Time.Team.S16-E04 Anarchy in the UK: Radcot, Oxfordshire

this is rather good isn't it for centuries people have been coming to this place rad cot passing under this the oldest bridge on the River Thames and right next to the river is this field with these very intriguing earthworks for years people looked at them but had no idea what they were and then last year a geophys survey came up with some really interesting results look at this it appears to show a castle keep coming out of the ground with what may be walls or ramparts around it could this really be a lost Oxfordshire castle that's been forgotten for hundreds of years I thought we were just gonna have three days messing around on the river the tiny hamlet of RAD cot in Oxfordshire is the last place you'd think of looking for a massive castle but it's on one of the most strategic crossing points over the River Thames two centuries armies have fought here for control of the bridge from medieval times right up until the English Civil War in the 17th century we've been invited to dig here by two archaeologists who live nearby they've done their own geophys survey and they think they may have found a norman castle buried underneath this now peaceful field John one of the local diggers has just said that this field is called the garrison doesn't that mean it might be connected with the English Civil War well I thought that once but I've worked on the history of this area for a long time and I've always known a reference in one chronicle which says that Matilda one of the grandchildren of William the Conqueror fortified route cought in 1140 - and you persuaded Rogers to do some Gin Fizz on that's right we thought well it must be something late like second world war defences and then so we accepted John well we just couldn't dig a hole in this just have to approve what was here whether it's it is modern stuff or not did you dig a hole we dug a hole yes and we found a great big thick wall 3.8 meters perfect made of made of motive rubble that's kind of exciting isn't it but what wall doesn't make a car somewhere no but I think when you look at the geophysics there's a lot of very interesting big structures on it I mean look see if we've got to keep there lots of other buildings around it it looks if the whole thing is within the big enclosure with possibly a gatehouse or something over on one side so where do you want to dig first well I think we're gonna have another look at the keep get perhaps get the other side from where you dug - just to get more information about that within spoil for choice really I mean there's so many things we can look at John if this really is a Norman castle that's been forgotten about for centuries how importance that it's very significant indeed Norman stone castles aren't that common and it's very rare for a new one to turn out that's completely unknown so Phil puts in our first trench over what may have been the castle's Norman keep or tower this is the feature which showed up as a big square in Rogers original geophysics and films now looking for its northeast corner but the geophys survey also showed up a number of other strange shapes around the field and they may be what's left of the rest of the castle so John's going to take a second look at some of them while the rest of the geophys team are experimenting with some new radar techniques over the possible keep or tower which we hope for the first time will give us a 3d model of any buildings while they're still underground phil's barely scratched the surface and as soon as the digger goes in more of it it's a pottery start to come out sharpen and burnished it's Roman how nice what I saw I mean looks looks roaming the maid on it let's get one have a look I think it's hey This Is It this is it this is a medieval program isn't it well it's supposed to be and our first piece of pottery is soon followed by dozens more some pottery your mashes with it and thankfully they are medieval we put a Bally trowel in the grain so it's an encouraging start and while everyone else has got their work cut out for them I'm keen to find out a bit more about the Normans and rad cot if anyone ever says to me the words norman castle i tend to think of 1066 and William the Conqueror but the period that we're looking at is a bit later than that yes this is getting on for a century after the Norman Conquest when two of William the Conqueror's grandchildren were battling for the crown of England is the Stephen and Matilda yes Matilda was the daughter of the last King Henry the first and he had made his barons swear an oath to her on the other hand she was a woman which was a disadvantage for some people's points of view and Stephen had a less direct claim but he was a man and he acted very quickly after the old King died and got himself crowned so this was really a civil war that's right what did this place rad-con after zu River rad cot is mentioned in one very important text of this period the Gesta Stephani which is a chronicle of Stephens reign and that says that in 1142 Matilda fortified various places on the Upper Thames and one of them is actually named as rad cot which it says was a village made inaccessible by waters and blocked up by marshes well here we are Ed's extraordinary isn't it you see that lovely old red cot bridge there and all the water it's hard to believe that at one time this would have been an epicenter for