Time Team S20-E06 Lost Mines of Lakeland

these are the once Mighty coniston copper works one of the deepest and most extensive copper mines in England some of these shafts were started 400 years ago in the time of Queen Elizabeth the 1 history tells us that a brave band of Tuda miners lived and died here to extract the Earth's precious metal nobody really knows what this place looked like back then in fact archaeologists hardly know anything about Elizabeth and mines at all so we've come here to look for the origins of Queen Elizabeth's mind and to unearth the story of the men and women whose Blood Sweat and Tears helped build modern Britain it's a quest which will take us higher and deeper than we've ever dug before [Music] for battling some of the most extreme conditions we faced in 20 years of time [Music] team time team is in the Lake District our destination the mountains of coniston and their copper mines bump coming up we're about to embark on one of the most physically demanding digs we ever attempted in the wetest summer for a 100 years look at that drop down there yeah I'd rather not think the drop gives me the whe that do in charge is site director Francis prior and his right- hand man Phil Harding a veteran of over 200 time team digs and they're willing to Brave the mountain because we're here to investigate a Tuda copper mine something few have ever dug before I was thinking you know if you were a chewter miner you had to get up here even before you started a day work imagine doing this with horses pH this is as rough a road as I've ever been on I think it is yeah yeah it's unbelievable yeah you haven't been a wilcher yeah they think about doing up the a303 lately you know but oh are we nearly there yet sorry Phil there's still a long way to go we're heading to a rocky outcrop almost 1 and a/ 12,000 ft above sea level to a huge opencast mine on the slopes of coniston old man it sits overlooking a small mountain lake called lever's water which acts as a reservoir for the village below right you ready to go guys y see you later oh still raining but heavy rain over night has turned the reservoir's gentle wear into a torrential waterfall so we got to get carair now then yeah hold on to the Rope a got me well so we've rigged up a wire to help us get the kit and a team of 40 archaeologists cavers and cameramen across there's a real kick to this River you feel as they could been be pushed right over there if you're not careful and we're not there yet almost 2 hours later and everyone's made it there are nearly two dozen abandoned mines scatter Ed across these [Music] mountains it's possible that people have been digging for copper here for thousands of years but the first known commercial operation started during the late 1500s later generations of mining were thought to have obliterated most of the early Tuda structures that went with it such as workshops scaffolding and water powerered machines but a few years ago the Lake District National Park Authority asked for a detailed survey around one mine in particular and it appeared to reveal a tantalizing glimpse into life 400 years ago so we dig half and we leave half and we come out to there beautiful yep hey Francis it's fantastic view or at least it would be if the cloud lifted what are these things I just passed another one on the other side there well these are sort of key mystery up here um we think they may be miners Huts they could be for living they could be for storing tools we honestly don't know but what they often have are one of these funny alcoves on the outside which this thing here yeah exactly now that that seems to be part of the dressing process of the ore actually preparing it so I'm hoping that Phil will actually be able to show us that this was Elizabethan our two building builds sit on top of a rocky outcrop just a few meters away from a massive copper mine which we know was being worked in the late 1500s our first challenge is to find out when they were built so we start by opening a trench inside both our second task is to work out what the buildings were used for there are a lot of unusual Stones around here and we think they might have been used in the buildings to process raw copper when the bright green mineral from the mine was broken up into smaller pieces by hand or crushed it looks like a lumper rock but it's got this dip in it here this was used for grinding ore up with a bit like we're using kitchens today we have a mortal and PES ofer grinding food in these conditions we're only going to get a few hours digging and everything has to be done by hand got it and as the morning wears on a thick Cloud descends across the mountain believe it or not there's actually a huge Lake down there but we've hardly seen a glimmer of it all day the cloud keeps coming in starting to disappear coming in again uh it's practically lunchtime well it is lunchtime actually but Phil's only been able to to clear this much of turf what do you think you've got Phil well well I'm very very optimistic about what we can see here because you can actually see that the surface that we're standing on the the inside if you like of the building if that's what it is is actually higher than the land surface around it the reason is that the building is full up with this very small dressing debris now that is good from my point of view because