Time Team's 3 Most Tragic Digs...

a few years ago Nick and Susan Howard and their family moved into their new house here at vbra in suffk they were pottering around in one of their Garden sheds looking at one of the innumerable old cupboards and they discovered that a bit alarming certainly a bit scary I think so but not really surprising when you look at the rest of the garden isn't it fantastic looks a bit like a little church doesn't it well we know that King Henry I founded a prior somewhere in bbor in the 12th century and 500 years before that a Saxon King was killed on these marshes and buried here could this overgrown Garden have been one of the most sacred sites in East Anglia it's a fantastic house what's it called it's called the Prairie and what's the road called Running alongside it prie Road do you think there might be some kind of clue there I think it's a bit of a clue isn't it there something going we know there was a a 12th century August Indian PRI in bbor so it's somewhere in this area you do realize that in order to find out what's going on here we're really going to have to wall up your garden hard yes we understand that but we'd rather that that you did it now before we start the restoration of the formal Gardens formal Gardens that's Posh this is what I call Herring bone Mas because it looks like the bones of a fish and it's a it's a building Style you seen the Roman period but you also get it right at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period into the beginning of the Norman period so are you saying that this whole building could be either from just before or just after William the Conqueror arrived yeah yeah I mean I think it's probably around about 1100 something like that but round about that Norman Conquest period this date is our first clue as a 12th century Norman prior should follow a basic plan there should be a great hall dormet Tre for the monks to sleep in and a refectory or dining area forming three sides of a cloy and on the fourth side there should be a church and mix's now confident that's what we have in this Garden so we're putting in a couple of trenches against this wall to test if the Cloister is on the southern side of the church and we're getting lots of broken brick and roof tile but unfortunately nothing that immediately screams Closter but on the other side of the wall Phil has found foundations that confirm Mick was right about these ruins this was a church oh that is cracking stuff it's it's the floor of the church she's got this straight edge here up that one's broken but this is a lovely straight edge running across there so that that's just literally presumably a panel that goes around the outside the main floor they have add up and you can see here look we've actually got the wall of the building here look how how protected that look lovely smooth surface there what's the color about fil and the black in the Y some sort of glazing or yeah it is they they're they're they're glazed to so I mean if we get a few more of them I mean it may well be that we can get them into some sort of maybe checkerboard pattern so they would have been black and white yeah you're going to dig that way try and stop us all right hey what you could do you own the place when we arrived I just assumed the prior Church would be no more than a small Chapel but Bob our buildings expert believes there's far more to it this column is now so eroded it looks like something out of Death Valley but it's actually the remains of a sophisticated piece of architecture it really is a column because if you look high up you can see there's a change in angle and there's a slight indent and it it comes in at a higher level it suggests that we're on a triforium so that there's probably another layer of arches running off in the other direction perhaps only for one Bay but nonetheless it's part of a pier what we have is this pricess reference in the 12th century book of el and it specifically refers to the the the death and Burial at a place called BLB so we're talking about clearly a very important Royal Shrine recognized and almost certainly invested in by Elite for its upkeeping maintenance and indeed the founding of the prior May relate to that Shrine but that's extremely interesting isn't it if Anna is if Anna's bones are still here in the 12th century they could potentially have be here to this day that's right we know he's here somewhere in BLB and what's going on here in the 12th century why why does King Henry make this great gesture and encourage this this great prior to be founded or is it a refoundation of the early Royal Minster that's the fascinating possibility so this this could really be one of the great discoveries of all time Sam believes there's a chance that when King Henry I founded the prior in blor he built it on the site of the earlier Saxon church and it shrin to King Anna or Anna but unfortunately we've got to sort out the Norman prior layout first before we can deal with whatever else might be here and frustratingly Jon's now wandered off into next door's Garden determined to find out how far the prior Church stretches away to the West steuart's sure BLB would have been a sacred or religious refuge for centuries before King Anna died his burial would almost certainly have attracted pilgrims for hundreds of years after but would it have been to our sight I feel really perplexed about this John well it would help if we could work out exactly what we have here we're certain we have a prior Church the problem is the geiz doesn't really have