Village of the Templars | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

this picture of Christ which was discovered hidden in an outhouse looks remarkably like the Turin Shroud doesn't it it's 13th century and it's believed to have belonged to an order of fighting monks who lived around here and even gave this village its name they were called the Templars and this is temple come in Somerset can Time Team find the remains of where they actually lived and who were the Templars anyway [Music] so I become a two-tone just at least Templars might have knitted well somewhere on this site over the backyard okay what we're going to do is look at the building itself our good old look at the structure you know see what we can find my guess is they're living somewhere at the back well we're looking for well I think if we can define the the area that they occupied then almost certainly there would have been halls barns a chapel you know bakery brew house that sort of stuff inside there so this is a little monastery yeah inside a defined wall yeah with the gatehouse and a deterrent that sort of thing we ought to go off and have a look at Sierra they're getting on actually with the with the survey work and starting to open up the trenches we've been invited to Temple Combe by a modern-day Templar Jeff Wilson bought the manor house because of its connection with the meadow evil order on which the present-day charity called the Templars is based he knows the Knights Templar owns the manor here in the 12th and 13th centuries but he wants to find out how much of his home dates back to those original fighting monks the house has a 17th century appearance but appearances can be deceptive so we've brought along barek Morley our historic buildings expert barracks starting with a grand tour of Jeff's home which we've invaded for the weekend the house has been repeatedly modernized since the sixteen hundred's barracks job is to discover if there's anything Templar hidden inside or below the present building oh well this big room but I think it's been made into one room it was several rooms if yes there's the front door over there oh yes yes owned along the floor underneath either some flex stones these were much yet more worn up this amount that end but where the door comes there's a row of narrow ones as though there was a wall up in between and it turns a right angle here and comes over to barracks already noted that Jeff's house has been built back to front it's more imposing face point Eastwood's he's also intrigued by its unusual l-shape could this red roofed long-range here be medieval in origin but it's around the modern farm behind Jeff's house that Mick things will find the boundary that enclosed our Templar side so we're down at the south end of the site now Tony and when I came and I'd look early earth works in this field shut the gate cuz the cows I think I think he actually helps help to show up because you've got this track down one side but immediately off that you see there's this ditch yeah this here down here yeah and then that rises up onto this Bank yeah which I think was probably the boundary on this side so you know you come down ditch up a bank and then you're inside this all this is inside the a precinct and of course it's drop the lands dropping away over there so that's probably the boundary on that side just by that little phone yeah more less beyond there and if I actually sort of sketch it out a bit of paper here and see what we've got is is the road runs across like that yeah the house is sort of like that with the bit at the back here's the farmer's house we've got a trench going in there because it looks if as a ditch coming across in that direction and then we're over here with a bank and it's coming over there and then it sort of drops away so that could give us the sort of area with the road on one side there are a number of temple of sites where we've got various buildings left and there's there's one it's this one actually that's been excavated and there's this is the layout of this place South whither more South which I mean Lincolnshire this was dug some years ago and there's the gatehouse you see and you see so it's basically a rectangular area and it's full of buildings and is that roughly the same size as this it's gonna be roughly the same sort of thing and it might mean you see that in this field here there are all sorts of barns and other buildings that you know go with it and we've shot know that we've done this sort of geophysics across the area it does look quite lumpy and bumpy here Templeton was a large administrative center for the Templars who acted as a kind of medieval peacekeeping force during the Crusades if mix right and Jeff's house was on the western boundary of our site and if the southern boundary was just beyond the dirt track at the back of this South field then the site would have spread out over a vast area although much of the land is now covered by barns in a farmhouse in the last hour we've managed to dig a trench here in the North Field where Mick believes the topography suggests our northern boundaries the bank ray on this side look which is much more prominent it's much steeper and this presumably is the corresponding ditch presumably yeah I mean outside that you've got earthworks as well which it's clear that down here at the bottom of the Northfield we seem to have a classic bank and ditch but is it showing up in our trench so we're putting a trench in here to establish that this is the boundary here yeah I mean hopefully we'd get ditches and walls and banks and so on you know with some dating evidence coming out of them well how you doing Eric it's looking pretty good actually what about this wall down here that that's cutting across the change yes you know it's just saying this sure is nice very much an edge there's any fines coming out well this is the most amazing thing about it when we were when we were machining up through here and look what we this is probably the best again your trench is undoubtedly there like a trench