big rectangular open space in the middle which is the village green that is the space between a couple of rows of plots which where the medieval farmers had their farm stands each of those who have had a farmhouse on it I've only drawn one building on because most at the time that a village like this was occupied everything took place in one building so you go through the door and if you're human you turn left if you're not you turn right into the the cattle in yeah I mean that combined their diet must mean that it was an extremely smelly place to live in it may have been smelly in the medieval period but there's a whiff of excitement on site right now as Phil's trench is full of surprises god I was good Phil ah you've got lots of stuff there Abbot don't be mislead gone those are not stone I'll go on no they know who told you that what John did he said whatever you do when you dig here you are not throwing stones this should be the acid test now you know what I saw a stone saying nothing so yeah no there that's not a stuff not a stone is it that's soft archaeology Phil there oh that's why Stuart said everything was going to be totally clay like an earthen now do you really want to know what's there yes well this looks like a stone wall there I understand yeah so not exactly what Stewart predicted from the earthwork survey but I've got to admit it looks like we might have our first hint of a house on this side over in trench - it seems that the archaeology is equally well preserved and we're also beginning to find walls but we're going to need more than a few stones to reveal alibies story and the lives of its peasants all the archaeologists are talking about our foundations and building platforms but there's no sign of any villagers are you having the same problem with the documents well yeah I mean most of the documents refer to the Lord and and his properties and but this one's a little bit more interesting this is a will from 1320 of Marmaduke fits John he lists the produce that owed by the peasants to the Lord and this includes a wheat and oats and barley and they also have to provide tables and chests and and pails and so on and so forth so gives us an insight into what the peasants would be doing during their daily lives and how to render to the Lord like picking out snippets of information from our documents we're beginning to glimpse the agricultural lifestyle of a medieval peasants but we really need solid evidence in the ground to tell the story of al-nabi and its villagers and having left the archaeologists alone in the cold for one minute they've begun to open a third trench yet another trench we've gone this is crazy today this you're doing might have something to do it yes why why are we putting a trench in here well you see these regular divisions of things along here they have a certain space element to the right with a house and a garden around it effectively what's interesting here is that one of these regular divisions appears to be subdivided and what we've got is a building right on the end of it so is this one of the last cottages in this medieval village that's what we want to examine here John GF is is a bit redundant this time it's not it we've actually surveyed this magnetically now and we're getting some really nice results we're getting lots of strong anomalies they reflect the building's the yards there's a burning rubbish pits and so and Stewart talked about this rectangular building it's difficult to see on this plot because I've only just produced it but look there's very strong anomalies there and they're right at this end of the building it's just possible we've either got a large pit there or maybe a fireplace so trench three is going in here because Stuart thinks the subdivision of this plot suggests even later occupation the archaeologists now hope that trench one should give us the beginning of the village trench to the middle and trench three it's end I'm still amazed by their confidence since we've hardly found any dating evidence at all yet in trench - we've added a floor surface to the wall bridge exposed but at the moment the finds are a bit thin on the ground we have got two little pieces here with the very shiny Brown glaze which are definitely in our 18th century or later quite - people of what you'd find in the topsoil anything around the site mixed up yep over in trench one film might have saved the day with a curious object he thinks belonged to one of our villagers it's a piece of work bone oh you see along here you see this edge here is really really sharp it's a snap tag yeah but if you look at this you can see that both sides are actually tapering up mmm it sort of like on a heart shape and when you look around here you see all these edges here are totally smooth off that is a deliberate shape into that piece of bone but looking at it I can't help it feeling sort of you want to sort of like taper a little handle look out like a little spoon but unquestionably this is the sort of tomb a everyday item I think everybody would have had so at last a real possession from a real medieval peasant but before we get too excited Stuart now thinks there's much more to this site than we first thought and this trackway is the key this is clearly an old road this hollow row so you can see when this is clearly a well-developed Holloway it's been used over a long period of time yeah