Digging for Britain (2010) s10e01 Episode Script

1
Everywhere you look, the rich
history of the United Kingdom
is there to be seen.
But hidden beneath our feet
there's still a wealth of
archaeological treasure
just waiting to be found.
That's why each year, all across
the country, our archaeologists
dig, dive and explore
their way down
Oh, my God. Some of the best stuff
you're ever going to see.
Oh, wow.
Is it good?
searching for fresh discoveries
Hypocaust!
revealing the imprint of
ancient civilisations
It's been there for 5,500 years.
and unearthing
fascinating objects.
Fantastic decoration.
Any musket balls yet, Aaron?
Wow, look at that.
Every dig adds new pieces to the
ever-growing archaeological jigsaw
that is the epic story
of our islands.
And I 'm down.
This year, I visit digs in some
extraordinary locations
and solve mysteries
using cutting -edge tools.
Oh, this is wonderful.
I 'm joined by a trio
of expert investigators
So you can see how that gives you
a really unique signature.
That's right. Excellent.
who dig deeper to answer the
questions raised by the finds.
That's how he got away with it.
Exactly.
Finally, the archaeologists
bring their best discoveries
into our tent
for up-close analysis.
So it's completely unique
impression. That's wonderful.
Welcome to Digging for Britain.
This time, we're seeking out
the best digs and discoveries
in the south of Britain.
On the Kent coast, we raise
the wreck of a medieval ship
in stunning condition.
Some of the samples we've had
feel so fresh that you can still
smell the tar.
We discover that Bishop's Stortford
may be built on a previously
unknown Roman town.
We've been absolutely blown away
by the scale
of what we've found so far.
And I explore beneath perhaps the
most famous castle in the world
Yeah, just this edge here.
to uncover evidence of
Henry VI I I's industrial-scale fraud.
And he was known as Old Coppernose.
There you go. That's why.
Throughout history, the
south of Britain has often been
the first point of contact with the
Continent for the spread of ideas,
culture and people.
As well as the front line
for any invading armies
like the Romans,
who changed Britain forever.
We know that the Romans built plenty
of forts, garrisons and towns
across Britain, and many of them
have been extensively
archaeologically investigated.
And we even know the names
of some of them.
But others, it seems, have slipped
under the radar to lie forgotten
in the landscape for centuries.
It seems extraordinary
that an entire town
could disappear in this way.
But it's even more exciting
when it suddenly reappears.
Our first dig takes us
to Bishop's Stortford,
22 miles south of Cambridge.
The Domesday Book
tells us that in 1086
there were just 29 households here.
Then, throughout the
medieval period, it grew,
developing into the familiar
market town we see today.
Little is known, though, about life
here before this time,
but we do know a crucial ancient
road passed through this area
built by the Romans.
This vital road was called
Stane Street.
It linked St Albans to Colchester,
and here it crossed the River Stort.
But very little evidence of Roman
settlement has ever been found
at Bishop's Stortford.
Now planned upgrades to a
leisure centre are giving a team
from Oxford Archaeology
a chance to investigate
the town's ancient past.
The road itself is easy to identify.
So this is Stane Street.
These stones are the ones
that were laid by the Romans
to make the surface of their road
that they walked on
about 2,000 years ago.
But it's discoveries being made
alongside the road
which has county archaeologist
Greer Dewdney so excited.
This here is a stone building
that we've got on site
and we are now starting to think
that it is possible that it's
actually a temple structure.
That's really exciting
because that adds another facet
to this whole settlement.
It gives another reason for people
to stop on their passage
along Stane Street
and visit this place.
This stone-built structure
is good evidence
that a community lived here.
And the sheer amount
of small personal items
being unearthed is a strong sign
of how big that community was.
There's a Roman coin here.
You can just make out
his head there.
As well as coins, the team
is turning up hundreds of pieces
of Roman pottery, animal bones and
intriguing decorative objects.
Neal Mason is supervising the dig.
This is my personal favourite
from the site so far.
It's made from copper alloy
and it's a lion's head fitting.
I nitially, when it came up with
the metal detector, we thought
it was quite modern, just
because it's in such good condition.
It's normally the kind of thing
you see in a museum.
More evidence for the scale
of the Roman community here
is emerging on the other side
of the site,
where the team have uncovered
a large cemetery.
We've got a lot more burials
than we were expecting.
We were expecting around 20 or 30.
We've actually got something
like 60 to 70 so far.