it means that this stuff has been brought in and there is an increased likelihood the objects which will date all this activity have also been brought in you know what I'm starting to think about already half of our people have gone down to lunch we're going to have to go down pretty soon if we're going to have anything we've hardly done any archaeology at all the weather is Dreadful the stones are really hard to shift are we going to be able to do the amount of archaeology we need to do I don't think we'll be able to do as much archaeology as we normally do in other words I don't think we'll get as many trenches or big trenches but I think nevertheless we will do good archaeology that you're all right I know I'm right yeah you always know you're right copper mining as an industry was virtually non-existent in England until Tuda times but in 1564 a small enterprising operation was set up in nearby kzk followed 30 Years Later by the one in coniston we've set up camp inside the local mountaineering Club where I catch up with historian Susie lip 8 that great warship and the merry rose that went down went down with bronze cannons on it when this document was drawn up which was 1564 it wasn't really a great time of threat but by the time they came to dig in coniston actually which is sort of the late part of the 16th century of course you've had the Spanish armado so Elizabeth needed all the Weaponry that she could get and what she needed above all was not to depend on Foreign imports but to depend on her own lands [Music] so by 1599 150 miners had arrived here in coniston most of them skilled Germans from what is today the Austrian tyol we think that the big mine they started is too dangerous to dig but we do want to have a look at it so we've brought in some experts of Our Own the local caving Society who by chance have come across our first find it is actually pretty dangerous doing archaeology down a place like this isn't it it is and it certainly wouldn't have been red up certainly in Elizabethan times so what's the dangers nowadays the dangers at the moment are that we're standing on on Rubble which could be on what they call the horse floor so you could just go wolf down we could so show us this find you've got what's that it's a piece of slate with don't know the date of this but that suggests that potentially the buildings up above us were actually roofed with slate oh so actually that that is quite useful information is it how far does this go about 100 yards um come on go and have a look all right yeah let's leave that here for a minute see I always think of a mine as a tunnel or something open cast but this is just a gash in the Rock isn't it it is and they've sunk down from surface and then worked it out yeah but then probably lifted all the material up above you know on a day like this you really can't imagine how awful it must have been for the Elizabethan miners but in Winter it must have been even worse and all of it would be done by hand it would elizabethans with the hammer and chisel every piece in here had to be lifted out by hand no Machinery used at all and it's incredibly difficult when these mines were started the idea of using machines or explosives like today hadn't even been thought of we started the day by thinking that our buildings were for the next stage in the process when The Rock was broken up or crushed and anything that didn't contain copper was thrown away but Francis has another idea I I mean that isn't heck of a lot of sort of burnt stuff in here don't you think I mean I think that's been really heated up I think that it's got sort of bubbles in the surface you know what I'm thinking is that this might be I don't know a smelting fireplace furnace something like that Workshop area Workshop area but but but big [Music] temperatures this still looks more or less to me like a great big pile of rock but you guys have been getting quite excited about it haven't you well we're getting very excited about it Tony because there is actually structure here and there is evidence for more than one period This is actually a very complicated building I can see no hint of structure what have we got a hint of structure I drawn your picture so what we have is a building that's either subdivided or two buildings next door to each other focused and using those Boulders as one edge of it we definitely got a building we've got this lovely lintle here that's my favorite bit well what might that be about well originally we we we thought well that's got to be a fireplace and we started finding a load of ashy material in it but as Ian's taken it back the ashy material is extended right across the floor and if that was a fireplace where's the flu yes right um we just don't know big question mark over it big question mark million dollar question is it Elizabethan well there's nothing yet to suggest that it isn't Tony so a rare Elizabethan Forge a workshop for for breaking up or or something else [Music] entirely tomorrow Francis takes our hunt for Queen Elizabeth's mines to the other side of the mountain looking for a lost Tuda mining machine Cassie tries out Life as a 16th century copper Miner and the brave giz team descend into the mine itself beginning of day two here in the Lake District where we're hunting for an Elizabeth and copper mine yesterday we found two buildings at the