sort of heads towards that plowed field over there yeah and it's not a cul-de-sac clear this depth of roadway and it's just possible we have properties coming along this roadway and disappeared into that field so nearly the end of day one and our site might just have doubled in size if that Road continued into the next field it's likely the village did as well but we'll have to worry about that tomorrow and apart from geophysical we're keeping focused on the lumps and bumps in this field in our newly open trench three we're already starting to uncover some fairly solid stonework but it's too soon to tell whether it formed some part of a building but entrenched too it looks like bridges house is shaping up nicely that's a nice looking wall you might think so Tony but actually what I think you're looking at is something like a revetment why would you put a revetment here well revetment would be used to protect the building that I'm standing in here you've got a fairly flimsy building made of timber here you may want to keep it safe if this is particularly damned so let's make a nice strong superstructure and keep your house safe but you're assuming that there is a property here well definitely I'm sure there's a property here because if you look behind me just down here you can see these big stones cool they're great yeah I mean it looks like flag flooring inside and he finds yeah there is it's a really nice piece of piercing the century pottery it's a rim and it's from a large are really really nice diagnostic piece so in the last hour of the day we've got some real archaeology that dates the village back to the 1200 it's been a really busy day we've put in three trenches as you can see we're just getting down on top of the medieval village but of course we don't know how it all links together yet and there's no reason to assume that the village stops at that fence line so tomorrow we're going to go down this little road what's known as the hollow way to see what's on the other side killing a day - here on the B Hall farm in County Durham where we're investigating the lost medieval village which were pretty sure lies underneath this field yesterday we put in a trench here because Stewart reckons that this earth work represents one of the earliest buildings on the site although he didn't think that it was made of stone phil was he right I think he's wrong on both cares actually firstly we've got no evidence of a building here at the moment and secondly we do have stone now that stone I think is a much later wall probably just a spread of material but the crucial thing is we've got no evidence of a building at all true we've got a few bits of medieval pottery but we're in the middle of a medieval village you'd expect that so what we're gonna have to do is going to be a bit more brutal we're gonna take the digger to it and go down Stuart's been walking these hills for 40 years he knows them at the back of his hand it's gonna be great telling moving on yeah first time for everything not the most encouraging start of the day but when the archaeology gets tough the archaeologists get tougher so Phil gets stuck in with the big digger to shift the dirt and see whether there's any evidence of occupation in his trench so far we've opened three trenches based on Stuart's interpretation of all the lumps and bumps in the field although Phil's struggling to find anything in his trench we still think it's located on the site of an early house platform we think British trench is located on a later house and the Third's on one of the last houses in the village if we're right we're hoping to reveal the history of the village from beginning to end it's a big challenge especially in this biting cold and it might get even bigger since we think the road extended into the next field on the village continued with it although the fields been heavily plowed geophys should reveal whether or not it did I can't actually see on the geophysics I suspect it must have been plowed out I mean there's no doubt that it came through yes field can you see anything that's all that we want to dig a hole in with the machine or to be honest no I mean compare the results from here yes it's full of sort of burnt features rubbish pits and so on within the village yeah once you move beyond that field boundary no evidence of settlement as far as I'm concerned okay well it's there that's so well preserved we've got enough work in there let's not do anything in here on the basis that geophysics doesn't show anything and concentrating the main field yeah for once I'm quite relieved there's nothing here we now know the full extent of the village and can concentrate our efforts on the lumps and bumps and in trench 3 we're beginning to uncover some pretty large chunks of masonry possibly another medieval house but Stuart's still doesn't think we've tackled the whole village yet this hollow way that runs through here that we're standing in if you look on the other side there's lots of earthworks on that side as well this this area highlighted in pink there's a whole series of little strips down here with what appeared to be some buildings inside them it's very higgledy-piggledy and very different this very organised stuff up here it doesn't look as regular the earthworks aren't as good and there's obviously got to be some reason for that it's not not like that and that's one