Oh drat oh it took so long to answer and they're just so many of these are really really nice what sort of period would they be well these are gonna be sort of 13th century hangings aren't they I mean it's a sort of thing these what they're calling caustic tiles because it's a clay tile with a pattern put in and then the pattern is filled up with a different colored clay slip exceeding section there look and the different families who give money to monastic institutions there they commemorated or whatever their coats of arms on the tiles and these are the sort of things that the church would have had all over the floor and probably some of the other buildings as well so have we now definitely established that this Bank on the ditch is the outside edge of that precinct I was afraid you'd ask me that no no I'm afraid not the bottom enfant well we've definitely got a ditch down there but it's nowhere near big enough to to be a major defensive ditch we're modern rubbish so this this particular dish is just a field drainage ditch so what we thought was the northern boundary at the bottom of the trench here is actually the line of a modern drain still it seems we may have better luck at the top carrenza discovered a reference to a chapel here could it be Templar the Oracle shows us where the chapel was which she's obviously just here where it was on this 1887 yeah we know that the chapel was here in the 19th century yes and this is a photograph of what it must have looked like them what we'd like to try and work out is whether that chapel is likely to have been the medieval Chapel it's it's been pulled down now and there was pulled down because it had been decided it wasn't the medieval church we've got we know that the Templars have a chapel here in 1309 when one of the brothers was the admitted around that date there's also a priestly connection that goes right the way back to the Doomsday Book in fact 1086 so there is a nice clerical connection right the way through which would suggest at any rate that there's been a chapel here not necessarily only exactly the same site but could be so we know there was a medieval Chapel here what we don't know is whether this chap this building it was called a chapel in the 19th century was that medieval Chapel oh look at those because if we could just cite the chapel and that would be a major tube nice to do absolutely okay meanwhile barracks summoned us to the long range of the manor house where he's found a beam he believes could be Templar in date some building we we're in the range that runs back from the main house on the front on the roadside and this I call service range now what work I've been doing on both ranges suggests that both of them were actually very very largely rebuilt in the early 17th century that's not much use to us is it well it isn't but that's why I brought you here because this fireplace supported by the beam this whopping great flew above it great chimney flue it's much more than sort of thing you'd find in a medieval place and it's just possible this is medieval that's incorporated and retained in the later house so we find that out through dendrochronology that's right which is why we got a dendrochronologist ok then Robert what do you think are we gonna go with it well unfortunately this lower timber is not OK it's elm and we can't date Elm at all there's no reference chronologies however there is this beam up above and that looks like oak and that looks a much greater that's possibility it's embedded in the fireplace as well so it's not like this right that's wrong what you're gonna do is you'll drill a hole into the wood and you'll have a look at the rings and then you'll compare those rings with ones that you already dated on that's right yes and what I'll do is actually take about a core there's about a size of a pencil out of this timber here I'm a little bit skeptical last time we use dendro it took a long time before the results were processed we're gonna get it by day 3 Oh certainly by day 3 yes I'll work from site here and transmit all the data back to the laboratory at Nottingham and the computer there we'll turn it out overnight and probably maybe even by this evening but probably by tomorrow we'll have a result you know you know it might date but it might not we have to bear that in mind the core Robert takes from this beam will contain a series of rings each year of a tree's life is marked by a ring in its trunk and the width of that ring is determined by the climate the panel created is unique to a particular time period making it easy to date Robert can compare the ring pattern found in this timber to thousands of others via a massive computer database if a match is found then we'll know the date when this tree was cut down let's hope it was felled in the 13th century I know that the Knights Templar were set up in order to protect pilgrims who were on their way to the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades and they were called the Templars because the two people who started the order lived in the shadow at the Temple in Jerusalem but what the heck were they doing with a big place here in Somerset which is after all a few thousand miles away from Israel true well in order to finance their operations they needed to attract to themselves grants of great estates they needed little administrative centers from which to collect in the rents and make sure everything was ticking over and at Temple Combe they planted what they called a preceptory of which there were many all over the country and would this have been a big place well unfortunately only three Knights at any one time seemed to have been operating here the preceptor and two others we don't know an awful lot about what what their organization was not until until they in turn gave way in the 14th century to another Brotherhood of fighting month with another Brotherhood yeah well the Knights of st. John of Jerusalem the hospital is and they took over the preceptory ran it in much the same way and continued here right the way up until 