much evidence for the rest of the prior I mean clearly they're showing something they're either showing well you say walls it might be robber pits whatever well look they're definitely walls the resistance there that's the wall in Phase trench there's no doubt about that so if that's a W there's no reason why these shouldn't be W that would leave us with such a small claster if that's what's being indicated there that I just wonder whether either the cloter is on the other side of the church on the north side of the church over here or that we're looking for a much more unconventional irregular plan than we were expecting well Mick did warn me it wasn't going to be easy but really our geiz is isn't working for us and I'm not sure our trenches have told us that much either nothing like an easy sight John's got it in one and behind that calm exterior I think Mick's really panicking why well because none of us can understand this place and it should be so simple we get rid of that tree there we've already got all these trenches open looking for church walls other buildings and the prior cloysters but Mick wants more including one trench in the middle of a hedge hang on hang on hang on hang on you're in the fence the uh all the O is caught up in the fence but there is method in this madness as Phil's new trench should locate the East End of the church to go with Matt's West End so realistically after a day and a half of digging we've got a prior church but no prior the only thing we've succeeded in is transforming this once elegant Garden into something much less picturesque it's a building site now let's be honest we've got what two trenches there no three there's one down the bottom there as well yeah all right three we got one just around the corner there and one over the fence in the next Garden all right uh come through here a minute come on we got one there yeah that's finished that one one around the corner there and that's finished little one there yeah that doesn't count oh doesn't right we got one here that's finished it's more like a pick and mix counter than what I think of as an archaeological dick I share your worries that's fair enough I can breathe easier now carefully you don't fall down one of those little holes now there we are quite confident that's a male that's all we've seem to have had so far is evidence for males one thing Mick knows is that there should be loads even hundreds of burials at the foot of these consecrated walls which isn't that surprising given that BLB PRI was lived in for 400 years before Henry VII dissolved [Music] it he found them and we all kind of INRI and Oh Daddy Daddy and as Susan and her family found out their remains can turn up in the most unexpected places you've got three different skulls have you got enough to know whether they might be male or female well this one here is definitely male because you've got this this enormous nucle Crest sticking out here is that's that's the bit right at the back of the skull here we're quite broad across here it's quite flared at the back of the back of the mandible and it's fairly squared at the front which again looks like a masculine one well there's a damn great old there look it's intriguing is that CL on my hand in or yeah R oh you think I don't want to get bit there ain't nobody in there is it don't know yet ah yeah that's incredible is yeah you don't want to go ferling about in there too much cuz if there's something in there that is undisturbed it's a sobering thought if Phil's going to find a vault or Shrine associated with King Anna then this is the place the Archaeology is once again causing all sorts of headaches at the West End Matt still hasn't found a wall big enough to hold up a church while at the East End Phil's finding more holes and they don't look much like a Saxon Shrine there's another B great void in there I wonder whether we ain't got just big Burrows whether that ID was creating our big ho down there this is more like waterers ship down than time team and Phil's probably got layers of demolition Rubble to shift before he gets to any foundations whoever looted the Stone from this old prior did a pretty thorough [Applause] job the charters tell us that in around about 1300 uh there was no infirmary there and with an infirmary you would have an infirmary Orchard but although we're struggling with the archaeology we're still building up a fascinating picture of our prior we also have an infantry taken when the prior was dissolved and it mentions a number of buildings um first of all we have the religious ones we've we've got the Vester mentioned we've got the choir we've got a chapel but then we get mention of the kitchen uh we get mention of the pantry we get mention of the hall we get mention of the Parlor these are domestic activities of the prior and then we get mention of a brew house now a brew house will be really really Fab because I would like to brew the northern of the church yes that lines lines up pretty well we've confirmed the north wall of the Norman church and the trench is producing a jumble of roof tile medieval window glass and the church floor but if there was an Anglo-Saxon Monastery here you'd have thought we'd have also found some Anglo-Saxon stuff with a hole this deep unfortunately there's not a hint not a smidge so far at least there's progress at the East End where phills uncovered big foundations as well as human remains yeah that's a bit of pelvis there and there's a bit of rib there and then in here look look got whack and great leg bone I think yeah