blood and sacrifice it certainly in the middie eleven hundreds little rad cart got mixed up in a vicious Civil War historians call it the anarchy but it was really a big family squabble between King Stephen and his cousin wannabe Queen Matilda Matilda's said to have had a castle at rad cot so could that be what the geophys is seeing under our field fills looking for the castles keep his fine strays are filling up with masses of pottery and he's only gone down a few inches and already hit what might be a wall Rick yeah ah come here look I think oh yeah yeah looks like a little bit of stone you've got that rose yeah so what have you got to call it a keep do you think well I think it we somewhere handy see that wooden post behind you so you know that marks what was supposed to be the other corner of the Cape and john eve mark the other corner has being away to know somewhere a barrier so we expected it to come through here somewhere so it looks like we've got our first wall already and it's only mid-morning the Normans were great castle builders the classic early Norman castle was called a motte-and-bailey which was a big circular mound with a tower on top and a defensive ring below it with lots of other buildings but our site doesn't look anything like that we think we might have a tower and some of the other buildings like a hall or a chapel but our site isn't round with a defensive ring it's almost completely flat and rectangular which is giving our experts something to think about what we've got is actually a very strange rectilinear enclosure it's not even rectangular it's sort of all sorts of odd shapes and angles and it makes me suspect that there might be reuse of an earlier site possibly a Saxon site possibly even a Roman site we don't know but it has that feel about it but some of the strange shapes on the original geophysics might be what's left of the castles other buildings Mick thinks this dark area here could be the remains of a gatehouse the fortified entrance to the castle presumably this Hallows is where the roads coming in wherever look at the topography that's what it looks like we haven't had time to plot on a computer exactly where we should put the trench so Mick and bridge go for a rather less high-tech approach Stewart's best guess still we're looking for this entrance here look and we think we probably ought to go where this this Hollow is in front of us right um you disagree with me see his face I've just been looking at the this possible roadway that comes in to the north up here yeah it it plot out where that might hit this Bank it's not actually in this Hollow where is it it's more here --is-- this is one side of your your Hollow all right okay presumably that gating the offence there's a bit of a clue is it no no it is like so our next trench goes in looking for the gatehouse one bucket with white to start but one thing still puzzles me if we really do have a grand Norman castle here why isn't it in the records and on the maps or you could ask who should have put it there used to wear around her didn't you yeah I worked in the County Museum from 1970 to 74 and my main job was to pile a record of all the sites of moments in the county and on that record does it say that there's a castle here no you miss it me well I must have done but then you see III remember how I would have worked then I would have looked over the fence seen the earthworks marked earthworks on the map and then I probably went in the pub but why specifically do you think it was missed here not just by you but by countless historians and archaeologists probably because this place was known as the site of a 17th century civil war battle yeah and so you know I probably like everybody else assume that the earthworks for something to do with that so this folklore evolved this was a garrison it was a civil war site nobody ever chela and nobody ever queried it in civil angle let's go back and look at the documents again let's see if this is really true if you could live your life again Oh tell me about it so it seems that somewhere along the line rad COTS norman history got confused with the later English Civil War when Oliver Cromwell's round heads fought a battle in the village with Charles the first Royalists but five hundred years before this we think there was a Norman castle here one real clue might be the banks streams and ditches surrounding the field which do look suspiciously like a moat to find out we've sent Stuart off in a boat along the river of the bottom of the field and got Henry to take some soil samples to see if the ditches once held any water but it's in Phil's Tower trench where we're getting our best archaeology see we've got this lovely big wall coming up here and the archaeologists are saying looks like the right period middle of the 12th century if it's not a keepest pretty keep ish and they think they may have the return they see where that lighter soil is but what's really intriguing me about this dig is all these finds often we wouldn't get as many as that in three days but these have come up in what three hours yeah I mean it's absolutely astonishing it's just masses and masses of really big pieces of pottery all these huge chunks of animal bone have we got 12 century stuff oh yeah it's nearly all 12 12 into 13th century I mean it's exactly on the money in terms of what we're looking for the only stuff that isn't is we're