The White Queen's Hidden Castle Beneath This Leicestershire Mound | Time Team

if this one thing time teams taught me it's the people's homes and Gardens can contain some pretty amazing archaeology and they don't come any better than this see this wall here that is medieval and that tower there that is part of a 15th century brick manor house oh yeah and that hump there that is the remains of a Norman castle but what's even more extraordinary is that all these buildings which span over six centuries of history were once owned by the same extraordinary family which include a Norman Lord who fought at the Battle of Hastings and later a queen of medieval England so our task in three days is to recreate six centuries worth of posh residences just hope we're still standing at the end of it [Music] Grube old hole lies in Leicestershire three miles from Leicester and to my mind it's an archaeological theme park there's an 18th century farmhouse graced with the ruins of a magnificent 15th century brick Manor while in the garden medieval masonry rubbed shoulders with a huge mound or Motte the remnants of a Norman castle - a classic just a big mound of dirt and then there's a big old Bank oh here look enter look oh yeah there's a lot here and it's all the more tantalizing to us as no one knows what these buildings originally looked like or when they were built even more amazingly ruby was in danger of being lost forever until it was rescued by some new owners just over a year looking at it quite closely it's not in the greatest of Nick is it I must admit when we first came across it was boarded up all around really and my brother's with carpenter and glazier he glazed 63 panes of glass the day we moved in and inside all the copper pipe was stolen the place was trashed and the fires have been started inside as well because your father I am indeed yeah Jim you were looking after it on behalf of the nation you must be feeling rather nervous about it absolutely every time we came out it deteriorated further and I became more anxious we were going to lose it to fire and so when ball turned up and he said he went for the fire service it was a perfect potential buyer what would you like us to find out there's a lot of historic fabric that you can see there's the house Thursday Martin as the other fragments are wall sticking up out of the ground and there's a story Rivera this very wealthy family was able to sort of make and remake the place they lived if there's one part of your fantastic property that you'd like us to bring to life what would it go it'll be the Motte I'd love to know what's underneath the mop there it's not everyone's got the castle in their own back garden and you have the great snow there's only the lies underneath let's look under them what [Music] big ballin Tim asked a pretty simple question can we sort out their garden but from your point of view that's quite complex is now I don't know it's complicated it's quite a lot to go at yeah you know because we know the stuff down there where that wall is we've got the Mafia but all the earthworks down there I suspect the stuff beyond sort of minor chaos going on behind you Jimmy trying to wheel the geophys up and down the hill we've got all this stuff being cut lurking in the background there there's Phil hacking away doing a bit of God yeah it seems to me you've already decided where you're gonna put the first trench in I think we're bound to start with the moths this is the mound of the original castle earlier excavations show there's a stone tower which we should have to look at and this should have been the sort of strong point to the castle and I mean next to the MOC would have been the Bailey and in there would have been the hall the kitchen the stables the outbuildings oh the living area of the cuspid so you reckon the Bailey will be down here somewhere softly that way because that's where the later castle that's where the surviving building is so the logic is to start here because it's the earliest yeah and gradually work our way out that's right and what we'll get I think is at least three phases of building of this of this castle site well we don't find the Bailey's in that direction because if it is I'll have to dig up the motorway so to launch our attack on this fantastic site we're starting with what we think was the home of Ruby's first residents the Normans geophys have started to survey the top of the Motte to see if they can pick up any evidence of that original castle but Phil's already ahead of the game as he thinks he's found our first glimpse of it just down the slope there's a big stone there well you know they say filled one stones are stone two stones a norman castle or in my neck of the woods two stones is just a couple of stones but this does look promising and the perfect place to open our first trench to see if we do have part of the norman castle and evidence of the norman family that owned ruby for centuries a family so powerful that an internationally best-selling novelist has devoted years of research to them fundamentally this is owned by the gray family pretty well from the time that the first gray arrives as a companion of William of Normandy in 1066 and they stay here pretty well to the 20th century the gray family so is that connects it with Lady Jane Grey Oh exactly as it comes down you can see they make some absolutely fantastic marriages here we've got the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk various lords and even the Duke of Norfolk mare Sir John grey mare is Elizabeth