reason for doing the trench yeah I'm not madly confident given your track record so far you need clarify that your map yeah can you see that trench through them yeah and that was the one where you said there would be a building platform and no stone there's no building platform and lots of stone right so giving Stuart the benefit of the doubt for the moment we're opening a fourth trench to see what's going on to the south of the road the house platforms on this side seem to be less regular than the others and we're hoping our trench will reveal how they fit in with the rest of the village and shock horror over in our first trench Phil might actually have found some archaeology whoa I think I should be like cold stuff again I think we got a bit of a feature here while this might be our first hint of that elusive early house over in British trench we're uncovering a whole floor plan let me have the back of the this building shaping up well it's coming along quite nicely Bridget um as you can see we've got these three quite large stones in what centre these ones just in front of me here and it it's kind of occurred to me that in the face well it does I was just thinking the same thing that they all are absolutely in a straight line there and that is parallel with the stones that I've got up there that are marking where the front wall of building would have been anyway so we might have both the front and back walls of the house and they're not the only walls appearing on the side I can almost see a line - yeah and this they seem to be phased it looks like we've uncovered two of the houses in the village and what's more raksha's also got some signs of occupation in hers we've actually found quite a lot of slag from them you know metalworking this is the waste part of the metal yeah so this is what's giving the geophysics signal oh yeah so the question is you know is there some kind of furnace here is there any you know suggestion of you know industrial activity so that's really quite exciting you might have a medieval building and some medieval industrial activity that'll be that'll be really interesting until now we've mainly found rubble and stone that the slag might be our first hint of what the villagers were actually doing in medieval Abbey which would be great because so far the archaeology is not given much away about the lives of the villagers but we do have a document which might help us the lateral sorter the 14th century Salter was commissioned by a Lincolnshire Lord Sir Geoffrey lateral while primarily a book of Psalms his illustrations paint a vivid picture of medieval peasant life not only as Sir Geoffrey had himself and his family depicted but all those who worked his land including the peasants who worked his fields for him you kick off with the ploughman and then we go to the cellar and seed and here we've got reaping it's all work dawned anemone full well known it was hard work but there are some fantastic images in the in the national sultan of our participation in games and engaging in sporting endeavors and his it's a fantastic one this man here is his friends are holding a pole knees either limbo dancing underneath it or it's some sort of weightlifting penitential that he's engaged and here you've got the age-old pursuit of foot wrestling and here you can see how your potsherds got broken when you see those in the trench you don't actually think of how they might have been broken do you and here for example a naked blue man sitting on a pole holding a pig's bladder was a balloon good old-fashioned entertainment not what could you want back at the site Phil could do with some entertainment because he's dug himself into a cold dark hole when should we get back here there's absolutely in a way of archeology there's no Paul phil's feature seems to have mysteriously disappeared it's equally bleak in our fourth trench when Matt's uncovered something but not what we expected Matt you got I've got something that sir you might be a bit disappointed in our perhaps them tobacco pipes Tim yeah so that's not medieval is it can't possibly be no well the height doesn't it doesn't really hope to home too many implications for this building Matt's finding 17th century pipe here not exactly fitting in with a picture of medieval al-nabi we're building up on the rest of the side what's more in Phil's trench we're now fairly positive there's absolutely nothing there which isn't what I was promised yesterday I don't understand what's going on it's kind of fun that Stuart's theory has been shot out of the water but on the other hand I can see there is a sulking great earth work here there are other great big earthworks all around it some what's going on perhaps the buildings and structures that went with those were far more ephemeral built of timber or something like that and and we just don't see the me in sections in a trench like this oh come on Meg I mean if there have been post those here I'd have seen him if there'd have been beam slots here I'd have been seen them when we when we machine up if there have been stone foundations I would have seen them look I'm not disputing that these earthworks here well I'm doubtful about is the interpretation of those wrong and what else could they be well it could be hedgerows to property boundaries they don't have to be buildings well at least one things becoming very clear archaeology