gonna back round of Roman pottery I mean quite big pieces of it as well in good condition we've also got this it's a piece of a Roman central heating system the sort of thing you find in a villa so there could have been a Roman settlement on this side almost certainly a villa looking at that yeah I mean you're looking at big fresh chunks of Roman pottery they haven't been kicking around in fields for all their life this is a surprise because we came here looking for a Norman castle and we assumed that the original GF is showed the buildings belonging to that castle like this shape here which seems to have three rooms and could be the castles chapel but with so much Roman stuff coming up Nick and John are having second thoughts now we've surveyed it in more detail it looks as though that chapel is part of a much bigger structure I mean they're here to be war lines going off at right angles and extra rooms yeah okay what sort of thing could it be we've been we've been teasing ourselves with easy to Villa a Roman village yeah because we've got Roman pottery from the site you've got a hyper course eating flute tile why not this being part of a Roman villa so we've got to put a trench in to find out so we've got rumors of the Civil War yeah we've got Stephen and Matilda yeah and now we've got a Roman villa it's gonna be a chapel so Chappell castle or Roman villa our third trench goes in to find out at least things are clearer in Phil's trench where we're looking for our norman tower well early yesterday when Nick was getting a bit gung-ho about what we might have here I said to him ah one wall does not make a castle well you've got one wall have you got a castle Tony when you've got one wall that is as big as this you have got a castle you bet your life on that so just the size that tells you that this is a castle it is about four meters would you don't build a bike shed like that really don't you're not in a way with it I agree it's massive isn't it and can it be the key I think it's got to be that kind of thickness of wall wouldn't be anything else on side and of course we got some very very good day in for it as well we've got masses of pottery and all that pottery is 12th and 13th century that's great news it looks like we've got our Norman Tower with some incredibly thick walls but so far it's the only part of the castle we have got and we really do need to find a few more buildings unfortunately that will all have to wait until tomorrow because it's almost the end of the day and stone the crows Phil's off to the pub I know that on time team we do tend to get a bit overexcited about some pretty dark things but this really is something special it looks as though under the ground here we've got a Norman castle which has been forgotten for centuries and if that's true then this is a find of national significance so far we've got just this one wall of the keep but according to the geophys it goes out to here and up this way and then along there but what's so tantalizing about the geophys is this this is the keep here and as we go deeper something starts to appear in the middle here and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and whatever it is is right underneath here these bamboo pole it's going deeper and getting curiouser and curiouser what is it we'll find out tomorrow beginning of day two here at rad cot in Oxfordshire where we seem to have discovered a previously unknown norman castle this is the outside here this we think is the wall of the keep with incredibly thick walls now I'm on the inside and this is where you're going to be working today that's right I mean what we hope to do is get some more poetry to sort of really firm up the date another destruction of it I would love to get older some floors to actually see when when the castle was in use and I'm really tantalized by that that blob in the middle of John's geophysics but it's not just a blob I mean look at the shallow earth slices you can actually see this clear line dividing the keep and I wonder if that's a sort of central wall it's only when you go deeper into the ground that this blob starts to emerge got any ideas what it might be yeah I think you get these cross walls in these normal keeps like that and very often there there are a couple of arcades with a big central pillar or something which is what this could be but the only way to do to ever locking yeah that would be something to find wouldn't it absolutely yeah if we've got this Keith and now we know what it's orientation is can't we imply where the rest of the castle is dig it job done go home you're right there ought to be more around here there ought to be a hall private chambers chapel barns all sorts of stuff like that and some of these marks on the geophysics might be those structures but actually there's really not enough in the halls we've got at the moment to make a typical sort of castle out of it then what could all this stuff be around the edges I'm beginning to wonder whether a lot of these earthworks aren't aren't related to something later I think that we're not looking at a one phase structure it's not all 12th century there's something else going on at the same of the side so what is going on and why does our castle only seem to consist of a massive Norman Tower which fills uncovered in his trench Norman castles usually have lots of buildings but neither of our other two trenches have found