Woodville and she goes on after his death to marry Edward the fourth the King of England there at the very top of a very very competitive heap and talking of people at the top of their heat films found his initial couple of stones are turning into a considerable pile of stones but are they our first evidence of the gray family anyway yeah sure right we have Tony we have got the remains of the stone building on the Mont look let me show you on the geophysics here is the stone building on the top of the moor and our trench is exactly here and we've got the wall here look Taylor there is the leading edge of it the outside face of the wall it's coming out into this quarried area and in that direction is filling up most of the side of the trench well that's the promising stuff but it gets better than that Tony you know there was some excavations done in the 60s on top of the MOC there well we've actually got photographs of one of those trenches that trench is right on the top of the man look how wonderful this set of stone steps is leading down into the Motte so that should be under there somewhere all that material is rolling on the top of the mall this is not this material here this is not this wall this is a totally separate excavation that they did in the 60s that's extraordinary I thought we were going to be trying to find out how high this tower went it now seems we're gonna be looking at how deep it went as well this is turning out to be rather a good dig afternoon of day 1 here a groobie in Leicestershire where we're looking at some of the most fascinating and complex archaeology you can imagine anyone having in their back garden it spans over 600 years of English history starting with this little hillock which is actually the Motte of a Norman Motte and Bailey castle now I'd have imagined that we would put in a couple of little trenches at the top somewhere but in fact phil is now attempting to get right inside it because we believe we've got evidence of a hidden stairway so what do we got here Jimmy well this is the radar data and we've got the slices here getting gradually deeper into the ground and so you can see that at the eastern end of the platform we've got what looks like three sides of a tower but with the north edge missing going down the slope somewhere and where is our staircase there must be somewhere on this side somewhere down here what's going on well it's intriguing because you know is it a tower that's on top of the Motte or is it a terror that's within the Motte you mean they could have put a tower on top of the mat and then stairs going on inside it and built some sort of set or something like that or easy the terror that's there already and they've piled the play around it so the terror sticks out at the top well if it's the second of those two alternatives yeah and we know that the modern Bailey's Norman then presumably the tower would be earlier possibly even late Saxon yeah but where Phil's digging there we should get that war coming out in relation to the the clay of the mound on the outside and any feel inside so quite which version of that we should understand eventually there's still a lot to play for well this certainly raises the game a tower and staircase buried deep into the ground but not necessarily Norman and I thought 600 years of buildings was enough to contend with but at least fills certain how to rise or should I say descends to the challenge we are desperately came to get to the bottom and a wall must get to the bottom for this trick to have any value at all we have to get right everyone clear we've got to get to the bottom of the wall that way we should be able to find out if the tower was here first and the Motte was built around it or if the Motte came first then the tower plunked on top on most time teams there would be a big enough challenge to keep us going for three days but we've also got a 15th century manor house and a medieval wall here to get to grips with and Mick thinks the key to all of that is the Bailey which he believes would have surrounded the Motte I understand what is the hill with the big building on the top but what's a paling well the Bailey is the enclosure next to each there's our mark look and these ditches and banks here I think a part of the Bailey this building is probably inside it probably comes up to the road and then back somewhere like that it's defined by a banking ditch around the outside inside and have things like the hall the pantry and buttery kitchen barns and stables we know there was a chapel all the structures that were supported the people living in the castle if this structure here is part of the main hall then that building over there I will be the replacement for that as its upgraded in the in the 1516 century so one of the things we need to do is to GF is this field in front of us see where the other walls of this structure are see if it looks like a [ __ ] popper trenches since you've written dated so GF is begin to survey the field in front of the MOT for any evidence of the building's Nick would expect to find in a bailey and crucially whether this standing wall once formed part of a Great Hall at the same time Stuart's scouring the garden for evidence of the banks and ditches which would have surrounded these buildings forming the perimeter at the Bailey and what makes this so exciting for me is that we've got a real chance to put people in any buildings we do find because we do know that they were all built by one extraordinary family the greys this is Hugo Manuel who comes