What's nice about this particular
burial is we have the surviving
grave marker,
or at least a portion of it.
We've been absolutely blown away
by the scale
of what we've found so far.
The wealth and density of finds
suggests a sizeable
population lived here.
Could this be an
undiscovered Roman town?
It's only with this excavation
that we're starting to understand
just how significant both regionally
and nationally this site could be.
And this, hopefully, is only
the tip of the iceberg
of what we might uncover
as the excavation continues.
During the weeks after our visit,
the discoveries at Bishop's
Stortford's Roman settlement
kept on coming.
To get the latest
on just how big the settlement was
and who was living there,
I invited project manager Andy Greef
to the Digging for Britain tent
with some of the best finds
and a new survey image of the site.
Andy, you've got a plan
of your excavations
against these kind of
ghost-like images. What is that?
Those are crop marks visible
from satellite imagery.
And they really show that this
settlement is far more extensive
than the bits that we've seen
in our excavations. Yeah.
Was there any idea that there
would be this level
of Roman activity?
It came as a bit of a surprise
to everyone.
We had no idea that the settlement
was so expansive
or so sort of busy as well.
Busy and rich. Yeah.
And this was an incredibly
finds-rich excavation.
Absolutely. Yes.
The quantity and variety of
high-quality costume adornments
suggests the presence of some
very well-dressed Romans.
I want to start with these beautiful
copper alloy objects.
We've got some lovely brooches here,
lots of different styles.
Are they from different centuries?
A lot of our brooches are
sort of 2nd and 3rd century.
We've got some really nice examples
of military-style brooches.
So military personnel in the area.
Yes.
That's lovely. And then, over here,
we've got something a bit different,
haven't we? Because those
look like hairpins. Exactly.
So more sort of evidence of women
at the settlement
and of personal care and hygiene,
really, as well. And what's this?
That's actually a mirror, or a part
of a mirror. Is it?
It's a fragment of mirror.
That's a rare object, isn't it?
You don't find them very often
at all, no. No.
So it's copper alloy,
probably bronze?
And just polished up to a shine.
And wonderful to still
have that mirrored surface.
I can't quite see myself in it,
but it's almost, almost there.
And that came out
of the ground shining,
so you can imagine
how that was for someone to find.
Yeah. And this, I think,
is wonderful,
because this is a piece of
pretty classic Samian ware.
But there's this.
That's called a pot mend,
where they've put back together
a broken piece of pot.
So we tend to think of Samian ware
as being in some ways high status,
but also vast quantities of it are
being made in Gaul and shipped over.
But, obviously, whoever owned
this one liked it enough
that they didn't just throw
it away and get a new one,
that they actually mended it.
Well, even connected
to the Continent as they are
in the settlement, it's still an
expensive piece of pottery to have.
So you'd mend it if you could. Yeah.
These are lovely
personal and decorative objects,
but also you've got some coins,
so these are fantastic for dating.
So what do these tell us about the
longevity of the settlement?
Well, we've got coins from the
1st century all the way
through to the 4th century,
so that we know that activity
on the site lasted for that long.
OK, so who've we got?
This is like a who's who
of Roman emperors.
That is Claudius, the emperor
who headed up the invasion.
So that's 1st century. Absolutely.
What about this one? Looks like
it might be legible as well.
That's Maximian.
He's right at the end
of the 3rd century.
Really lovely little portrait
on that one.
And then some smaller coins here.
Do they tend to get smaller
through time? Absolutely.
If you're getting smaller
Roman coins, they're generally
going to be 4th century.
So we know that this settlement,
which we think was established
towards the end of the 1st century,
stayed in use in some form
or other for several
hundred years. Yeah. Yeah.
So how does this add to our
knowledge? What does this tell us
about Roman Stortford that
we didn't know before?
Well, it tells us that a lot more
activity took place in this part
of Hertfordshire
than was previously known.
You'd have seen people from all
walks of life.
And this excavation,
along with the crop mark evidence,
really shows the scale of this site.
It's big enough to be called a town.
It certainly is. Yeah. Wow.
Thank you for bringing these in.
They've got stories to tell.
Murmuration by Johnny Flynn
Let's gather us up
To the heavens above
We can always come back
My love. ♪
I n the centuries after
the Romans withdrew,
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms began to form
in the south east of England.
Regions with familiar names
like Sussex and Essex
date from this time
the early medieval period.
One of the most powerful early
medieval kingdoms
straddled the centre of the island.
Its name was Mercia.