any sign of them so far yesterday bridge put in a trench looking for the gatehouse she's found lots of rubble but it doesn't look as if it belongs to a building it's a similar story over in Tracy's Chapel trench we don't have a Roman villa in fact we don't seem to have any sort of building at all something odd seems to be going on in this part of the field where we've got lots of earth work banks and ramparts up until half an hour ago I thought this big earth work was part of the Norman castle but now Mick says it may be something entirely different Stuart you're our lumps and bumps man what's your take on all this well I think we have got an earthwork here the Civil War period but not the Stephen and Matilda Civil War the later sense of award 17th century round heads and Cavaliers period so two civil wars on one side it's looking very likely at the moment that's extraordinary is there now we know that rat courthouse you see through the trees yes had a Reuters garrison in it during the Civil War and that the Roundheads besieged it for six weeks and that the fight cannonballs so they needed somewhere to do it from I think this is a civil war siege working dad by Oliver Cromwell yeah indeed how does your work tie into that well it matches um we move up to that north western corner see that shape well there is very reminiscent of the bastions where they used to mount the cannon during that period so does that mean me that we're not gonna be able to find any more of our Norman castle because it's all been destroyed by these later earthworks well I think that's the problem in this half of the field the trenches with dug have just got masses and masses of dumped material put in which which reflects these earthworks so whatever's in this here is gonna be quite well buried so I think we need to change across this just to test that out but you know it bears out my sort of concerns the easy values that we weren't quite dealing with what we thought we're dealing with so we put in a new trench to test Stuart's theory that we've got a 17th century civil war fort buried here and I'm starting to get a little worried because if Stuart's right and we do have a fort on this side of the field then it could have destroyed a lot of our norman castle these things are thrown up in a couple of days the the Civil War defenders who don't only take 50 60 men a couple of days to do something like they do at least fills trenches looking good it's taking him a little longer than he thought to uncover the strange blob in the middle of the tower but our new 3d GFS model shows that it goes down at least as far as the outer wall and we're still getting lots of really nice medieval pottery from this strange look note your new break Oh new break ins oh look at that oh yeah ah look at that fabulous come on in tell me about that well some real boresville balusters juggling made him up on the Oxford she became shipbuilders the classic 13th 14th century plays for a year in Oxfordshire so that is lore that is like the staircase balusters there's the shapely leg yeah yes yeah a nice tall neck nice bulbous body and then going down to a nose and I sort of tapered foot it so I can gray and on it I suppose yeah big big strap animal fusing with Slash decoration on it then you get all this applied decoration room letted and coloured slips painted on it although we know Matilda's army controlled rad cot castle during the anarchy of the 12th century we still don't know who actually built it so Helen and John have been looking at the records to see if they can shed any light on red cots Norman owners John given that we're looking for a norman castle here do we have any idea who would have owned this area at the time of the conquest well we do know who had rad cot in 1086 20 years later because Domesday book says that it was in the hands of a man called alpha of Farringdon and obviously is a very interesting character he was an Englishman but he was actually richer in 1086 and he had been at the time of the conquest how come well William must have trusted him he was one of a group of ink administrators who knew have a country rang whom william found it worthwhile to support and trust and so he's one of that select band of english who collaborated and who were built up by williams regime what about at the time of the anarchy at the time of the fight between Stephen and Matilda do we know who was here then we don't have a certain but it's pretty clear that a lot of Alice's lands went after about 1100 to a man called Hugh of Buckland Hugh was one of the king's major supporters and henchmen in the upper thames area now he died about 1120 but he had a son called William and it may have been William de Buckland who owned this at the time of the eleven forty to see just how much of William de Butlins castle has survived is open to question some of these earthwork banks which we once thought were roman ramparts are turning out to be much later we put a trench in over here to see if Stewart's theory was right and that this big earth work was actually some kind of defensive structure thrown up by the Roundheads in the English Civil War have we gone rational this changes everything we've hoped for here we have a stone revetment it's a it's a complete budge job they've just thrown it up in about three days what is a revetment what's this for a revetment is essentially a holding ball in the middle can you