top of this mountain which might be workshops but Francis our site director thinks they're far too small to have been used on an industrial scale so this morning he's leading part of the team elsewhere he's taken the decision to open a second site stretching our resources to the Limit what's this crazy plan all about that it's not so crazy Tony I never do anything crazy right it's well advised right yes of course we know they've got mines over there yeah right now mines aren't producing copper out of the ground they're producing ore and the whole process that happens once the material is out of the ground is about smashing up the ore so that you can eventually smelt it now this is the area where we think the Mills were that did this crushing there's a power source in the Stream I think there's every chance of finding what we call a stamp Mill down there Stuart what is a stamping Mill well I could describe it in great detail but also show you a drawing that's beautiful this is actually taken from a late 16th century book it's shows the techniques being applied in Central Europe at the time and we know we've got German miners on this site so we'd have an expectation of something similar to this so this is Elizabethan at least it's the Elizabethan period in IND it is indeed yeah what we've got is a a chute here which will bring water to drive a water wheel the water wheel turns an axle and as the axle turns it drives these vertical posts which have got iron shoes on the bottom of them and they pound the ore and what they're trying to do is is break the waste rock off and end up with size about Big Walnut size so if we find bits of AE about that Walnut size will that be sufficiently diagnostic to tell us that what we've got is an Elizabethan stamping method yeah absolutely because later on as the technology improves they can grind them into smaller and smaller pieces so we're going to put in a trench just like we would anywhere else well yeah sort of tny I mean the the big problem is I don't think anyone have they St has ever dug a stamp mil not in this parcel world not in Elizabeth stamp mil Now Matt you're going to excavate a site the like of which no one has ever dug before well it's going to be a first time good so here's the plan for day two we're going to be looking for a stamp bill which we know from the records stood at a place called cob is level it's quite a gamble because it's more than half a kilometer from site one where we've barely scratched the surface here we've got two Huts the larger of which might be an open fronted Workshop perhaps a kind of Forge but Francis clearly can't be in two places at once so he's got to delegate some Authority hello Phil it's Francis your boss here hello boss you've done such a good job that I'm actually going to promote you from an archaeologist to a manager that's with a immediate effect well as a manager I resign with aor effect I'm an archaeologist and I don't want any more backat from you so get on with it bye-bye I'm resigning I'm definitely resigning they say some have greatness thrust upon them and as Francis sets off a newly promoted Phil Harding heads over to trench one to look at a piece of clay pipe our first find of the day hey is this right you got a clay pipe St yeah it's it's just come out from where Tom and Rick have been working so that is really really good it is yeah Clay po stem what do you think uh Danny well we've got the bit of the stem and there would have been the Bowl here but judging by the actual diameter of the hole here in the stem I think it's probably later okay so tobacco's br in in the Elizabethan period but you don't think that that's an Elizabethan Pope stem I think it's probably a bit later than that hund couple of hundred 100 years later than that the sheer fact that we've got one object which we can probably put a date to is really important it is isn't it it cones up that atmosphere doesn't it of sitting up here on top of a cold wet Mountain poor old Mino with it last bit of tobacco to smoke well that's it I mean you know let's be honest let's be honest probably the the only comfort you're likely to get up here on a cruel day is a pipe yeah absolutely so we know our buildings were built at least as far back as the late 1600s but what were they used for we've called in Jerry McDonnell one of the country's leading experts on Ancient metal working and he's not impressed by our Forge idea he thinks we've mistaken natural black rock for burnt material but Jerry's much more excited by our mortar Stones yeah here they are got one two three this is not what I was expecting Phil sorry when you said Mor Stones I was expecting something really you know because of the period we're talking about something really pretty large because you pressing quite a lot of O these are pathetically small I'm sorry they're the best way you can do no but they're good they're good because I think one message is small scale okay now the two interpretations of that are either very early working I you've got a a small scale local pharmer the Saxon period or iron AG or Raman period the only other thing is yes they're associated with the later workings but they're used for assaying so what you do is you put piled a bit of charcoal in there lit it and put in some weighed OE and with a little blowpipe you could reduce that copper ore to metal so