over to England with William of Normandy as part of the invading army wins at the Battle of Hastings and is rewarded by William who now works himself William the first of England with an enormous grant of land which includes groobie have we any idea of what sort of man he was well we know when they excavated him he was 5 foot 8 so it was actually amazingly tall for the time and there's a great story about him at the Battle of Hastings this comes from a contemporary source someone called waste a vassal from Romania which is our Hugo was that day in great peril his horse ran away with him so that he was near falling for him leaping over a bush the bridle rein broke and the horse plunged forward the English that's the enemy of course seeing him ran to meet him with a hatchets raise but the horse took fright and turning quickly round brought him safely back again so it was obviously was in the cavalry who was out in the forefront and he survived did he actually live here we know that he fortified here and he created a base here for himself we actually know that because after the death of William of Normandy he doesn't support the nominated heir William Rufus but supports Williams oldest son and so he has to build up the cost we fortifies it he builds up the walls expecting trouble he himself had to go into exile after rebelling against the king but he was allowed back into England and he actually died here but it was his wish that he be buried abroad and so they embalmed him as it were in salt which was a perfectly reasonable way of doing it wrapped him in an oxide and shipped him back to France he could be laid to rest where he wanted to be so our Norman Hugo certainly fortified our castle at Ruby but did he actually build it from scratch or did he just refurbish an earlier building when he was given the land after the Battle of Hastings and as Phil continues to dig down to get to the bottom of it and yep to the bottom of his war recourse as we got there now Tracy's began to open our next trench in front of the Motte because we've located another building in what we hope is the castles Bailey so what we're doing here Paul is just having a look on the basis of the radar and what would think the rest of this building is that you've got a wall here as it shows up quite well well it didn't on the resistance in fact I mean all we saw was a massive rubble and that's those high readings in black they're right when Jimmy did the radar we can actually get a really clear picture these walls so those will be buried below the rubble just go back to our other series it looked to me as if there's your existing wall this one it looks as if we've got an end war and a parallel war and if you look on that wad we've got something like a projection that might be a an Oriole window there's like a bay window on the side lighting the upper end of the hall whether family will decide we picked this part of it as we may see the corner and in the beginnings of that that projection and in that area so that will be where all the car medieval masonry the decorated window glass the broken goblets they'll all be in there we don't see any goblets in the rider so four o'clock day one and away from planet Mick we've now opened two trenches hoping our latest might uncover the Great Hall within the Bailey and in Phil's trench the castle on top of the Motte and Phil's finally got his first piece of dating evidence well you got then piece of work Flynn yeah don't you reckon that is there I wonder if it's not early Neolithic or something like that I want to saw it surface there I thought it might be part of a polished axe but it's not it's it's just the flake awful on off the outside of a piece of Flint still no snow but then what you're dealing oh yeah yeah I mean looks very impressive film isn't it what we've been doing you can see here we've actually got the main wall going right up through it what we're standing here is is a big rubber trench alright and you can actually see these lovely course stones going across all the way across to give us some nice edge to the wall coming down there so all this red stuff we've got here it's more - as well as that's Royce is all there the stuff bonyen it together but just as you've come here look what I've started to get down the bottom here look it's starting to go a lot more clay so do you think we're near the bedrock there well I don't know you've only just arrived and I've only just found it so I don't know when you'd look at it I mean do see something really really impressive think how much more impressive it is going to be when we get down to the bottom yeah because if that is the old grain surface the old ground surface that's gonna run in HoN you hate this man dear just think how tall that section that walls gonna be so Norman or Saxon fils Castle certainly beginning to look quite substantial and after only a day Stuart's efforts have paid off he's identified the perimeter of the Bailey and yes we're in it so huge Bailey stonking great castle massive walls in Tracy's trench roll on tomorrow beginning of day two here at groobie old hall in Leicestershire where we're investigating the family homes of an extraordinary dynasty the greys and the star of the archeology so far has got to be this man-made mound and and these three meters of medieval wall which we think is part of a Norman castle that Phil's excavating not only that but it seems that we're going to dig even deeper for this a long time since I've seen you excavate a wall that size this is a seriously big wall Tony