these bones here are sat in this light Sandy colored material right at the base of here on which this wall appears to stand which means these bones are potentially earlier than the construction of the prior itself cuz they're under the rubble platform which was used to construct the priories exactly if you're finding Anglo-Saxon skulls here uh the minster's back in the frame isn't it it certainly is since we arrived Helen's always been convinced that King Anna's here somewhere so what would we like you to get here well we're going to have the East wall The Altar and between the Altar and the East wall is the classic place for shrines so if we have King Anna here in the 12th centur no no that because he could have been bear with me if we if we have King Anna here in the 12th century he's likely to be here through the whole of the medieval period so this is the place that he's most likely to be look I'm going to be happy if we get the East wall of the church back inside the church carer's cleaned up the foot of the pillar and it confirms this was an internal column proving Bob's theory that the PRI church had an aisle outside the Nave a couple of days ago you said that they couldn't be columns because they'd be the size of ches briy Abby or something monstrously enormous it's big it's a special building it really is it must be the best bit of 13th century in the region we can now see how much land King Henry I gave the augustinians to found the PRI I've tried to get outside it to try and understand the precinct within which and there was rather more to it than the ruins in Nick and Susan's Back Garden we've in fact only got a relatively small part of the site which is protected at the moment pretty much just the core and we're trying to really work out what the special archaeological interest of the S me if I overlay my little color drawing of the top of the the modern layout of the Village from the old roads and boundaries we can see how the prior site dominated the village and didn't include the Parish Church which came later there's a church in the village and that's where the priories they're two two separate sites so what we've got in effect is a precinct which is all that area in there that's fantastic the augustinians clearly had a large and Powerful establishment here in bbor and Stuart suspects it could be situated on an earlier Royal Minster and we've now found signs of earlier possibly Saxon occupation in both Jack's and Matt's trenches in fact Matt's got proof of several earlier buildings on this site over that side well just behind me there I've got a glazed tile which is identical to the one we've got next to that wall so I know I've got that floor level yeah but behind me in the Victorian cut we've got the same level and below that I've got an earlier floor really substantial and below that an early post hole as well so I've got stuff going down pretty deep so the post hole is stealed by two floor levels all right this structure could potentially be the earliest settlement on the site and with with a stretch of the imagination even the place where King Anna might have been brought after his death on the marshes well it all looks fairly sort of typical high medieval it looks like grimston were they're making up in norfor near Kings ly um that's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to see use on the table nice green glaze nice sort of decoration on it I mean yeah that fits perfectly could this be evidence of the refectory or dining room Mick suspected was here you know usage more refractory well probably not one pot doesn't make a refectory yes there was a building here but not the one we're looking for if it had been part of the clal range there would have been hundreds even thousands of bodies laid to rest around here so after 3 days of searching mck has conceded that the Closter must have been on the North side it's most likely to be either Roman or Saxon and after a huge amount of work John's mission to find the East End of the the church has come to nothing we couldn't recover enough material to be sure it was from the prior church or for that matter the earlier Saxon church it's an unusual stone type it's not the same stone that we've got in the prior but without digging here we wouldn't have found this large well-preserved male skeleton it was buried with this amazing brooch which dates the body to the late 13th century when the prior was probably at its Zenith at the height of it power the prior must have been an a inspiring place a wealthy Royal foundation and a focal point for pilgrims for hundreds of years radiocarbon analysis suggests the burials in Phil's trench date to 930 ad that means this man was buried 200 years before Henry the's prior was built on top of him and in Jackie's trench at the foot of the church the bones date much further back to the mid 7th Century that's a around the time that King Anna was killed so we can safely say that we've looked the Saxons in the face it looks as if their church was here on this site even though it could have been destroyed in later Viking raids as for the whereabouts of King Anna's tomb that Still Remains a mystery so even after this hugely frustrating dig with all its puzzles and dead ends we can show Nick and Susan that an impressive augustinian Church ran across more than the full width of their garden with a great tower held up by pillars towards the east end and a Closter to the north Nick you've been glued to this for ages now haven't you fasc I bet when we came here you never thought you'd see all this