you'd weigh the copper ore before it went in weigh the metal that came out and then you know how good the quality of the ore is so it could be you know aethan or later but firstly you've got to analyze them yeah we'll have a go analyzing them so we don't have a forge but perhaps we've got a workshop for assaying when small bits of copper ore were tested for their quality Jerry's going to test both the stones and our trench with a sophisticated bit of Kit an x-ray gun which can sniff out any traces of enriched copper but it seems that large scale or crushing was happening elsewhere and over at cobbler's level Francis is looking for a waterpower machine which did this called a stamp Mill we certainly know that the German miners built a stamp Mill here because it became rather unpopular it is quite extraordinary isn't it that in this this beautiful setting there would have been what must have been a fairly major industrial process yeah and it's an industrial process that produces Industrial Waste we've got this court case perhaps the first recorded court case of environmental pollution it's against Daniel Hostetter who who's managing this site and it involves John Fleming who's a local gentleman and the Tenant farmers and what he's saying is that because of the stamp house the copper ore coming out of it is making the water here so muddy and corrupt that it's overflowing over the land leaving the Ground full of corruption and leaving the crops utterly decayed and wasted they've lost 2third of their previous year's crops did the farmers win they did Daniel host had to pay 145 in compensation to them which would have been a heck of a lot of money in those days it certainly was and it's really interesting isn't it the fact that we've got environmental pollution and Industrial processes happening here a long time before the Industrial Revolution it's really exciting to think that we could be digging the remains of a forgotten Industrial Revolution but over on site one we've had a bit of a setback we're starting to find a lot of Victorian Rubble which looks like it's been drilled by machine and Jerry can't tell if our building was used for assaying so your zapper you can tell us what's in the rock yeah what it's doing is it's firing a beam of x-rays into the Rock and those x-rays excite the atoms that are present in the Rock and they respond effectively by sending out an an x-ray characteristic of that element and we detect that but we're only really concentrating on what we call the metals so that's iron yeah yeah yeah um copper uh tin lead Etc so really what I was looking for was to see whether we got enhanced copper left over from the or crushing in here and the answer is no as I feared because probably of the weathering over the years so as we reach our halfway point it's beginning to look like we've seriously underestimated the complexity of the archaeology here could this be one dig when 3 days really isn't long enough afternoon day two here in the Lake District and although we were working here all day yesterday this is the first time any of us have seen that lovely little Lake which is called lever's water because the cloud cover was so heavy what has just come up though is this extraordinary find it's a flying mask or a flying helmet from the first half of the 20th century and what it's doing here we don't know except there was some kind of air crash over there in the second world war so maybe it's something to do with that we just don't know but that kind of epitomizes the problem that we've been having we've got all sorts of interesting bits and Bobs but no evidence that can date these structures to Elizabethan times which is what we're trying to do we'll probably never know if the flying hat belonged to the crew of the Halifax bomber which crashed here in 1944 but it's a poignant reminder of the dangers of these mountains after a morning spent looking for an Elizabethan stamp Mill Francis has arrived back on site Phil has made an alarming Discovery and he wants the boss to take a look Phil the small morning I said I'd come and check up on you well that's what I'm doing tell me what have you found well what we've had to do is dig through all this this this rubble and what we've been able to find is that that is all probably probably 18th 19th century what's this fill it it looks for all the world like a charge hole it is Francis it's where somebody has actually drilled a hole in the Rock to fill up with dynamite and blow the rock apart to actually get the copper ore now that piece with the drill hole came off of that spoil tip over there we've found similar drill holes and spoil tips over there it is consistent with all these spoil tips one thing which is certain is that that idea that all these Brown spoil tips might be Elizabethan is a bit of a red hering so what we still don't actually know yet is when these buildings were put up so there is a lot to answer in what just over a day mining At Con became much more intensive during the 1800s when new owners took over but until now we thought the victorians had largely ignored our mine but it's clear they were drilling holes with machines and detonating large amounts of explosives using our buildings to safely contain all the rubble this generated mining is by its very nature a hugely destructive activity could it have obliterated the Tudor