and it's such a great thrill to get into a really deep hole but of course there is a really serious side about digging this deep hole and that is to find out how old this wall is and how it was constructed and the only way we can do that is to carry on digging deeper and get to the bottom of it it's not gonna be a bit dangerous it looks like it could collapse on you know I mean what we've we've had to consider that but you can see what we've done we've already made the trench much much wider so that effectively slopes off the size it means we can go much much deeper so can I walk up your Terrace II you can now but once we clean them you keep off of there yeah yeah because that could be a lighter structure yeah that's some warm week it's fantastic any of you but we have a real problem with this now which is what well we've got the radar that shows a tower there that's Phil's trench that's where the wall sticks out but we can't really relate it to the 1960s excavation so we can't be sure where the steps are where the walls are then you've got this lovely picture for the 1960s without those steps in it but I have no idea how that relates to our beautiful wall we think if we put a - by chewing on our best guest place yeah and we hit the stairs or one of the walls either side the stairs then we'll be able to tie in all the 60 stuff with a stir so where is your best I reckon it's gonna be somewhere about if you line up fills trench down there look what this line here yeah yeah we reckon a two-by-two about there is our best guess to where the steps are but if we don't do this then we will have come here and done our work we won't have been out related to the nineteen-sixties work and he'll still be hanging in the air you know we need to solve this right right and I thought this was the easy part of the site but it seems to be more of a mountain than a molehill we've melt two days left to build up a picture of all the homes lived in by the gray family at brooby starting with their earliest residence the norman castle and yes we've got walls in the gia fears and in our trench but they seem to be going down and down and we just can't date them yet but we do know that another trench in the 1960s located a staircase unfortunately we can't locate that in the ground so we're putting in a trench to locate that trench sorry that staircase most of our focus so far has been on the Mart of the Norman motte-and-bailey castle but of course there's lots of other really interesting buildings here including the 15th century brick tower and our lovely medieval wall and all this area here we think was probably part of the Bailey of the Motte and Bailey Castle so lots to sort out which is why we've put this trench in and Tracy you've got some archeology for a seven-year high it's only year we huh I mean we've got this wall as you can see running up through here parallel to the standing wall behind us we've got two phases of water here we've got this granite built with the slate and yellow and water but then we've got this sandstone with pink water to the side here Mick do you think this wall is to do with that medieval wall or to the 15th century Tower or to the Bailey or what I think it's yes to all those I think thank you very much ready move but I think this wall looks if it goes with that one and it's part of the late medieval castle there's probably something of the bailey underneath here if we go further down but because the place goes on being developed as a late medieval castle some of these rules probably tie up with the later building and the tower as well as probably with all of those features together you got some fines though we've got lots of good stuff that shows that it's its high states the main one is he's got a very posh roof I've laid some of the stone roof tiles out these are swivel and slate the local material they put the big uns by the eaves and then as they work off the roof they get smaller and then along the ridge you see these tiles have been raised and look like a coxcomb from below these spikes on the top so it's a posh high status builded this is what are we gonna do with this trench now Oh carry on the possibilities that there are earlier structures down below I mean at the moment we know the demolition of this building which is probably about fourteen eighty 1500 you know that because the pottery that's coming from it in the type of tiles and so on is that sort of date so as long as if they're demolishing this perhaps and that down there but because we are in the Bailey there's probably you know quite a depth of stratification of earlier stuff in here where you can try and have a look at that's to get some dating material so the majority of the story might be right under Tracy's feet there's also playful that's right so Tracy's continuing to dig down to see if there's any evidence of earlier buildings beneath her warned but we also now think her wall could link up with the 14th century standing wall and together they would have formed two sides of a hall everything lines up and what's more it looks high status but then things are never that easy a long time team are they I'm not so sure that it's a great hall well you know it's certainly a great building but we've expanded the survey or at least the resistance survey and we appear to have a whole series of buildings and the range here a possible range there and coming back down so that may just be part of a much bigger complex that rectangle is Tracy strange that's right and this big blob is where we thought the Great Hall