no no it's been mindblowing mindblowing because at the first I didn't realize just how big the church was I just had no concept whatsoever you didn't even really know you got a church in well I didn't I had no idea whatsoever it doesn't bother you that we found all these skeletons no I've got a sneaking suspicion Susan absolutely adores her she does that time team is 100% independent and funded by our incredible fans joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models master classes and more please join us on this exciting Journey we need more support to make more episodes imagine I'm a Georgian gentleman I've just come from nearby fashionable bath in order to visit hun Street one of the largest and most opulent Mansions of the Georgian era and no it's not that that's just the lodge this Grand Design was the dream of local MP Francis poam who tragically never lived to see it realized in fact despite millions of pounds being spent on it we don't know if it was even finished 200 years later all that's left of it is this Portico all the rest of its somewhere underneath these Stables but the extraordinary thing is that apart from a couple of pretty little pictures we don't know anything about it we don't know who designed it what it looked like inside or even if anyone ever lived in it there have been Mansions at hun Street since medieval times so John poam one of the most important figures of Elizabeth I's Court acquired the estate in the 16th century but it was his descendant Francis who built the last and Legend would have it grandest Mansion of them all so is that Portico there that bit here that's it this blown up painting shows it nicely doesn't it how long would this North Front have been well in the 1920s there's a particularly dry summer and they recorded that the parch marks on the ground here were 200 ft wide by 120 and took that to be the side walls of the house that's one two three this is all looking a bit too easy the Eastern facade should be 100 ft away from the center of the Portico have you done the gfis for this area yet of course we have and have you hit anything that might be our East wall well look at these results the red line is actually that theoretical line at 100 ft you can see this very clear black line right on the edge of our survey grid tell you I I'm concerned John you see this looks like a perfectly regular rectangular pile doesn't it there but relative to the Portico there this thing's coming out it a cranky angle yeah it might just be the effect of the results but um I think the only way is we've got to dig yeah I mean I totally agree because if we can actually pick up something really distinctive like this doorway then from that we could extrapolate where the front wall and the back Wall's going to be I mean the other thing is there's also this feature in the data that might just be a ditch now whether that's related to the house or an earlier phase of activity I think it's worth looking at that as well so in goes trench one to locate the Eastern facade W wo wo wo that's that looks like a big bit of building that does that's the sort of stuff I do expected the building to be made of is it oh yeah mise manganes no m m manganes oh de ah oh your Fran and that looks like that mortar look that is that same mortar that is exactly that same mortar as is over there on the port that is go on then John where is this on the geophysics oh I said it was yeah but I thought you said it was right at the end of the TR no look you can see it's 2 m in 2 m in 2 me oh well there you go then that's it that is it then it's still the first hour of the Dig and already it looks like we're onto the Eastern facade of Francis popp's Grand Mansion a building project clearly intended to show off the family's status you know how if you're building your own place and you run out of money you park a caravan on site and rough it for a few months well this is the popp's version of that Caravan the lodge that Francis poam built was up on the hill overlooking the moed medieval Mansion which we believe he demolished to make way for his new house if there was a perfectly serviceable medieval building here anyway why do you think Francis poam spent so much money on building a new place well the 18th century is a century of improvement and that's a that's a key word and people want to improve their Estates they want to prove their taste and their culture and one of the ways that you do that is by building or rebuilding and so putting up a new house or rron an old house was very very typical back on site Phil's discovered a gravel surface beside the wall line looks like burnt Flint it does look like burnt Flint that looks like a yard surface it some pottery Welsh slate charcoal yeah goes right away across doesn't it yeah have your trate thank you a yard surface up against what looks like a wall suggests that we have found the Eastern facade but it's a bit nearer the Portico than recorded parch marks had led us to believe and now Jonathan's noticed that something about the Portico doesn't quite add up all of the illustrations show 17 Bays wide there 17 Windows yeah so if each of these then should be 12 ft wide and five of the 17 this should be 60 ft long in all but it looks to me like it's shrunk by size is it is about half size something's clearly wrong we need to work out if it's just the Portico that's small or the whole house so in goes trench 2 to find the southeast corner of hun Street mansion the thing about Georgian buildings is that they conform to various architectural patterns and