archaeology tuder miners didn't drill holes or use gunpowder they preferred oldfashioned methods Cassie is going to try out some of the tools they used on the local Granite so if you want to choose your weapon okay um I think I'm going to go for the sharp one and just whack it yeah guy really flicks up you can tell immediately it's just jumping straight back at you that could get quite painful couldn't [Music] it ow also you got to remember they're working into the face up there really quite a lot closer cuz you you're actually standing quite far back having exposed the mineral we can perhaps get a chisel in to have a go at trying to expand the crack it's heavy but it's not quite as painful that lumps coming off now yeah so you've got your lump of O now so you that's kind of what we at it's actually quite a lot of color in fantastic so I'll drop that in my basket y get home for another 12 hours it took an Elizabeth and Pikman a week to drive forward just one foot and they were paid between two and 8 Shillings a bucket depending on the quality of the ore it was a dangerous business men used brute force in near total darkness and our mine Simon's Nick is named after a minor who died working in it our biggest fear about digging here has always been that the mine has a rotten wooden floor hidden beneath all this Rubble so we've asked the um Brave geophysics team to check how safe it is you both okay down there fine yeah there's a short section on this first bit that we could do maybe sort of five or 6 M if there is a false floor here the team should pick it up with their ground penetrating radar but there seems to be a change as we got up to here which may just be a facet of this pile that we've we' had to stop at let's just hope it doesn't end up being renamed Jimmy or Emma Nick it's now late afternoon and over at cobbler's level Matt has just uncovered a curious cobbled floor and has asked landscape investigator Stuart answorth to take a look come down to see how things are going pretty good actually you can see that we've taken off the turf here and almost directly underneath is this cobbled surface and of course the first question is could that be the floor of the stamp Mill well I mean the thing with the stamp Mill you got this big frame with these stamps going to P pom pom you can't do it on where it's fragile or or flaky material so this sort of surface is the kind of surface you would expect yeah I think the next thing I'm going to do here is take off some of these C um underneath them so have we got the stamp mil we'll only know for sure if francis's gamble has paid off tomorrow still perhaps our luck is beginning to change oh ah good God that's the real thing that's copper I mean you know see Jerry standing around there doing nothing what that oh that's encouraging and out that is cuz we got the green probably of of malachite which is a copper carbonate but also the other color might well be chalk Pirates that's not copper on itself no no no this is the O This Is The Stuff they're searching for right and this is the first piece that has come out of an archaeological context at last our first evidence for copper mining it's a huge relief and as we head down the mountain for a well-earned drink we're beginning to understand what's going on here Frances up until the time we came here I think it's fair to say the general assumption was that an awful lot of the workings where we're now exploring were Elizabethan all we got to do was to put in our trenches and interpret them and Bob's your uncle but it hasn't quite worked out like that has it no T I mean to be quite honest I think that was all in Cloud cookie say what you mean yeah no it really was you know I mean virtually everything up the top of that Hill that we've been looking at turns out to be Victorian is that true the structure that you've been working on it's true everywhere on the top of that Hill Tony I mean the fact is that the whole site is masked by that Victorian mining Dey what are you going to do to get to grips with all this tomorrow we will get to the bottom of one of those buildings and see if we can get some dating evidence we do have some secure Elizabethan dating don't we this P cuz this is in fact 400 years old yeah and there's a great story attached to this as well you know we've been digging up at Simon's Nick right original chat called Simon apparently was so successful in mining that everybody suspected something and they brought him down here got him drunk on this stuff to find out the secret and he said actually the secret was he'd given his soul to the fairies or to the devil depending on the account and the very next day up at the mine an explosion went off and he died as a result so you better be careful God help us tomorrow cheers [Music] the morning of day three and no one feels like talking here's a problem we weren't expecting there's a water pipe that runs all the way down this track from the reservoir to coniston and uh unfortunately because of the adverse weather conditions and US driving up and down all the time the big stones are moving on the track and the drivers are starting to get worried that we might smash the pipe and if we do then coniston will run out of water and with every Journey the the track becomes more dangerous so the decision's taken to send a lot of the team up by foot it's a