would be well I can certainly see that all of these lines here they all respect the same alignment don't know they're not the higgledy-piggledy hotchpotch that mick drew as being part of the baler no and what I'm wondering is you could have a formal entrance coming into this courtyard and that then would be the Great Hall rather than that so what we're doing is we're using the radar to quickly look at that area because it's actually giving us more detail than the resistance it's seeing through the rubble so you're putting all your hopes on the radar yeah but the radars just actually hit something along there that makes me think it might be a Great Hall medieval floor tiles in a Great Hall well that tiles certainly tantalizing and having processed the radar John's wall lines look even clearer got to make that four meters then initially so we're putting in another trench to see if this time we have got the Great Hall woman offering the question is if it is the hole what on earth's the building we found in Tracy's trench and that's not the only mystery we're still not sure where the film's wall was built by Hugo the norman member of the brave family or whether it was built earlier by the Saxons and we're still struggling to find out how the mysterious staircase fits in but at least the documents might be providing a glimmer of hope for these documents absolutely fantastic they given what's essentially a list of rooms it seems and even locations of them so we've got a great chamber called the white chamber with a cellar below it was called the wine cellar apparently two chambers are butting towards the north with two wardrobes and on and on it's almost I could kind of walk around and as headed assignment of dour but I don't know what an assignment of doubt is what is this well this refers particularly to Margaret whose husband William d'affaires has died so the deal would have been when she got married her parents would have negotiated with the Pharaohs what she would have got should he die should you predecease her and they would have agreed the standard hour was that you got a third of your husband's lands and property and sometimes income for either your life or until the point that you married again so because it's a third of everything that he owns you have this really very complicated division they're actually kind of dividing up the house so you'd have different rooms within the same house but only two different people there saying okay this rooms yours this rooms yours we'd go right the way down to people who owe him money and people who owe the smallest things some of these agents would collect for her some of them like a third of the house that the new Lord Ferris would be counting as his own house he'd either let her live there should either have a right to live there we might pay some rent for it 1371 this one is dated so that's about the same date as the medieval wall that's still standing in the field so potentially we might be able to find some of these structures in the ground well you might just be right Helen and we're already finding walls in Matt's trench but it's too early yet to give any dates or say whether this is the hall over in Tracy's trench we've now been digging for over a day and I would like to have some idea of what's going on have you got any idea at all what sort of building this might be well I think it's probably a chamber block and a two-story why do you say it's two-story well it is high-status it's substantially built but if you look at the window over there by the door it's only a very small window and what's the implication of the tiny window well if you've got a single storey building high-status you'd expect to have a lot more light coming into it I see that implies that they must be and that the floor above where all the lords and ladies came with the windows in the other big windows yeah so perhaps we can identify at least part of the home which the greys lived in in the 14th century a two-story chamber block with a top floor where the lords and ladies would have slept and it's likely to be the white chamber mentioned in the dowry document with a cellar below possibly the wine cellar so nearly the end of day two and I think our quest to piece together the story of the greys homes is looking quite promising blimey it's quite big [ __ ] it's all 15th century and probably the first half on whether this is the hall or not it does look as though it's the same date as Tracy's building so we do have at least one massive building complex and Phil's finally got to the bottom of his castle wall have you done - right and it's been really really worth it it's just been an exceptional trench I don't really want to leave it I mean we've known for some while about how this wall was built so he got these horizontally bedded stones to make the face on this side and on that side with this massive rubble infill and then periodically these levelling up courses just to stabilize the whole thing but the crucial thing that I wanted to know was what were the foundations like what was they actually built on and what's the other absolutely solid bedrock I'd like to think that because this solid bedrock was here that the area may have actually been present as an upstanding Knoll and that they were sufficiently good engineers or geologists to realize that this was a much more robust geology and that it was provided good foundations for a castle have you found any evidence that any of this could be Saxon there's not a shred of evidence at its action I think this