are therefore easy to date I think that that's banked against the wall something's not quite right about H Street and it looks like we're going to have to rely on the archaeology to shed a little light Phil expands his trench to find out if the wall thickens out enough to support three stories well that's it and that's it there so we got close on 2 m of it it's looking thicker I walk into the house I'm confronted by this spectacular eight-sided room I go upstairs what do I see then what you would have seen is a series of interconnecting rooms because country houses by this time were made up of at the top level for entertaining so they had rooms that connected one into the other so you went from one into a slightly grander room into a slightly grander room for for instance we know that there's a coed room that had 76 squares of blue tiling and then you would have eventually got your way into the grand or great salon and that would have been the room that you used for displaying your pictures but it would also have been your Ballroom these regular layouts should help us to reconstruct the inside of hun Street mansion and we're beginning to get details from inside a room in the Eastern Corner before we can get going rat shar's discovered a corner 2 m away from the wall line on the geia Fizz it lined up with the corner Bridge found yesterday so we're going to open up a huge trench right across the Eastern Wing to work out what Rak shar's wall is and to get inside some of the rooms of the Georgian [Music] Mansion GI are now trying to locate The West Wing Under The Stables in the Eastern Corner we're digging through tons of rubble in what could be the mansion's cellers and Matt's been investigating the flinty surface running outside the East wall we appear to have this this feature or ditch or something start starts here it's cut by this wall and goes a good meter and a half behind me there so that's that's way too big for a construction cut for this wall I think so what I'm thinking is it might be um maybe a part of the earlier REM maybe and it's cutting through all this stuff on the outside of the building you see you've got this kind of grally stuff here and there's a there's something linear going along there how about that for a wall then back on site Phil's found another wall what do you think of that then that's a wall and half is it but it's much fatter than anything else we've seen what think of that then how actually got a edge of it look C is a hell of a width is it isn't it compared with everything else we've had it's twice the width Stone me that is a wall running parallel the thin outer wall turns a corner and Kinks out to form one of three equal Bays records suggest that our local Builder never finished the West Wing most of which lies under the stable itself where we can't touch it but Jonathan thinks he's found a bit we can get at in the North West corner of the building so in goes trench 4 that's the face there and the best bits were sold off to Prior Park well that is noce the general left the Portico as a relic of his uncle's Grand Design while his family made the lodge their home we got our sh look here Phil's trench is now too deep to work in but he's determined to get to the bottom of his basement room oh look at that is that look like you plastered are you does yes I mean if we can up that away awkwardest form of digging we've ever done I'm sure that is a plastered surface there it's looking like it isn't it oh look ah come here am I right in thinking that there's a loan comes up through there is that mean that's where the wind is going to be then so it seems that there were Windows looking over a dry moat running around the Eastern Wing up to the mysterious corner where Jonathan thought we'd found a medieval Chapel well I've been slapped around the face by the wet hadock of reality haven't I cuz this felt like a medieval building you see what I mean those Corner s seem like buttresses but I don't mind at all cuz if if what I'm reading is right is that is that stub there built into the corner yeah it's all part of the same thing um you can just see there's a vertical face down the bottom there and you've got another one going along there that's fine you're on the corner of that big Wing that extends down to Phil's trench and if that wall the small one is built into it and it returns around this way and it's built into this corner then we've got the same wall being built into both the wing and the moat wall at the same time it's the same build isn't it yeah yes right this requires a major rethink and it's now clear that the outside wall was built at the same time as the parit wall the question now is when and right at the end of the day Jonathan's found the answer this room now we've passed the rubble and we're on to the details which really reveal the period it was built in and you can see the plaster lining there squeezed between what were once wooden uprights against the wall some of it was paneled on this downstairs room stores scullery kitchens that sort of area all that's typical of the 17th century in the smart rooms might be colored with tapestry down here those cheap materials are well done for the kitchen staff seems to me that after 3 days we haven't discovered a Georgian Mansion at all 150 years after this was built the Georgian slapped a bit of lipstick on it that's basically it so it's a bit of Georgian cladding yeah so Francis popp's doomed Grand Design turns out to be the last flourish of a family intent on building ever more impressive houses so John poam