see here there's this loose soil yeah this is the store that's been bought in its garden soldiers great a bank and here we have the revetment on the other side to hold it in so you've got a load of guys throwing up a wall they're throwing up a wall they're chucking a load of stuff in really really quickly yeah that's quite compelling but dating evidence the dating evidence is perfect we have this 16th 17th century pottery which is at the time of the Civil War and also if you come over here we've actually just found this sweet little horseshoe you can just imagine a round head trotting on his horse through this field of buttercups so how do you feel about your trench this trench has actually been behaving for once Thank You Rochelle I do like the idea of a trench behaving itself we put in another trench over there we put that in because we've got some intriguing geophys there was a little structure that seemed to be divided up two three like three little rooms or something which me originally thought might be a Norman Chapel but then he had a slightly more off-the-wall idea that it could be a Roman villa is this trench behaving itself Tracy no no really no it's not what we expected in what way no stone walls what have you got what we have got is these layers here of mortar and small bits of stone there's wall plaster in there that's all demolition material from a building it's not it well no because cutting through the demolition we then have Robert trenches where the stone walls would have been coming down that way would it be fair to say basically you have no idea what's going on no I think we know what's going on we just don't know what it means yet great so while Tracy's trench is still a bit confusing we are beginning to get a better overall picture of our site and it looks as if local folklore about the Civil War could be right raksha's trench proves that there was an earthwork bank built here in the 17th century and it seems to have formed part of a much larger fort it covered almost half the field how on earth did we miss that one the northern rampart would have been studied with cannon to fire on the Royalists holed up inside nearby rad Cod house the fort probably destroyed a lot of the castles remains so we're lucky that fills Tower was on the other side but Tracy's trench is slap-bang under one of the ramparts if there was a chapel there the fort could have erased all traces of it but we're not giving up we've still got one more chance to find another building from the Norman castle even though this square shaped feature on the GF is is underneath the fort it's showing up really strongly with 30 metres away from the main keep it's on the same alignment I mean the thought is could it be a kitchen bake house something like that so bridge opens a trench to find out what it is yesterday Stuart and Henry wanted to find out if the norman castle was surrounded by a man-made moat but after looking at the river and taking some soil samples they've discovered it didn't need one so what you're saying is that bass but everything out there is boggy wetland that this actually sits up as an island in the middle of all that that's right and it's not just in the medieval period there's been in Ireland since very earliest prehistory from the coring the lowest deposits a glacial so we know that that edge has always been the edge of an island so people must been here for more since people were in the areand and you think that Matilda this will be a perfect place for to to defend and hole up here it's surrounded by bog and marsh it's got control the river crossing control the road north and south so as an island the field would have been an ideal place to put a castle and to defend rad cot bridge why was rad cot so strategically important you've got to remember the situation in 1140 - this is at the height of the war between Stephen and Matilda and Stephens on the offensive Matilda has retreated to Oxford which is her base at this point and she's fortified various places along the Upper Thames which are between her and Stephen so where is Stephen Stephens coming from the west and he's the van Singh towards the Upper Thames area so what does he do next well the Equality love his reign the Gesta stefani says that he attacks the two castles which Matilda had fortified at Bampton and a trad cot and then the castle at Bampton fell so the guys at rad cot would have had a problem though they wouldn't know whether to continue fighting or whether to surrender yes they can see that Stephens coming soon they know that his army at the moment is very strong they've got a hard choice over in the field we've decided to concentrate our forces on bridges trench where she's found a stone wall the archaeologists are taking a complete guess that it might belong to the castles kitchen based on our knowledge of other norman castles so if we got a building here that dates to the Cape and fills trench it's bring a bit earlier actually bridge I mean looking at this you know you've got all the typical early medieval course words from around here lots of the sort of the Cotswolds limestone stuff I mean it all looks like late 11th into early 12th to me so at last the pottery from bridges trench suggests we may have another part of the Norman castle in fact we've got more pottery than we could ever have hoped for from Phil's trench we've got pieces of pot and bowls from the very