1540 when along with all the other monasteries in England they went up the spout courtesy of Henry the eighth and what happened to this place then looks like everything else it was grabbed by Henry the eighth the Tudors and granted away back at the Northfield carrenza discovered that the stone wall at the top of the trench aligns exactly with a wall of her Chapel exterior north wall of the chapel and that must be this wall well actually got you've got is that the doorsill and the jams rising up from it we've only got the bottom stone with those champers corners what date do you think this building is cuz the Ordnance Survey records said it was about 1200 13th centuries fine is it really yeah whether it's as early as 1200 it's it's a good two centered art so that they're two arcs of a curve and they actually centered on the opposite corners so it's pretty well in equilateral you can see the doorway though that you can see on the photographs berrak shows me this is 13th century this is Templar if we've got this feature here is there the possibility that looking on the other side of the wall we would find more features yeah well that's why we're in the garden here which you gonna have a look at that now and see if we've got the the base of the wall coming out could that be part of the same build well we have to tell ya it seems that while I've been concentrating on the house Mick and Phil have started a second trench closer to the manor house in the farmers strawberry patch yeah we've got one wall down here you're coming out but that's not online at all no it doesn't appear to be at the moment okay if I come across there yeah you're not into a clean neat operating heavy it okay great you can see whether it's at she'd line and you know clearly this is this is a long way out and it must be somewhere down under there about facing where Barry Keyes if it runs through if he runs through well you can see how much higher we are still in here compared to the level at which we hit the foundation's down there but it must be about a meter at least to me yes us a larder so the north wall of our chapel with its doorstep is under this modern field wall unfortunately the East End of our chapel has been lost buried under the farmers new garden but the remains of the walls of the West End may still exist buried under the strawberry patch here still that's for tomorrow John Murtha geophysics basically we need to do more work tomorrow we've gone to the central area there's no sign of any structures yet I think that means that we go on with the main trench that runs down the slope and perhaps will open up another trench on the south side just to see what that band is like there whether we do anything around the house I think it depends a lot on well the dendro date is you know whether we're dealing with somewhere with with a medieval structure into or not and if we can find that out at all could you ask him when we'll have the dendro date and if we if we knew that it was if we'd tart them brilliant if we knew we were dealing with a you know anything of a medieval building yeah we probably wouldn't need to dig next to it to look at the foundations but but if that's not the case we'd have to rethink it it affects the whole planning and we've got something to go on we know where to dig what I've done is take the six samples and tried to get the computer to combine them where they match if they match and then compare that with something like two hundred and forty two hundred and fifty reference cottages covering the whole of the country from about 900 AD to sort of 1990 so what have you got I'd like to build up a bit of tension so I suggest that the Timbers all the Timbers in that's that range were fell in the period sometime between let's say 1610 and about 16 15 probably probably no later than 1620 mind you of course we're dating the the range now it's an archeological question as to whether the date of that range relates to the date of the house or any part of the house well whatever it's not Templar and end of day one and I think probably the one thing that most of us would have put money on was that that fireplace would have been medieval never mind we've got loads of evidence outside we've got the tiles and we've got window ledge or doorway whatever it is for free so already we've got a lot of evidence of the Templars let's find out what happens tomorrow down at the strawberry patch everyone's jumping up and down with excitement apparently there's something in the strawberry patch oh if you're wondering what this bouncy castle thing is it looks like it's going to tip down with rain any minute so they've stacked that over it to keep everything dry Mick what's going on well big stones right so we're just debating what they are what you reckon well it's a bit high up in the sequence we thought didn't we that's right go higher remember the floor levels that we were expecting given the the doorway into the chapel and the other side on the other side of the wall there's still a meter down so we're a long way up in in terms of the level of the ground and therefore a good deal later it's pretty impressed we've got to sort out what its relationship is to the other wall below it you see where our tools repeat is we suspect it's going to be a whole series of walls that we've got to try and relate it to the existing boundary walls which we've seen outside men in their foundation yeah we may have more stuff like that you've got a printout of that yes we're just trying to see whether we've ever got the coloring lights yes in the kitchen our medieval ceramics expert Ellen Murphy is piecing together a floor from the tiles out of trench one it was like weather when this blaze was off but there's another one that we've got you see it's a much greener color so I think you're fairly near that we've got quite a few planar ones as well with a little sort of perhaps a checkerboard pattern yeah she might be or he might have had a flaw somewhere but I don't think so from what we've picked up now which was just alternate colors