acquired hun Street's medieval manor around 1600 and constructed a new house befitting a lord chief justice but around the time of the Civil War the next generation of poams built another house the one we've uncovered and over a century later Francis spent a fortune refacing the outside of the house lavishly remodeling the inside and transforming hunt Street's Gardens but to finish it was too expensive a proposition for his nephew who eventually pulled it down and moved into the lodge time team is 100% independent and funded by our incredible fans want us to make more episodes joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models master classes and more and you get to have your say in the process as we develop new sits the mysterious ruins of Hopton Castle still bear the scars of a tragic past 400 years ago this Fortress was torn apart part by a civil war Siege the small band of Defenders inside who were loyal to Parliament gave their lives defending it against an army of King Charles I today only the tower survives as witness to their heroic Last Stand and nobody's got any idea what the rest of this castle look like so that's where we come in we've been invited here by the local preservation Society to try to find out and maybe to solve a little mystery along the way Richard you're our Castle's expert and you want us not only to sort out what the castle looked like during the Civil War but to address the issue of a war crime because not only is it a fantastic site it's got a fantastic story with the Civil War Siege and these Brave Garrison holding out against the royalists for several weeks before finally surrendering and then being rather brutally murdered most of what we know about the siege of Hopton comes from a man called Colonel Samuel Moore The Garrison Commander he wrote it all down in his journal and it reads like a novel gab fire he says that the royalists attacked the outnumbered Defenders three times losing hundreds of men it was only when the attackers had the parliamentarians cornered in the tower that they finally gave up well first thing first and that is to find out what this place looked like so giz get to work looking for buildings six then okay thanks and Stuart our landscape investigator starts hunting for the castle ramparts from its shape we suspect our civil war castle may be medieval in origin it fits the classic model of a motton Bailey which is basically a big tower on a mound with a defensive ring below it suppose we start a trench somewhere about there yes it means Phil and Bill the local English Heritage inspector can make an educated guess where the outer wall might be this wall which we think might be part of the original medieval castle and might have been refurbished in the Civil War down into what we think might have been part of the original backfield ditch yeah and then up onto this bank which is probably going to be part of the defenses or the assault in the Civil War yes yes that's what you call a Turf that is that's axminster that is f alone and with no sign of relief for 3 weeks the 30 odd Men Behind These Walls held out against hundreds of royalist soldiers and over in his trench Phil thinks he may have found the first evidence of fighting we've got a musketball it's a bit splattered but it's definitely a musketball but is it Civil War I don't know but given the site that we're on I bet it is so we're in the right period but are we going to find the bloke who was on the other end of this we'll know later Phil's looking for the old castle wall and the moat where we think we might find traces of the first attack this bank here was was we thought originally might be part of the medieval castle defenses well we've gone down through it and we're getting masses and masses of brick but more importantly we're beginning to get Pottery too you see here I mean here is the base of a pot and here's another piece of pot little tiny handle but I mean this stuff is clearly not medieval still if his Rampart is from the Civil War does it fit into the history with uh 26th of February is the first attack over the next few days field Marshall Helen geek is going to do a spot of War gaming now there's a there's a body of foot who who approach the out walls along with Richard our Castle's expert she's going to compare Colonel Moore's account of the battle with what we find in our trenches let's put some more on okay and but it's what happened after the siege that really intrigues me so the guys from The Garrison who died could be over there where they're geising mhm or they could be somewhere completely different it's just pot luck whether we find them or not is there anything that you've read in any of the documents that could narrow down the search for us yeah I think so I mean the first one says it's a Cellar now we ought to be able to find a Sellar with geophysics and it would be very recognizable if we do encounter it that's one good hypothesis that we can test that they might be in a Cell the second one is that all the sources concur in saying that they're they're somewhere near water mud or water and so I think that we could go for for anywhere that's water logged um or withstanding water and have a look around there and see what we can [Music] find well John's been busy doing GE Fizz and he thinks he might have picked up a good candidate for a seller not far from the tower John you've done the inner Bailey what's it show it's pretty good I mean we've done mag and re and I think we're starting to see clear buildings inside look at the magnetics to start