early Norman period this suggests the Tower was built shortly after the conquest perhaps even by Alf seer Farrington that would make our stone keep extremely rare because most early Norman towers were built out of wood but the big surprise is in the towers destruction because Phil's also been getting pottery from the demolition layer of the tower and it reveals that it was pulled down not long after the Anarchy ended these five sheds are a type of pottery called mighty where this gets common by the end of the 12th century and we've also got this pit which is very very early Brill boss will work again this comes in round about the end of the 12th century what we haven't got is any of this which is the 13th century glazed work so I'm pretty confident that the castle was demolished round about the end of the 12th century by the you say the eleven seventies eliminators Amaya it's gone by them yeah so it looks like our norman tower was demolished a lot earlier than we thought this great stone structure which must have taken years to build only lasted for around a century but it stood during one of the most turbulent periods in English history the anarchy and tomorrow we're going to carry out our own siege of rad cought castle beginning of day three at rad cot in Oxfordshire and although the weather's taken a turn for the worse we're hoping our Luck's about to change yesterday we discovered that a lot of our norman castle could have been destroyed by the construction of a 17th century civil war fort this morning with just one day left we're determined to get back on track and find out just how much of Matilda's castle has survived we've got the main building the keep and Phil's been slowly working his way inside it but in the Middle where we expected to find a big central pillar he's in fact discovered something rather different I can see a long rectangle not a central pillar that's because we got two things the central thing which is this is a really substantial piece of masonry and I think that that is that the same date the same build as the castle and it literally is standing in the middle of the key to hold the roof up so it's basically the bottom of a huge column isn't that's right and that will probably go right the way down into it have deep foundations but what you've got here is something which has been added on here is the edge along here of this central pier and beyond that you've got this pitch stone foundation with an edge running all the way out there and you can see there's also an edge running along here so what do you think's going on well I don't know at the moment but either way what it does seem the shabbiness of that foundation implies to me that whatever it was done it was done in a hurry so while phil stands there scratching his head we crack on with finding the rest of the castle and this is the plan for day 3 Phil's going to try and uncover more of the pillar as well as extending his trench to investigate the area outside the tower we're also going to take another look at our gatehouse and Chapel trenches it's becoming increasingly clear that the later fort has damaged whatever might have been in them only tiny fragments may be left so we're going to have to work hard if we're going to find these two buildings we've also decided to look for something new we've been getting enough early pottery to suggest that there might have been a settlement here before the castle so Raksha puts in a new trench over this dark line on the geophys survey which could be a boundary ditch from an early medieval village over in her dredge bridge is digging what she hopes might be the castles kitchen and she thinks she's just found the first evidence of cooking let's see to marry up the to me doesn't more like a bread knife doesn't hurt it does look like a predator you sure those may be evil to their bread knives in the middie they must have had bread so medieval bread knife or not it feels like we're getting closer to the people who lived here but although we know Stephen and Matilda fought over rad cotton 1142 we still haven't found anything to prove that the fighting had an impact on the castle itself when Matilda's army knew that the next-door castle had fallen and that Stephen was coming in their direction what would they have done well presumably when Matilda came here she would have fortified the site with temporary defenses like like earthworks and Palisades which would all have been put up in a great hurry yes she would have had much time there wouldn't be much time no and the atmosphere would have been extremely frightening in fact we got an extremely vivid account of the siege of a small castle in the chronicle of Stephens reign describing the siege of Ferrand early just down the road and only three years later than this and this talks about the building of elaborate siege machines around the castle and positioned archers and then there was a great hail of arrows down onto the castle Stephens army was massing and climbing up over the ramparts it was tall be very frightening Stewart and Helen are trying to get an idea of what it might have been like for the defenders of RAD cot during those dark days we're going to explore how King Stephen might have attacked the castle with the help of a Norman throwing weapon called a trebuchet well what sort of range would you get from the friendly sort of out of this engine we've had 150 275 metres