plain but Eleanor isn't the only expert looking at floors today oh yes Barracks intrigued by the pattern of stone slabs on the sitting-room floor here Jeff believes they show an earlier and completely different room plan from that of the present house 12 eric has found the ghost of these earlier war plans repeated upstairs in the 17th century joists under the present floorboards so unfortunately these rooms were built 400 years after the templars there are two or three other little areas of Britain that have these at this particular time the early 17th century a service storeroom the same as you might have in some medieval houses the old buttery and pantry and and it turns up at the center of these new centrally styled houses that replaced the medieval plan of house which was dying out at the time of the 17th century if there's nothing medieval in or under Jeff's house and the modern farmers destroyed any evidence in the center of our site where will we find evidence about Templar preceptory and its boundary mix convinced we'll succeed in the South field where geo fees are already examining the bank and ditch he showed me yesterday but over at the North field there's some division in the camp the surveyors are ignoring Mick's intuition about the South field and are looking at some earthworks of their own the dendro date on your big fire was disappointed here I'm now barracks saying that all that bit is definitely what 17th century yeah the house well it's disappointing but obviously on a medieval site in the history still on the site so it's still a temple of site so in fact if you look at it logically the whole attempt includes a temple of site so it's not that much different it's still there lunchtime and the geophys results seem to confirm Mick's theory that we've got the remains of a boundary in the South field I mean this is a 40 metre wide strip going 90 metres down so we've covered a large area these might be structures but I'm not sure the main thing of interest is this clear line coming through it partly coincides with the slight earthwork but it's not straight on top but I don't think this is going to be far down I think you'd find it within the top half meter that was all the confirmation McNee did and no times wasted in getting a trench dug across the line of the bank and ditch here in the South field Robin Luke Danny what I said I wanted to ask you whether the temple has really were knights in shining armor but I think you've answered the question for me well the situation was that you've got this conjunction of monk and Knight total lack of show and also lack of maintenance in terms of personal appearance they didn't adorn themselves took no heed of their appearance were often unwashed their hair covered with dust and their faces burnt by the Sun so you've got a very simple display in terms of the way in which they went into battle even though these people were the younger sons often of aristocratic families tracing them back to their grandparents to make sure you know they were of pure descent Knightly Knightly descent they didn't have their own heraldry on their shields just the simple red cross on the white background and this impractical white mantle which they had they've given up the dark life and entered on a life of celibacy but terribly I'm impractical when you were going into battle in the heat of the Mediterranean even though they were scruffy though they were religious incredibly religious I mean we've got here the most sophisticated rulebook which knocks the Road Traffic Act into the shade you hear about the Crusaders being debauched and drunken well certainly no Templar who followed the rule could afford to do that couldn't indulge in that kind of behavior I mean we know they drank yes we've got details here in temple come in 1338 of them in one year brewing 78 quarters of grain to produce beer but then everyone drank beer and wine I mean otherwise they died if you drank the water you'd add it now there's only one thing guaranteed to drag Phil out of a trench and that's a good point so it isn't surprising that he volunteered to find out how the Templars would have brewed this medieval ale we've gotta wait till the temperature gets right yeah yes we need a thermometer for that well we haven't got a thermometer not in they that's what they did so what we've got to do is to look until we can see our reflection in the water yeah right and then that's the right temperature I can see my reflection in the water now then it's so the temperature the water is right what temperature would that be then that what temperature would be about a hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit or sixty-five degrees centigrade oh look at that it really works so this process is what we were doing his name is called the mash in that's right it's mashing yeah now simply putting the grain into the water the water and soaking out the maltose sugar from the grain from the grain yeah okay so what do we do can you smell that malt in God yes did you know what the average consumption was sometimes between a gallon and two gallons a day yeah and yes because it was such a an essential drink it was essential you couldn't drink water because if you drank water you were likely to get typhoid and so the water and in brewing has been boiled perfectly pure to drink yeah was it a sort of job that everybody would have been able to do or you were were there a particular the first professional Brewers if you'd like to call on professional Brewers were the monasteries so Roy and that would have been the Templars as well and yes that would have been the Templars as well so somewhere around here they would have had a brewery yes they would have had a brewery a match like this is only the first stage in a medieval brew but before the yeast can be added and fermentation makes it ready to drink the mash needs to stand overnight you just stack the straw and hay rained it on the top as well to really insulate it down well of course there in medieval times it was a longer prose as I said this was