is all about the interpretation with some considered calm debate thrown in I mean I agree with you that's what the earth looks look top it all we dig a hole in it there's nothing there today you're interpreting that as a building yeah what we've got here you can see them they've high bits and these low bits we thought we'd put a trench here we thought it might be a structure here of some kind there might be a structure of some kind look that yeah all right if there wasn't a structure there can you tell me why you asked me to French on High Park where is it with everywhere else on the site when we've been looking for buildings we've been digging up the holes in the lower parts in the innovation garden but the hollows who divine but defined by higher parts that define the surrounding in a hole I hate to take sides but at the moment I put it as field archaeologists one landscape investigators nil sometimes the landscape can be a lonely place but entrenched three we've discovered the walls which Stuart had predicted in the earthworks and he's confident he can level up the scores oh it's interesting right sure I don't know it's suddenly emerging we've got this wall running along the trench but I haven't got a clue where we are in the building all right I've got ya this is great cuz what you're on the gable end wall of a medieval longhouse that goes up that way ah its foot let me show you that's the inside that's that's outside there runs along here and then it turns around where this Bank comes along up here and back right the way down I'm getting too old for this right the right the way down it's a classic some medieval longhouse so Stuart's back on course with his medieval longhouse and having studied the earthworks he also thinks this was one of the last houses to be built in the village on the other side of the site we've been trying to discover all of his origins and although there was no sign of an early house in Phil's trench he's determined to keep searching this time in a hollow bridge and raksha's buildings were found in hollows so he's hoping to have more success but to tell the whole story of our lobby we now really need dates and fines not just foundations and in British trench we might finally have got some where it looks like a knife blade why do you say that well you see the side here this looks like a blade yeah from here and then it comes up in this angle and that's called the tang and that's where the handle would have been fitted and probably made of wood because it no longer exists I know you haven't had a chance to clean it up yet but any kind of date well given that it's got a slight curving nature to it can you see that yeah yeah well that's very typical of medieval knives but I think the most interesting thing is is its position of where it's been found what do you mean on top of those flags absolutely why is that significant well in amongst it with a lot of pottery that it's all been dated of 13th 14th centuries this is a really good occupation layer it really is evidence of those last people that lived in this building not only a great personal find but we've now got a solid date for when this house went out of use it's only one building but one of the main goals on this site is trying to find out when and why this village was deserted and if this happened in the 14th century its demise fits in perfectly with one of the most catastrophic events in British history most deserted medieval villages were because of the Black Death Worm well that's what we tend to think you marry I mean what's the great catastrophe in the Middle Ages 13:48 30 forging on the Black Death arise kills between the 3rd and a half of the population so when people found deserted village so I thought oh that must be the reason but actually there are very few of the you'll actually depopulated by the Black Death people that are less we've got a Corleone living in very few we just cleared out guys so why did so many medieval villages perhaps the other big reason is a change of farming particularly in the fifties and 16th centuries where we hear for example if people believe it T in villages when landlords of turning the village over from an arable farming estate growing Lots crops its needs a big labor force to going over to sheep and cattle we will need with a couple of stock we know a couple of shepherds so you get me the rest of loschen before we can really speculate what caused all of his desertion we've got to find dating evidence across the whole site not just one house so nearly the end of day two and everyone's digging like mad over in Matt's trench we're now beginning to expose walls and a gravel floor surface what's more he's got some dating evidence for it thanks for it luck ha please okay well very well be 14th century here yeah all right so yet another medieval date for the village and over in Phil's second trench even he might have some archaeology I get no Phil cars a lot more promising and I worst trance you out me and we got all these stone here look it's far more looks like building material to me there's that sort of chalking water Easter look fines coming up this is a lot more promising with real archaeology inside Phil's a happy man again but as the archaeology takes a turn for the better the weather's taken a turn for the worse as all the trenches become mud baths it's time to call it a day tough old day