is one beautiful Norman castle so at last we can forget the Saxons and safely say that it was Hugo who built the castle here after fighting at the Battle of Hastings having cleverly identified solid ground his builders built up courses of stonework piling up earth around it to form the Motte it's a great way to end a day or so I thought these buttresses on the right are suffered clear sometimes there's no stopping these archaeologists what sort of width are we talking about six metres maybe we speculated whether this might be the chapel here it's the end of day twos and now we've hit on something really quite extraordinary and very surprising a big house that's grander and more impressive than anything we imagined would be here fingers crossed for tomorrow beginning of day three here at groobie Hall in Leicestershire the ancestral seat of the gray family who for over 600 years lived in some style here you can see this 15th century tower there and there's the remains of a Norman castle from much earlier over there but last night our archaeologists came up with the building which they think was even grander and more elegant than either the tower or the castle what is it that's so exciting about this building well I think we were trying to find out whether this is a Great Hall and I think what we've got now this is too sticky a bit suggest it probably is the Great Hall a large single story building there with this little bit here called the Oriole and what's Oriole an Oriole is a kind of super-duper bay window in the corner between the hall and another wing coming at right angles to a lot of windows into your lights the the end where the family are dining so this does indicate it somewhere where people have very high status and this is sort of you get me the hall I would expect these to be two wings of a number of wings yes yeah so there's more as well the geophysics shows more look that's the building over that side with Tracy's trench in it which is you know probably private rooms this is the hall across here with the trench we've got here and then there's another range you see making a courtyard open here in the middle but last night some of the archaeologists were saying that they'd identified buttresses oh I don't see any but oh yeah Jimmy's enhanced this area here look so if you look at the plan and you can see I see buttresses yeah yeah and there's an incidence of bats Isis as I understand it is that if you're back to seing a wall that's because there's a lot of weight on the wall so there's going to be something that that's high status there or just high status because it's got buttresses yeah I'll move the windows between he's meant to look like a a cloister or something like that you know so we're going to clean all this and analyze it we got to get down into the middle of the courtyard yeah are we gonna have time to do this other wing as well I would hope so but we'll have to look at how the other trenches are doing first we've got less than a day later I know that's the problem yes all right you're clear off the leaders to I'll screw his neck one day I really will okay then so two great trenches in the Bailey but I just hope we've got time to deal with all the archaeology we've not only got to investigate a palatial residence and possibly earlier buildings beneath it but also our Mott although thankfully our brand daddy of digging phil has uncovered the missing stairs but weirdly they just don't seem to be going anywhere Oh jiguro don't understand it let's keep going there's obviously still plenty of work to do but this being time team we've decided to open yet another trench to see if we've got buttresses and if the potential full building is as magnificent as jeepers suggests if it is it really goes to show how important those Gray's were I know how fascinated you are by the Grays but have you got a favorite well my big favorite is Elizabeth Woodville who is married into the gray family she gets married about 1452 and she marries Sir John grey and they have two boys but when the wars the Roses start he volunteers and he goes to fight for Lancaster and tragically he's killed at the Second Battle of Albans leading the cavalry charge so Elizabeth suddenly finds herself a widow and her mother-in-law lady Ferrars won't pay her dower she has no recourse to anybody except really to the King Edward the fourth who happens to be recruiting in the neighbourhood and the story is is that she goes out she stops him on the road she tells him that she needs his justice and nobody knows exactly what happened it happened between the two of them but in a month time they're married in secret and he has to confess his entire court that he's married this girl from in a sense nowhere so a queen of England could once have been sitting here in her own garden a queen of England undoubtedly sat here oh I bet she sat in more tranquil surroundings than today mind you considering we're digging up half his garden brew his present owner fireman Paul seems quite relaxed in the circumstances we already know where the gray slept it would have been in this chamber block over here and we know where they wined and dined the aristocrats in the Great Hall there but the one thing that every medieval family was most concerned about was saving their souls and they wouldn't have done that by praying in the parish church or in some dusty old grotto they would have had their own Chapel which like everything else would have been pretty high status now Helen this is where we've put in the trench to identify the