left then until the following day or overnight and then it was strained off right and another brew was made from the same guy the same mash yeah the same mash and they could have they could actually get three brews from one la Cruz and obviously three brews of different strengths so you act the first brew which was a stronger beer all right yeah and you had the second brew which was a what they called a table beer and a third beer which they called small beer right and a small beer was what the children drank so how did their beer compare and strength to our own beers well the table beer was probably about the same gravity or the same strength as our own best bitters would be today so if the the best beer of today is only their equivalent they are table beer there are strong views from pokeo decor then there is evidence of absolutely nothing here at all yes absolutely five o'clock and our new trench in the South field is finished but there's no sign of the boundary so this hump that we thought was the outside boundaries just natural natural why do I think we have yeah this is a this is a land rain and rain which is a fairly modern so we have absolutely no evidence at all right the boundary not here I mean what I'm what I think we ought to look at now is there's another yeah sort of linear feature about 60 meters that way just in front of this field boundary which runs more or less parallel with that field boundary before the bands and I think sure might as well then why did you dig a trench here yeah well with with this is the most prominent feature on this side of the site and you know it's it's it's sort of almost on the edge where it drops away it was a logical place to put a wall in the ditch the geophysics seemed to show that I mean you would have been equally excited if we'd come out here and showing you a great base stone wall you can see it Tony middle showed up you know you can see it does look like a bank oh yeah totally convinced piety you can see this trench and this little hump over it looks just like an earthwork so we're about this when you've got a trench like that yeah how do you plot it they do not do this right down we dug this trench there was nothing in it at all or do you have to bow it's wrong wings we fix its position which which Stewart will do and we'll put things like the fuel drain on back of the bank at our basic dimensions and then we'll have a record in the report that says produce no fines no structures but you know there's in a record of it in case anybody else interpreted in a particular way again I think it was in archaeological term who don't have to allow for that now it's not part of the the picture at all this is the next yes Tony you can hear you can see there's a drop down and a slight rise up rolling so just this tiny little dip down to here yeah so if we do the same again across that yeah yeah [Music] well we still have a couple of hours of daylight left so we might as well have another try at finding this elusive boundary wall let's hope we have better luck this time [Music] the wall mech is pretty thin now I suspect it's actually an early form of fill drain you know whenever it was dug a trench and they put stones in to help the field you know keep the water off the top like the one and the other trench only a bit earlier that's exactly it success in this field really and we have no idea where the outside boundary of the settlement is what are we gonna do I don't think we've got an age anywhere but we've now got a number of structures around in the middle I was hoping that by now that's the right way around if you like that look what what we've actually got now is that this this isn't this isn't that because of the barracks survey and the dendro date is later yeah we've got the chapel at the top and we've got other structures coming out of the trench down here so that the center of gravity if you like has moved to something like that yeah it's a smaller complex and much further north and and much closer to the village yeah 32 hours ago finding two sides of the boundary to our preceptory seem the easiest part of our task this weekend now it seems the most difficult in the time left to us it's the end of another long day and Phil's grain beer is about the only Templar related thing to come out of today's neighbors but at least it means we've got something to drown our sorrows with [Music] day three and we're right back where we started in trench one although it's been raining a bit overnight I think we all just about decided that the house over there is a red herring you see what I mean and the only bit of medieval that we've got is around here the big problem is where is the boundary to the whole monastic complex we've stopped looking right over there and now we're beginning to look over in this area as you can see geophys and the surveyors are already out in that field looking for it that's quite interesting because I learned last night that that's where they've been telling the archaeologists that we should have been looking all the time but that's time team down here as well back in the house tempers are frayed and egos bruised we finally got round to looking at the tithe map something we should have done on day one because we should we should have looked at this well I said you know if we'd have seen that if we'd have seen that on Friday we wouldn't have been farting around in the fields out there we cross cross the temple come tell me couple because we should have looked at the bloody toys free map before because it's got an enclosure on it as try free land that is technical property it's this farm is not Templar property yes houses here but of everything west of that line which includes the present house and all rest of it he said it is not in the tithe free area yeah it's land that they didn't pay any tithes on because they would exempt because they were a monastic order with a lot of privileges granted by the Pope and other people all right and that that sometimes survives right the race fro and he gets onto the tithe map in the early 