with so the white line is showing what I think is a big structure there and the black on the inside it's either mid deposits areas of burning in the resistance you can also see that the shadow outline of buildings now what I think we've got in front of us here you can see it clearly in the earthw obv you know but we've got a wall going underneath that Hawthorne Bush I think it actually turns through a right angle and comes back underneath our feet our second trench goes in to see if we've got a [Music] Cellar so that's one possibility for the mass grave but what about the muddy ditch I'd assumed that our whole team were over here trying to sort out the castle until I saw this little head bobbing up and down Behind These rather nasty Nettles Henry what are you doing once I get to the bottom with the with the a when I look at the soil down there I will be able to tell whether it's flowing water through there or whether it's still water or whether it's just a muddy hole some of the documents say the dead bodies were found in a muddy pit right you could be giving us some evidence couldn't you yeah no this should tell part of that story yeah Phil's doggedly digging away trying to work out the shape of the [Music] castle he's changed his tune from this morning he now reckons we do have a wall it's just underneath the Earth Bank he found earlier all right look at it look at that it's the the burning is running underneath so the the construction of that bank is later than that burning you know I just I do wonder what the hell all this Burning is though well we know the buildings were burnt during The Siege yeah exactly you see you you does make you wonder it looks like by the time of the Civil War the inner Bailey was surrounded by a small and rather unimpressive wall and instead of a moat it had Earthworks and at the center of it could be a very large building it looks like we're coming on to a sort of different level here we've been through this incredibly loose compacted brick deposit yeah which I guess is what do you think the walls of the building yeah this is beginning to be more like one of those crime scene investigation shows than a Time team bit of gold but then as is always the case on time team something turns up which you don't expect I heard some bleeping and the words gold we've got a gold hammered coin oh wow the spoil from the bottom of this trench there's the extraordinary thing about gold that when it does come out it just shines straight away doesn't it as if it was put there yesterday look at your face you're quite pleased aren't you I'm very pleased it's made my year Helen's got to double check the date but could this gold coin have been dropped by one of the Garrison or even by their killers in the hands of trained soldiers and At Close Quarters muskets were deadly it makes Mo's claim to have shot and killed hundreds of of royalists at the breach sound much more plausible but where did this happen our armchair generals are playing toy soldiers to find out so they're through the breach most most of the 200 so it's at least 100 the within the breach but not within our our works but as in a pinfold in the circumference of the burnt lodging what is a pinfold it's basically a very large sheep pen it's for sorting out sheep so they're caught in a trap yeah they can't move yes yeah so do you know where that first breach in the wall happens I have very strong suspicions Helen it's in this area down here anybody coming through this narrow Gap in the breach will be trapped they could be fired down from there from there they're literally trapped like sheep in a in a Sheepfold if Stuart's right then somewhere here should be a range of buildings which resemble a sheep pen as well as giving us a direct link to the history if we do have structures here they'd make this Castle far larger than we first thought we're going to have to ponder this one over a few beers tonight but before we can down tools and raise glasses whoa my goodness we've got our hands full with yet another remarkable find from the Sellar I think that's a cannonball in fact I'd put even money on that being a [Music] cannonball so could this mean we're close to the end of The Siege feel our that is Tony just that little bit of it is some weight isn't it yeah imagine that coming crashing in through the walls and Landing right in the bottom of the cellar I'm in no doubt now that this is the brick dwelling house referred to in The Siege accounts and what we know is that the Defenders set far to it to stop the roist using it so I guess what we've got here is evidence of burnt Timbers being fired on with ordinance surely this now locks Us in the history and the archology together what a beautiful spot You' brought me to get a lovely view of the castle here but there's nothing here ah there is something here though because if you look in this area over here Phil there are lots of lumps and bumps that suggest there might been buildings here and walls that there were things blocking this end up here and for once I agree with you what's that there going that way here yeah that's my wall Matt's found the far end of our brick building and it isn't just a house it's a mansion in fact it was so big the builders had to fill in the moat around the tower just to squeeze it into the [Music] Bailey our archaeology has now built up a terrifying picture of the final 48 Hours of the defender lives and it backs up Colonel Moore's journal in every detail after being bombarded by constant fire with the attackers through the Bree The Defenders set