punishing start to our final day we're trying to build up a picture of con's Tuda copper mines and to be frank it's not what we expected at all almost everything we've discovered at the top of the mountain appears to be Victorian here we've got two Stone huts one with perhaps only three sides we still don't know what they were for or when they were built but we do know that in the mid 1800s they were filled with rubble Square it down so we can actually see that all this rubbly stuff runs in underneath it and if we're reasonably happy then everything during this period coniston was one of the most productive copper mines in Britain generating huge amounts of rubble which needed to be contained to stop it cascading down the mountain yesterday geiz surveyed the mine with radar and they've discovered a similar story way along pretty much basically if I can understand what you're saying you can see the depth of material that's on top of this floor surface but you can't actually see a void below yeah if we look at the raw data I mean we can see there's real variation in the depth of Reflections and that seems to be showing how much material is being dumped back into the mine after it went out of use it doesn't mean that the tutors weren't mining here but it's clear that the 19th century exploitation of this mine was far more destructive than anyone thought but further down on site two we think we might have found an Elizabethan machine called a stamp Mill which would have crushed the raw copper ore coming from our mine yesterday Matt found a cobbled floor and this morning he's prized up the stones for a closer look done you done well the red dots on the tops the top of the cobbles cuz they're actually a lot deeper than they are wide right so they're really really strong and that's what we think might be might have been the base for the stamp Mill and underneath it we've got all this stuff which is the fine grained waste which is just the kind of stuff You' get from the stamp Mill have you got anything juicy if you like out of there by way of finds yes we've had one find it's not really an artifact as such but look can you see the green there oh yeah look at that so that's the malachite which they had been looking for when they were crushing The Ore obviously missed a bit and that ended up in the waste that that rather pretty well proves that we've got we're dealing with stamp Mill waste there aren't we yeah that's good enough for me yeah the 17th century stamp Mill is a major Discovery this Timber machine would have toiled away crushing the raw copper mineral from probably several mines across the mountain before it could be sent off for smelting we've asked the local caving Society to drain the mine closest to the mill using a pump to see if there's anything Elizabethan in there as well Warren what was the function of this tunnel this tunnel was driven to the vein purely as a drainage tunnel to drain the workings above yeah and also to bring the ore out to the stamp Mill that we think we found outside yeah and the other interesting thing since we drain the tunnel yeah is that we starting to see timber in the floor still in situ yeah yeah and what we think they've had is to get the material out of here we think they've wheel barrowed it God what a job 24 hours a day and now if you just look in front of you you can start to see the shape of a coffin and that's what these were known as when they were known as coughing levels narrow for your head wider for your shoulders narrower for your feet that's eery we've just about come to the end here yeah it actually branches off this right hand Branch you can see how it's have actually started to work the work the Rock and these chippings in the floor is actually from when they were actually working this this Mine by this time it be 1617 this is what I love talk about evidence of 500 years ago this is almost like snake skin it's so worked by all those picks and tools isn't it come on let's follow the wheel run back the effort it took to drive this mine 80 yards into the Rock is almost unimaginable but this wasn't the only hardship the miners had to endure what did the local people think of all these Germans arriving on their doorstep they weren't so Keen there's an account here it talks about the unwillingness of the people in the area because they don't feel they're getting sufficient recompense for their lands and for the damage that's being done and it gets worse the man who sets this all up Daniel H talks especially about one naughty man called fissa Naughty is actually quite a serious word in Elizabethan period um and the villainous murdering of Leonard stz who's a German who defended himself it says a long space against 20 of them and then they all fell upon him and pitously murdered him so did they stay the Germans or did they shoot off at home as quickly as they could incredibly no they didn't and we know this because we've got Parish registers and we can find names so we've got one barar suck mantle here um we've got a nice German name up here we've got Margaret Holm so actually the Germans are staying settling down and and remaining in the area the Germans may have stayed but our time here is running out back on site Phil has closed down building number one apart from the 17th century clay pipe it's almost completely empty FR look what I got here look