19th century what we missed out was was it was the really a very very early stage you've just seen what the map showed you know why didn't we look at the time because we're bloody stupid you know I mean we and this thing it's because we we wanted to get started and we also fell into a things we fell into the same trap as everybody has looked at this place and look at this building and say well okay it's got bits of features in it Eitan must be on the side interceptor everybody's beam is looked at that great big fireplace in the kitchen yeah okay if nothing else is early this must be beside looks the boundary might be this feature down here there's a lane coming up to it which turns at something here so there's probably something which is this is butting against you suggests that the perception might be that there's some quite crucial points here yeah do some geophysics we've started we've started that transit across well what we what we're not in a position to do I don't think is to is to do any more excavation but we've got sufficient resources to put in one investigation trench haven't we well it seems as ability I mean in the next some three hours we can get that surveyed okay well that would only take us to half-past one yeah I'd be I'd be I'd be prepared Tony to be to be overruled if we if we if we dig a trench cross that earth work but we don't actually go into it because we wouldn't have time to do the proper recording job if we actually did go into it but at least we might see if there any structures there we might just get some data material so the tithe map clearly shows that the areas of tithe free Templar land were here to the north and east of our site the chapels included but Jeff's house isn't if Stewart's right then we should find that the east boundary wall is somewhere at the bottom of the North field close to the fence here 11 o'clock and the first readings from geophys seemed to suggest that there's something buried under the fence itself but is it the boundary wall the local farmer certainly thinks sir sort of dying on where this wooden fence is now oh really I just automatically assumed we were seeing sort of the footings for the wooden fence I mean it's quite possible that what we're seeing is that wall below this so is it this wall here that's been used to be extended all the way along no this will be buried there a section of God there's a lot of rubble there then so no would you feel about putting a trench across it what do you think that that wall might represent well it's the boundary that goes round the edge of the area of Taif free land which includes the chapel which we're thinking is now the site of the preceptory and it's a boundary that seems to have a have been there for a long-term long time and it would be nice to put a trench across that we can probably fairly easily dismiss the stone wall which is presumably post-medieval but underneath that there may be an earlier boundary feature there's more to do the perceptor could this be our boundary we can't waste any more time talking we've got to start digging if we're going to find that wall but there's a problem our farmer doesn't want his fence knocked down so we'll just have to dig up to it at last Lux on our side how recited trench has revealed a wall and good six feet away from the fence why don't you let him carry on yes we're not gonna have time to do each other well no I think you dare keep going back [Music] meanwhile Robin and I were off to church in the 14th century the Templars were disbanded and persecuted for heresy I wondered whether this was why the temple can picture had been hidden away I was wondering whether one of the reasons they might have been accused of worshipping the strange severed head was because of all these various depictions of Christ's head that they're associated with that's certainly a possibility and it would also be a reason for a depiction like that to be hidden yeah and of course that would also go for a lot of the of the documents which might have incriminated them and could well be a reason why we have so little detailing the day to day life of the temple because they'd have been burnt or hidden in a panic it could well I mean does that mean that we know virtually nothing more about the Templars than you told me on day one well actually I've come across a detailed list of accounts drawn up in 1338 by the Templars successors the hospital is we've got for instance a complete list of all the the servants to hang us on in addition to the three basic Knights who were there we've got for instance a a squire a cook a fisherman a gate keeper Clark Heywood six other servants two boys two pages steward 21 in total and you know the chapel that we've been digging up yeah we managed to find evidence for the wine wax and oil which cost them six and eight thumbs which was half a mark and thus type end of one chaplain who was celebrating divine service there twenty shillings and suddenly with a series of accounts like this you get a freeze-frame picture of what life must have been like here what six hundred and fifty years ago back at the bottom trench carrenza and Phil are starting to find a wall but is it our boundary that is the front edge there that should peel off and that's just tumbled oh that one yeah it's a falling down wall that you're pulling away there it lists looking a lot better along there though on it well that's all going straight down there yeah oh that's better Annette Oh God that's good isn't it bye sir yes yes just got that yeah there's two yeah well there's the show you to the the pot and there's the base of it brilliant yes it's a nice big piece that is so nice sort of gritty for you again isn't it same as that tiny little bit yes sir what you writing then for the date right from medieval well it looks something that could a 12th century couldn't really a bit difficult with the old course or where isn't it Tuesday and we haven't got a room sit agnostic but I'd be happy with that altogether it's a bit bigger than the other baby face still two pieces