Great Hall and down here is this other range or hole that makes been talking about with the the buttresses and we're somewhere around here I think so where do you think that this chapel might be well from the dour documents we get some idea the first one says that something is near the chapel as far as the chamber above the hall door so it's got to be closest to the hall and here's the hall doors will be down here so it's in this rough area then it goes on to say the chapel of the manor near the close now the close is this enclosed court chart so we know it's near there now we move on to the later on that says a chapel called the old chapel with the cloister by the same towards the south and if it's towards the south it's got to be at the end of this passage one would presume so somewhere around here which is round about where we are what do you think of this way I think it must be somebody in this area I mean there's a piece of Norman masonry built into the wall here look where's that next that black bag look oh well this piece here with the the cuts out of it they might relate to an earlier building somewhere in this area it's not in position but around the back wall you can't see from here you have to go in the garden now where stood here on that wall there there actually are some sandstone blocks it looks being situated they part of an original wall which might fit with the chapel being this location okay it might be that side of this wall but it might be this side of the wall so I think we've got to look both sides with the geofence you know to see if we've got the layout either side of that somewhere in this area but either that side or this side so the team begins to G Affairs on this side of the wall and that side of the wall to see if we're anywhere close to being right about the location of the chapel because middle of day three and what we really need now is another challenge especially with trenches open all over the site documents to decipher and finds to analyze but at least everyone's making progress yes have you Phil got something interesting absolutely Mick I finally got to the bottom right and I think we finally got the actual threshold here for the doorway you know Georgie on one side I'm sure that's right we got the jam there and we've got a jam on this side you probably pay yeah they say the corner that we've got this floor dead level oh yeah I mean that's going into the middle of the tower isn't it we think we got a tower yeah with a doorway yeah and in there as a cellar well this is where this is going into right a later stage they take away the doorway rise nice stone wall probably a decent door and they just plug up the hole with these stones and then they fill the middle in with clay so we've almost cracked it we know when the castle was built in the Norman period who built it Hugh grameen Neil and Wyatt descends so deep underground because there was once a cellar at the bottom of it accessed by our stairs the only question which remains is when the castle was destroyed which will hopefully solve if we can find any dating evidence for when the door was blocked up we should then be able to tie it into the history of the other later buildings we're finding in the bailey because in our latest trench where not only beginning to uncover a hint of those mattresses this is top quality masonry list is really high-end building but we're also finding dating evidence for when they were built this is our star find this beautiful silver coin and I've got Helens have won this and it's one of the Edwards but it's it's clipped so it's not a mink condition silver dating from 1280 so where exactly that come from well this came from demolition layer which is sealing the earlier phases so can you see in there section there's this big brown layer coming through that would fit actually because if they revamp in the site to build these big 14 teams rebuilding was on and that could easily get into it particularly if it's batter than clipped and worn that's exactly what you expect you keep using this word clipped exactly do you mean by well it just means that you know it's been in use for a long time and they've just taken bits off it here and there that's not been sad words about these people have been nicking silver right okay as it passes through yeah they've nip bits off it and of course cumulative do you get a lot over here or so okay it's the reason modern coins which was aren't made of silver have that milled edge to them yeah you can see that is the genuine edge he's not been interfered with so that shows he's been around a while so the date of the coin suggests that the Grays began building their new palatial residence in the 14th century after demolishing their earlier Norman home in the Bailey and over at the Motte Phil's finally found something which might tell us how that ties in with the demise of the castle I got a piece of pottery that's I'm gonna hole yeah but you'll never guess where it comes from your it comes from the bottom of this rubble blocking so that piece of pot exactly dates the demolition of that doorway okay so a spot as master and it's kind of the standard sort of early medieval pottery in this part of the world but it's glazed it's quite fine so probably 13th century I'd say rather look of it got that well it's quite useful because the features down there in the field by the church all the features that date to before the gray house are all producing pottery of the 13th century so it looks like the demolition of the castle is about the same date