today did we achieve much oh my goodness of course we did I mean we're now into buildings in various parts of the village we've got walls we got floors we're actually getting some dating evidence that's a crucial thing what about in your trench - ah well you know didn't have a very good start with my first read there was a bit of a red air in but now in this new one that's really good solid archaeology and I'm sure that's going to come up with some great answers - and tomorrow we're gonna be trying to get the very earliest origins of the village aren't we but in the meantime what could be nicer of an evening than going down the tavern and indulging in a bit of medieval foot wrestling so seconds out round one welcome back to County Durham it's day 3 in our quest for the lost medieval village of uh lovey and yesterday was a really frustrating day it was tantalizing the weather was absolutely dreadful but although we may not yet have found the origins of the village in this trench here it looks like we may be finding the middle and the end of our story what is it that we've got Matt Oh down that into the trend you can see we've got the edge of the hollow way the stony track there that's quite late we had a bit of tobacco pipe off there so 17th century onwards you go up towards the front wall of the building it's the same story tobacco pipe everywhere modern glass as well so 18th century onward 17th century and then he's go into the house the gravel floor even more tobacco partly obviously smoking lows however underneath that gravel surface that's where we're getting the earlier pottery we're getting green glazed pottery so 13 14th century and it's the same out the back as well over the back wall a couple of bits of green glazed pottery apart from the fact they were smoking like kippers we don't seem to know very much about what the people who lived here with doing well that's what I'm putting my hopes out the back of the house because I'm out there we had this early pottery and you know they would have cleaned out their house it's chopped to a rubbish out the back hopefully we get down and there we might find rubbish pits and middens and stuff which will tell us a bit more about what they were actually doing finally we're not only getting individual dates for the village we're starting to chart its development we've got a 17th century house built on top of earlier 14th century occupation which is the same date as the house found in bridges trench with only a day to go we really need to start piecing together all the evidence we've got from across the site so we're collecting together all the pottery by comparing the date range we're hoping to chart the story of the whole village but there's still a load to do since we haven't reached the bottom of the trenches yet yesterday Phil opened a second trench hoping to find evidence of the villages origins after his first trench proved so disastrous we've now found a cobbled surface but we think it's just a cattle yard so stewards dragged a reluctant Phil back to his first trench where he's convinced he can actually see a posthole as far as he's concerned solid evidence of an early house what is all this stuff if it isn't something somebody's stuck in the ground along the edge of an earthwork platform within a pause anyone I tell you what if you had a big stone like that and you hooked it out with a plow and it filled up with dirty soil you get exactly something like that well I think it's too much of a coincidence on the edge of this platform on this platform and you've got evidence of timber structures in the ground I'm not so you haven't got two infrastructures you might have one postal despite his protests I can tell Phil's intrigued and he's decided to extend the trench to see if there are any further post holes running along the bank and almost immediately he's into archeology bone well-preserved we've been finding animal bones among the medieval pottery all over the site and they're revealing quite a lot about our medieval peasants we can tell that they were butchering eating and cooking these animals for example this bone here it's quite dark black and we can tell that's been burnt and another really nice piece is part of a cattle vertebrae and we can see a nice clean butchery mark here so you can imagine a knife just going straight through it and these the kind of animals you'd have expected us to find yeah pretty much if we think about Sir Geoffrey lateral and his Salter we know from his estate in Yorkshire that when it was surveyed they had for example 10 horses 13 oxen for pulling flowers etc 8 cattle and 3 sheep and that they owed the Lord 64 chickens worth a penny each at Christmas the animal bones and the lateral Salter paint a vivid picture of the agricultural lives of our 14th century peasants and despite this being a modern farm we've also got evidence of medieval ploughing perfectly preserved in rows of Ridge and furrow in the surrounding fields Mick's keen to experience how they work these fields and he's called in experimental archaeologists to find out Wow look at this thingy and you haven't seen this in one of your files no no not for a long time that's brilliant daddy's well this is closer representation as we could have actually got to the plough that was illustrated in the lateral Salter this is so it's a replica of a 14th century medieval plant that's