the brick mansion on fire before fleeing to the tower a terrifying sequence of events which we found in both the archaeology and the documents they were now at the mercy of the royalist commander Sir Michael Woodhouse and Richard thinks he's worked out how he forced them to surrender all I had to do is run up the bank and attack that that looks like a door but it's actually a window opening now they're trapped on the top floor they can't do anything about people attacking the bottom of the castle so this is another example of this building not really doing its job as a defense because it had a vulnerable window close to the ground yes because the window either side of the window the wall is only about that thick so it's dead easy to actually bash through I think what we can see there is what was done during the Civil War and that's what makes them give up because they think that they're going to lay explosives and they say it's better to surrender than to be blown up extraordinary isn't it to see something so vulnerable from all those years ago that led to such a terrifying end yeah it's ironic that the strongest looking part of the castle the tower was actually the weakest and everything we found over the past few days suggests that in both medieval times and during the Civil War Hopton was more of a country house than a castle it's turned our knowledge of this place on its head and explains why the Defenders failed to hold on to it but it also begs the question why did Moore and his men defend a hopeless cause why did Moore refuse to surrender when he had three opportunities to do so it's difficult to explain we can only think that he must have been inspired by religious fanaticism or by the belief that God would come to his Aid or because he was terribly afraid of the royalist army he'd possibly been reading the newspapers as well and hearing these stories about the massacre of helpless prisoners and he possibly didn't trust the royalists offer of quarter what about the other side why did Woodhouse allow such a terrible atrocity to take place well that's the really difficult question to answer somehow we were off the map of chivalry and chivalry and honor did operate in most of these Civil War encounters there were rules that you could follow like table manners um the fact that the first offers of quarter were refused may have made him feel that they were off the map but I suspect one of the accounts of the massacre says that Woodhouse left his mentor themselves for 3 hours it was normal royalist behavior but in this case case they seem to have been particularly violently inspired and that might be the cause of the massacre but evidence of that Massacre continues to elude us with no signs of a mass grave anywhere else we were praying that we'd find one at the bottom of the cellar but alas as the day draws to a close we've got to admit defeat you're kind of Performing the last rights on this trench then aren't you Phil well I reck I am so you're completely convinced that's natural are you well look there's the bottom of the wall yeah built right on top absolutely I know I think this is a deposit that not even a parliamentarian or a royalist ever saw but while we haven't found any bodies we're pretty confident our seller does match one description of where the men were said to have been killed it's unfinished without any plaster and it's also at the bottom of a burning building and what about it being full of stinking water well most intriguingly of all computer modeling suggests that our seller was liable to flooding as well who knows perhaps this was their place of execution after all after the battle was over Hopton was left as smoking ruin the tower was badly damaged and fell into disrepair for several weeks a small band of men had turned this country house into a small Fortress and held out against overwhelming and terrifying odds 400 years on we've pieced together their last stand and discovered the Magnificent 17th century chamber block where they fought and may have died this morning Neil you said to me Tony the excavation of this trench will unveil the story of this Castle has it done that oh it has the archaeology has worked out so well what we've now found is this huge postm medieval Cellar it's about 20 M long and above that you could imagine a two or three story brick house and it was placed here to deliberately to replace that that was oldfashioned old news if you have money this is how you lived imagine chimneys fancy Windows plastered ceilings this was all mod cons it is ironic that the new building should have been burnt down and the Garrison Retreat to the old one absolutely at the time of the war forget the word Castle copton was a house and it was fighting was taking place in all sorts of places during the Civil War not just on setpiece battlefields not just at storming of castles where everyday houses were being attacked and bloody murder was taking place at Close Quarters hello my name's John Gator time team is fanf funded by patreon this vital support helps us to make new episodes joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models and master classes plus lots more

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 181,627

Keywords: Team Team, Archaeology, History, Education, Educational, British TV, British History, Tony Robinson, Phil Harding, John Gater, Stewart Ainsworth, Mick Aston, archeological dig, Channel 4, Time Team Full Episodes, Full Episode

Id: gtbRGXLsnAE

Length: 49min 16sec (2956 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2024