as a demolition of all the buildings down there when they were being cleared in advance our building the big house well it just goes to show that you can make one giant leap from one small find and one equally small trench that looks awfully like the plans that were over there doesn't it you've got a butcher Asst coming out that's what the scar is here the butchers sticking out so that would I think clearly demonstrate that the chapel that we're looking for here all the building we're looking for here he's on the other side of the wall in the gravel garden at the back I mean the radar we did on this side was inconclusive I mean we've got lots of disturbance as we knew but I'm still convinced if there had been more lines we'd have seen them yeah and we didn't so yeah all the evidence is saying chapel has to be on the side and if you compare the geophys results from both sides I think they seal it the chapels on that side of the wall and if it was anywhere near as impressive as the halls turning out to be it must have been rather spectacular pretty impressive bits of masonry they're fantastic aren't they this is all part of really good quality window tracery glazed window and on this one you can even see where the Masons set out his marks I love this this V bit on mix one well he's got the top of mullion in between two window openings so like that yeah got a little arch either side of an essential upright what kind of date do you think these are I think these are probably early 14th century so how does that tie in with this trench that shows us along with these massive walls that there's a really big building phase of early 1300s around this rectangular courtyard here yeah is this one of the legendary buttresses yes and you can see the Masons marks on it as well great isn't it that we've got the autograph yeah of one particular worker who's working on this fantastic this is clearly a huge building campaign that produces from what you're showing us some sort of really posh aristocratic manor house not necessarily fully fortified but but like a palace or the greys are doing really well absolutely but after that it's demolished and they start to build presumably that big house over there and we're just getting glimpses in each of the trenches of what went on before this lock was put up so this is the bailing of the modern Bailey cars where we've got timber slots and bits of Partin and odd odd little trenches we're never getting a complete plan out of it but at least we can see a much less regular layout of the buildings in this Bailey before they come in and I mean this is a mega project when the greys were at the apex of their power great results we now not only know what groobie's buildings looked like but we can actually chart their history right back to the Norman period after 1066 Hugh brahminy was given the land and built himself a really substantial modern bailey castle with a stone keep and living quarters in the enclosure surrounding it and this was the Grey's home until the 14th century when they decided to upgrade most of the buildings that we've excavated seem to have come in - you surround about the early thirteen hundreds how is that reflected in the history well we don't have any one that we can indefinitely identify as the Builder but we've got here a William Ferrars who summoned Parliament as Baron of groovy and he dies in 1325 so this is about the sort of time that you can imagine them going we've got the name we've got the petition were rising in society what we want is a really nice big medieval you know style house to kind of back that up really what about when our houses were demolished in the late 1400s only 1500 what was going on then well this is this comes into the people that I'm really interested in because Elizabeth Woodville has two boys by John Gray and one of them is Thomas grin as part of her rise in the royal family he becomes a Marquess he's given a marchesini marries an heiress with the title maybe he goes well I'll start building here again and make this the show house that I want it to be if I'm going to be now a great Tudor magnate having been a great Plantagenet magnate so he builds a great brick tower and I think starts work on here so he might have demolished all the stuff that we've been excavating then and that's where we get our brick tower so perhaps when the Grey's fortunes rose with William Ferrars in the 14th century they began to build their stunning medieval home with two-story accommodation a magnificent Great Hall and Batra Strange's forming a quadrangle a property fit for the remarkable Elizabeth Woodville Queen of England and later her son the Marquess Thomas Gray went one better demolishing this stone Palace and building an even more fashionable brick residence our 15th century tower did you have any idea before we came here that under your lawn was a range of medieval buildings I knew that there was some buildings under there that I had no idea our extensive anything no it's it's amazing [Music] [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 396,167

Keywords: Archaeological excavation, Archaeology, British nobility, Carved stones, Challenge, Dereliction, Discovering the past, Edward IV, Fascinating past, Grand manors, Groby, Historical research, Historical secrets, Intriguing history, Lost treasures, Medieval architecture, Netflix for history, Preservation, Team, Timeline - World History Documentaries, White Queen

Id: C_Kk604ogps

Length: 47min 59sec (2879 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 08 2019