right fantastic it's very very similar to a modern player works very much in the same sort of way but the the vertical cutting blade the Coulter yeah and behind it we've got the share and that cuts on the horizontal so that's cut in that way and that's cutting that way that's right right and that pushes the soil cuts the soil and as the plow comes forward this component the moldboard turns the earth over to form the ridge right so do you think these things could have created the reason for these plough ridges that we see in the for Zen I think it's quite possible they could have done it's the continual use of the same pattern of land ploughed and ploughed and plow it again following the same furrows along and creating those ridges okay I'm ready when you are Pete right together let's if you'd like to learn more about the lives of medieval peasants log on to the time team website as we attempt to understand more about medieval plowing and put our replicas medieval plow to the test it's now middle of day 3 and the site's become a hive of activity over in British trench she's found a coin some great Peterson oh wow I can't read the date but if you look at this actually see around the outside of it you can see some mission coming up it actually dates from the reign of Edward the first in the 14th century and fits in perfectly with the 14th century pottery and knife that bridge found earlier mats perseverance has also paid off and he's uncovered a medieval quern stone reused in his 17th century wall was this should be slightly concave smooth surfaces on the underside that's right this would have been used to grind the cereal which the villagers harvested the while individual fines are great they only give us tiny snapshots of the village having collected together all the pottery from across the site we now think we can build up a complete story bridge what strikes me is the enormous amount of green stuff we've got here well there is there is a huge amount of lead glazed we're here fairly local pottery the important thing is and it's been found in all the trenches to date and it's dated to about the late 13th 14th century it really seems as though this community was here at its zenith in that time yeah because we've got 13th and 14th ear all along here all down here here here it's the vast majority the pottery we found isn't it that's it I mean and in Matt's trench and Rex's Trenchard my trench that's what is coming out that's what the hell's are seen to be - but in Ranchester trench we've got much more modern stuff the post-medieval that's right it does seem that in about you know the sixteenth seventeenth century there's there's a redevelopment of the community here so we can now date all the houses in our trenches back to the 14th century placing the village smack bang in the medieval period but we've been calling this a deserted medieval village and so it should end in the medieval period before the end of the 15th century but our finds suggest it continued for at least another 300 years on what's more the documents seem to confirm this later occupation in the middle of the 14th century amna became into the hands of the neville family now they're a leading and owning family in this part of the country they've got many manors and castles spread across the north and they held on to only be until 1570 when only B was confiscated from the head of the family Charles Earl of Westmorland for his role in the failed rising of the north on behalf of Mary Queen of Scots against Queen Elizabeth various of the villagers were involved in that rising and I've got a document from 1570 which lists the villagers who were pardoned for their participation in that not rising do we have any gnomes absolutely we've got people like John Aaron and cotton a John Byrne William Dowd wait for his members of the worthy family what days is this this is 1570 and the other thing of course that's interesting about it is it means there are quite a few people living here in 1570 so this is not a deserted medieval village so if al Libi didn't end in the medieval period when and why did the village disappear the black death could have decimated the village in the 14th century but it certainly didn't kill it off and the villagers obviously weren't evicted in the 15th century while the archaeologists ponder this conundrum at least our plowing experiment has produced some positive results oh wow that looks better they only made some improvements have you we've made a few adjustments Rick yeah well I can see it's just gliding through smooth air but we have encountered other problems arise the moldboard on the side yeah what's been happening is that the soil has been hitting this central part here right and it's been moving over to both sides around the plough well whereas what we want is for it to all kick up on to the right-hand side off the moldboard so if we can move that further forward that might that might just do that so it looks as if whoever drew the little picture on the little Salter knew about ploughs but they probably want to play them and they haven't got it quite accurate that seems to be exactly the case our intention was to try and recreate yeah the plough exactly as the picture was dit so this has worked up to a point yeah it's only very small little alterations that we need to make to make a much more efficient plough although it needs a few