with herbs or two to three pound rock but they fire all sorts of different pieces of material out of it you'd get bees nests forms nest bits of rotten carcass anything that made the life miserable inside the castle so what are we going to use in the experiment we're going to use some very dangerous grapefruit why a grapefruit but it's just nice to safe because there is one drawback to these engines than they do misfire and if it misfires it's either coming out the back of the engine at head height which can be quite bad for one of us or going straight up in the air which could be quite bad for one of you people oh no spring look the grapefruit has landed and Henry goes off to measure the distance okay Henry half hour was that right I was 87 meters 87 meters got what and if you'd like to learn more about medieval siege warfare oh you can find out at the time team website back on site and it hasn't taken raksha long to find evidence for an earlier settlement she's been investigating these boundary ditches on Rogers original GF is but just how old they are takes everyone by surprise they're Roman oh well that's a turn-up for books well you know it accounts for a lot of the pottery that we're coming across you know across the side we've been finding lots of Roman pottery in medieval features and it does seem to suggest that there must be a Roman settlement underneath the keep so that solves the mystery of all the Roman pottery we've been getting since day one it shows that our fields has been used and reused over the centuries we know it used to be an island surrounded by marshes which would have made it very attractive to the first Roman settlers it's also likely that the anglo-saxons would have lived here too and when the Normans arrived here after 1066 they put up a castle here followed five hundred years later by the Roundheads who built a fort on top of that but this afternoon's really good news is that the fort hasn't destroyed all evidence of the castle Bridger has been looking for the castles kitchen and at last she thinks she's found it is this looking any more like a medieval kitchen well we have found a lot more part that's got a lot of soot on it so it looks as though it's been used for cooking or at least on a half you've also found your doorway yeah good what's happening here it is behind me you see this brown splodge here yep this is where the door jamb would have been and it's been robbed away right I'm standing in the actual doorway right this orange material this looks like the bedding layer for a pathway that's leading straight up towards the keep right direction yeah and the idea of date at its earliest we have got pottery dating to the early 11th century do you think by looking at the construction of this wall that you might be out of date it more closely although it's quite a narrow wall the way it's built and the way it's finished is quite good quality it's quite similar to the keep really the cooking pottery and the earlier bread knife suggests this was indeed a kitchen dating to around the same period as the norman keep so it would have served food to the knights and their servants in the castle it's not quite such good news in our gatehouse and chapel trenches but it's not as bad as we once feared the rubble in our gatehouse trench seems to be part of a collapsed wall which might be the outer wall of the castle the ditch of the civil war fort has been cut through it we haven't found a gate house but the geophysics still suggests we're in the right area so if it is here it's probably buried beneath all this and we just don't have time to take it all out in Tracey's trench we can't say for sure if we have a chapel but we do have some kind of building all the stones seems to have been removed from the walls when the building was demolished and the later fort even it raised a lot of the demolition material what's left is a thin line of stones which could be a drain this is one pace I hope I don't break it right from day one Phil's trench has given us our best preserved part of the castle the tower but we now realize just how close it came to being destroyed because Phil's found a huge ditch just a few feet from the tower and the evidence suggests it's part of the later fort that wiped out so much of the Norman archaeology beautiful Hey look at that and that amazingly and that absolutely spot-on it's the standards of early post medieval pottery around there we call it red ware cuz I mean you know it's bright orange fabric mid 16th to 17th century probably more 17th and mid 16th really show civil war absolutely brackets a civil warrior easily we've also dug up a huge amount of mud from the bottom of that ditch and thanks to our metal detectorists Dave tough REE we've just found something buried there which causes quite a stir someone said race over here isn't quite sure bitter goblet oh look at it bridge what can we say about it oh we can see that it's pewter but what would be nice is if this I'm sort of engraving on there on the base of it or something like that we might have maker's marks we could have anything that might date it because the goblets from the Civil War ditch it probably dates to around the 17th century bridge takes a break from digging to see if cleaning it can help us to date it more accurately but there's one more little mystery to solve why the tower central pillar was turned into a wall and we've called on