of pottery but major assembly tables yeah I've got another bit yeah same old stuff yeah we've sort of trebled our virtually our medieval popcorn this is looking like we've found our boundary wall so how could geophys have missed it you know you said it was at six meters but you thought it was the fence well this is actually six meters it is the anomaly we thought because we were so rushed when we were looking that black line clear black line the measurement we thought it was right under the fence that Claire said it was six meters from the start six meters down with a probable boundary wall in our bottom trench it seems that the foundations we've uncovered in trench one are well within our Templar complex the tiles found here give these stone footings of medieval date and with our 13th century chapel at the top of the slope we're probably at the heart of our template preceptory unfortunately it seems the foundations of our Chapel don't continue into our strawberry patch trench all the walls here are much later in date and relate to the 17th century house yeah we're show you it's been staring us in the face all weekend believe it or not we know it was standing down here is what we've got we've got the footings of it here but through here how'd you find this a you just went for a little wander did you I would go and have a look I would open my mind and see what came into it around here can you see any other stone walls stone walls all hedges aren't they yeah the field boundaries around here are all hedges this wall carrying on here make up look at the height of it down here it's up to about nearly seven feet down here this isn't a field boundary wall huge gripping exactly the same sort of makeup yes your classic sort of monastic enclosure wall tall thin doesn't have to be particularly well made it's only enclosing it but the height of that and the final thing clinching thing I think is that if you does it return on that it goes down here and turns there this is exactly on the line of that tie free piece of land on the tired map there was free of tax because it was a much and look through the wall oh there's more is there to clinch it when you look through here through the gap in this wall you can see much see you can see how much higher the ground is that side then this side this walls been here for a long long time for that much ground to built up against it so the boundary wall has been here all the time staring us in the face but does this existing wall join up with the foundations we found in our bottom trench is this wall the boundary to the Templar complex I think I think it must be you know to find a all like that and it's even seated good old with that it's utam you know mitra morning with it ties up exactly with the the one surviving piece of wall behind us it hasn't appeared on any of the the later maps and so on that you know that it's bang where it should be in terms of the the boundary of the tithe free area the clearly the boundary of the tithe free land is more or less the other side of those barns cross to the vehicles up there I wonder by where the inflatable is yeah in the core of their head and was down this wall down here and somewhere the prop under that big mound of soil at the back then we pick up the wall underneath us and it's coming across down in our trench here and across there that's pretty good yeah yeah I mean I think we can be really quite pleased with that it's to have the area to have some idea of the boundaries to have some idea of the of the the remains inside it relocating the chapel that's a great package you know so why were you so incredibly angry early on we've been waiting for about 15 years now never seen you that well I haven't been that angry for a long time and I think it was because I think we could have got to this stage very much earlier if I had if I hadn't have been stupid enough not to look at the most obvious thing to start with I mean I think we probably lost a day or more and we could actually have been in this paddock here probably by mid to late yesterday but at least when Bob comes back when Bob Croft the County archaeologist come back to his holiday we can say Bob you've got to be very careful what happens in that patch because we now think it's part of the preceptory whereas before we gave it no attention at all these foundations suggest a stone boundary wall that would have stood about three meters high a boundary like this would have been pretty impressive but it was more for show than anything else inside the walls our template preceptory would have consisted of a large monastic farm packed with barns stables a brew house bakery and living quarters for the knights and their entourage for these fighting monks the chapel would have formed the focus of Templar life and as such it would have had an ornate tiled floor probably funded by donations from rich local families who had been protected by the Templars while on Crusades to the Holy Land it looks as though for hundreds of years people thought that the Templar Center was up there and that that story would have been repeated and repeated right down to this present day and even we were confused and thought that it was up there but it now seems that actually the complex was more around here and you can see why when we first got here it seemed that that fantastic view would have been in the Templars back garden but now it looks as though the whole aspect of the temple of Complex would have been facing that way and you can imagine if dignitaries were coming out from Shaftesbury which is over there you see that tree-lined route that would have been the road from Shaftesbury they would have seen perched on this hill here this rather grand looking Templar complex you understand why they built it [Music]

Channel: Time Team

Views: 329,535

Rating: 4.8652358 out of 5

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, medieval, holy land, monks, religious history, Knights Templar

Id: 1qPhAC3IBZA

Length: 50min 49sec (3049 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019