adjustments our replica plough has brought us much closer to the daily lives of our medieval peasants and it seems to be quite a cold miserable existence probably one our archaeologists can identify with and the coldest loneliest trench has to be Phil's we're hours of digging is revealed virtually nothing still screener we're now felt yeah no more post old sister what what's this then Phil coming this line of stones down here on that alignment well yeah that is a lonely stones I don't know what they are well it's interesting sits following that the line again of this earthwork Bank yeah but this extension was put in to chase this line of postholes which is told me over there but I can assure you there are no more post oh oh you got the alien got you into your traineeship and this is on the same alignment the post all there is is that cider in it so this might be part of something coming this weekend keeps crossing you yeah the IT teams strategy you keep changing your mind this must be one of the most frustrating trenches we've ever had on time team first a feature then no feature we get finds and then nothing but even without a date or any archaeology in the ground steward sticking to his guns convinced that these lumps and bumps are the remains of a house plot and that somewhere within it is one of the earliest buildings in the village while we've run out of time to test his theory we've had far more success in bridges trench and we've positively dated a 14th century building you sent me your house I will do we're now going into the backyard see those stones there we've been assuming that that's the wall of the back wall of the house but it seems that it's actually a post paired so you have had great big posts coming up either side of the entrance I love these flag stones they're beautiful out there and they're generally positioned in the center of the house so this is where you would have performed your essential domestic duties where you have had your hearth and things like that but over here well on the you can see the end of the flagstones and this is where we would have had a timber a timber wall coming up here this is the back wall that's the back wall and on this side of it you've still got that revetment wall acting as a boundary and input to your property these foundations were once part of a 30-foot wooden longhouse which would have been covered with a thatched roof it wasn't the last house to be built or lived in in elderly because in both Matt and rakshasas trenches we found evidence of people living here right up to the 17th century and what's more rad chars discovered not one but two houses the wall seems to be sitting on top of this yellow clay layer down in the corner there yeah it's actually running underneath this wall now anything on the other side of that wall should be the exterior right but it all seems to be the same layer it looks like a floor surface and we might have a possibility of a post hole in the corner yeah I can see that so was there an earlier timber phase here and then somebody not that done then built the stone building well that's very interesting because the earthwork plan suggests that there's been bigger plot subdividing later on on here and he looks if you've got the archaeological evidence for that so we've got to building phases in Rachel's trench a timber structure very much like the house in bridges trench then a later 14th century stone long house built on top of it we know from the pottery that it was occupied for the next 300 years but was that the end of our lobby village the last time I can pick up any real evidence for a village being here is in the early 17th century it was in 1629 only B was passed to Frances and Stephen Thompson and gentlemen really much about them but this document does tell us about their estate and ullman be consisted of five messages that size walleston slices three cottages five barns three gardens 100 acres of arable hundred acres of meadow and 200 acres of pasture so it's still a it's still a viable Williams thing you know if you've got a hundred acres of arable you've got our labor force to work it it sounds like one of these gradual slow wines down as people clear off the older people die off and eventually just dies on its feet so after three challenging days I think we finally cracked the story of medieval al-nabi and its villagers while we haven't tied down a date for its origins we've discovered the village was well established by the 14th century it then flourished for at least 400 years surviving upheavals like the Black Death until its gradual decline in the 17th century and for the next 400 years until now a few documents the farmhouse and this lumpy field were the only clues that the village of al-libi ever existed at all what's life really like on the wards some candid admissions in dispatches confessions of a nurse tomorrow night at 8:00 on fork back to tonight in Heston Blumenthal is serving up pig chicken lamb and the back end of a goose and exploding the whole thing as he brings us this Tudor feast at 7:00

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 398,773

Rating: 4.8824115 out of 5

Keywords: time team full episodes, Season, Time, Team, Full, Episodes, Timeteam, Archaeological, Sites, Serie, argeologie, archaeological

Id: Iq6vjmtsJ28

Length: 48min 8sec (2888 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2013