what I got here widened his search in our remaining building and found a piece of Timber which may be a door because it's I think it's saor isn't it I think that's fantastic Phil it's proper structural Timber woodworking Timber I too I think well oh you know one thing it ain't up here it ain't a tree route no it isn't there's a big investment to labor bringing wood up here what do you know about radiocarbon day in Francis quite a bit could could we get a radiocarbon date out of something like that if it's ordinary household Timber then yes I think we get a radiocarbon date it'll certainly tell us if it's not Tuda ah well then I better get on and expose some more of it I think you better Phil in fact we did get the piece of wood tested and it turned out to be bang on the money radio carbon dating confirms that the tree which the door was built from was cut down at least 400 years ago during the rain of Queen Elizabeth or perhaps even earlier so we've got a Tuda building but did it belong to the Copper miners well after almost 3 days of hard graft Ian has finally found the floor surface for our second building oh look look how shiny that is as well oh it smells of copper you can you can smell it smells of copper yeah you you have a sniff smell that oh that's weird isn't it yeah yeah Phils try that I'm I'm allow to smell the dirt as well am I that's bizarre oh it a funny old tiny almost yeah I've always said Phil Harding can literally smell archaeology but his nose isn't proof enough that this is copper we need something a bit more 21st century 20% it's time for Jerry and his ray gun the suspense is killing is it is it 20% 20 yeah and that's an honest reading that's hon no no that that's honest true that tells me you've got copper working yay absolutely spot on what it generally says then is that we can directly associate this building with the work in a copper or I would think so yeah yeah or the storage of copper or that's been processed or that the people are dealing with a lot of coer I mean you know presumably it's a floor trample or something like that and and it's all on as you said earlier on it's all on their boots I tell you what well from his point of view it's been a hell of a lot of craft is it it has been a lot of hard work but it's been worth it fantastic finally fantastic this means we can finally tell the story of what went on here our two Huts were probably used for storing raw copper ore which had been dug out of the nearby m a vital part of the Tudor industrial process the material stored here would have been broken up by hand before being sent down the mountain to our stamp Mill for crushing a simple but efficient process that continued for hundreds of years and given this long history there's just one question left Francis yes why is it that we've had virtually no fines at all we have Tony I mean we've had tons and tons of mining waste they're fine all right you know what I mean though domestic stuff the kind of thing that can help us date the site well you haven't had domestic fins because there's very little domestic life as such going on up here the miners were living in their huts on the top of the hill here and they probably had leather bottles wooden platters things that didn't break when taken into a hostile environment like this so they'd bring their stuff up with them at the beginning of the day and then when they went back down they take it down again yeah I think so yes it's quite ironic really isn't it it's just like us we got a thermos we've got a coffee but we'll take it back down again we will yeah and I mean frankly I'd look at you a bit oddly if you were sitting next to me with a teacup and a saucer drinking like that it wouldn't be right would it what about money everybody drops money even poor people yes now we do actually have a historical record to the fact that the German miners weren't given coins but they didn't particularly you know get on with the with with with the local population well they were just handed out their food and clothes and things exactly precisely that so not even any coins not even coins so as we head down the mountain for the final time we leave our sight as we know those bra German Pioneers did taking everything with [Music] [Laughter] us and it's time for a celebration [Laughter] it's been a tough old dig isn't it it has Tony but you know anything worthwhile doing is worth while making an effort you know what for me is the biggest irony one of the things that we came here to try and do was find out what life would have been like for those German miners in Elizabethan times in a way hacking up to the top of the mountain every day back down again being deluged by the weather going in and out of those freezing cold mines well maybe we got a little feeling of what life must have been like for them and how appropriate is this in order to recreate a little bit of Southern Germany here in The Lakes once again ladies and gentlemen I have the privilege to introduce to you the beer Hoff Umpa [Applause] band [Music] have we found the remains of England's most infamous King a Time team special examines the evidence in Richard III the king in the car park tomorrow at 9:00 next on for let's deal [Music]

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Length: 47min 4sec (2824 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 03 2013