Richard our castles expert for help why do you think it might have been built perhaps somebody's trying to strengthen this keep for some reason perhaps during the anarchy so the building underneath that big timber beam and building a big cross wall so this might be our first tangible evidence of Matilda's army on the side exactly I mean I find it a very favorable interpretation the point is that this foundation is such a rubbish build it makes it look as though it was put up in a hurry and this idea if this wall is continued right the way through the key means that you can effectively devoid one key into two separate keeps you can defend all of them at last after three days of digging we've got what we came here for evidence linking this Norman castle to the anarchy of King Stephen and Matilda maybe even to the siege of 1142 and after looking at the landscape and using our trebuchet Stuart thinks he's worked out how King Stephen might have attacked the castle if I was going to be seize his castle that's where I put a trebuchet along that road not only if you got can you lob things into the enclosure from it but you've also got control of the road itself you can almost cut off the castle here so although it's a really strong defensible position because it's surrounded by marsh and so on if you lost control those roads its strength also becomes X we klas should actually literally be trapped in it you couldn't get out reinforcements couldn't couldn't get in yummy to be completely stuck in there surrounded by water the defenders would have been trapped with no option but to surrender so when king stevens mighty army arrived that's exactly what they did and perhaps to make sure that rad cot was never a problem again the castles Tower was pulled down soon after the war ended but never one to let history get in the way of a good story time team is going to imagine what might have happened if they hadn't thrown in the towel what are you two doing there's a coconut shine it does something but one of the things that they use Trevor shows for to fling over the walls of a castle that was being besieged with with any defenders they can get their hands on and kill they would behead and throw the heads back it's quite revolting but it seems to have worked so you two sick people have made some happy a mache heads well we haven't made them the children from Farrington primary school have made bees that they're just a little bit too like to fire from that so we're setting up as targets instead that's even worse so these are now the garrison and you're going to fire stuff at them we're gonna fire grapefruit at them you are sick and we're home gage my lads are you ready when I give the signal let the fruit fly you ready like it's a looker one two three and that demonstrates why Stephens army won I think it's been a great three days we now know rad cot was once home to one of the earliest norman stone castles in england the main tower was built not long after the conquests in 1066 to defend the important river crossing perhaps by alf sia Farringdon a local anglo-saxon working for the Normans inside the tower was a huge central pillar holding up the first floor this pillar was later turned into a wall probably to strengthen the castle during the fighting between Stephen and Matilda the tower would have been surrounded by other buildings we found a kitchen and although we can't prove it they might also have been a chapel and a gatehouse but the evidence for most of this was destroyed when Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads built a siege fort here in the 17th century but at least that fort left us with one of the most special if still rather muddy finds we've had on time team equal others me well I have never seen anything as complete as this is it is just amazing this on the bottom no it's a makers mark took one waow iiw a but the eye is for a J I think almost certainly and usually this is a husband and wife and I would guess this is going to be John and Anne and the W well the most common surname is that we have today beginning with W is Williams the trouble is is an awful lot of common surnames of giving the w but it is just just lovely it really is a wonderful discovery and along with all the pottery is just one of so many superb finds from the past three days it's intriguing to think that there might be a few more earthworks got around the country hiding secrets like the ones we've uncovered here at rad cot from Roman settlers to Saxon Lords Stephen and Matilda not to mention a couple of civil wars we found evidence of some of the key moments of English history but what stood out for me about the archeology has been the debt we owe to all those potters quietly working away making their wares for hundreds of years enabling us thank goodness to put dates to the real history of ragtime hit channel for calm slash time team to get the lowdown on this dig catch up on past programs and watch exclusive video clips later tonight channel 4 another alternative look at the spread of Christianity its history continues at 7 latest news comes next

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

Views: 483,944

Rating: 4.882391 out of 5

Keywords: Time, Team, Full, Episodes, Season, Timeteam, Archaeological, Sites, Serie, argeologie, archaeological

Id: BW-EkpOyTRg

Length: 47min 59sec (2879 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2013