And our next dig takes place
at its southern gateway,
the village of Cookham,
14 miles north-east of Reading.
This is the Thames.
It was an incredibly important trade
route all through the centuries.
And here in Cookham, there's
a church which we know goes back
to Norman times. But archaeologists
believe that it has a much
earlier foundation,
and that it once was at the heart
of a large monastic settlement.
A monastic settlement that's
associated with one of TH E most
influential people in
early medieval Britain.
Her name was Oueen Cynethryth.
When her husband, King Offa,
died in 796,
Cynethryth became Oueen of Mercia.
Tantalisingly, we know she spent
the later years of her life
at a monastery somewhere here
in Cookham,
but no-one has ever
found a trace of it.
Now, a team from the University of
Reading is on the hunt here,
next to the church.
Gabor Thomas is leading the dig.
So this church obviously draws the
eye today and there are elements
of it that are medieval,
possibly bits of it that do go back
to the Norman period.
But you think this was a site for an
earlier monastic settlement, then?
So there very likely was
a precursor to this church
standing in Anglo-Saxon times.
And nine times out of ten you find
that the Anglo-Saxon version
of the church is either under the
footprint of the Norman successor
or very close by,
and there could have been maybe
a settlement or a complex.
So that's a possible
sort of scenario here.
Gabor's geophysical surveys
in the field alongside the church
showed tantalising clues
of archaeological remains.
So he set up his department here
and sent in his students.
I 'm currently in a hole
at Cookham field school,
and I 'm going to show you
how we've progressed since day one.
And what we've managed to do is
dig a series of slots
from east to west.
The huge area of land
they've stripped hasn't been used
since medieval times,
which is great news for their quest
to find evidence of the monastery,
and perhaps the famous
Anglo-Saxon queen herself.
It's going to be very similar.
It's been a very busy few weeks.
So here we have a hole
which we believe they've dug
to retrieve building material.
And in the big trench, the team
is finding evidence of a vibrant
Anglo-Saxon community that might
have supported a monastery.
I 'm looking at that patch of pale
gravel running through the middle.
Is that something archaeological?
Yes, it is.
It's really significant.
It's an Anglo-Saxon street surface.
Is it? Yeah. That's the actual
road surface? That's right,
that Anglo-Saxon people that lived
in this settlement
would have walked across.
Right, can we get down in the trench
and have a look at some of these
features, then?
Absolutely. Let's go.
A stone road like this is
an extraordinary feature
for an early medieval settlement.
I mean, it's well constructed,
this road, isn't it?
It's not just a thin veneer of
material over the top of a trackway.
That's right. You don't get
engineered roads like this
in typical Anglo-Saxon settlements.
It's telling us something about its
special status, in other words.
Yeah.
The team are also finding
traces of buildings
where food was prepared
on a large scale.
We've identified some hearths in a
row, there and there.
We're saying it's a medieval
Greggs set-up.
So you've got large buildings here,
a really significant road running
up through the middle of it.
I nside these buildings, we've got
bread ovens, we've got hearths.
It doesn't feel particularly
ecclesiastical at this point.
Yeah, that's all about production
and, if you like,
servicing the community
that lived here.
This is what keeps it all going.
Exactly. Yeah.
I n their search for traces of
monastic life, the team has opened
a second trench on the
other side of the site.
One of the things we were prepared
to come across was burials -
and we have, but in a way
that we wouldn't have expected.
Here is the ditch,
and that little spot there -
I don't know if you can see it -
is where we lifted the skull.
And then, over here, are the legs.
The cemetery here has been damaged
by much later medieval rubbish pits
and boundary ditches.
There's a real jumble, isn't there?
Because I can see the bottom of
two tibiae there, the shin bones,
and the fibulae next to them.
And then I think that's a humerus
that's kind of sticking out
at an angle there.
And there's a skull as well.
That's right.
We're dealing with quite
a tightly packed cemetery here.
And do you think it's possible
that Cynethryth herself
was buried here?
I think there's a very high chance
that she was buried here.
That would be very much
the standard thing to happen.
So, yeah, very high chance.
Cynethryth is unique
in the early medieval world.
She is the only Anglo-Saxon queen
whose name appears on coins.
This beautiful silver penny
was minted in Canterbury
in the late 8th century.
The team may not yet have found
a royal burial
or any of Cynethryth's coins,
but they have found a spectacular
array of small finds,
and perhaps proof
that this was a monastery.
Finds specialist Elias Kupfermann
has gathered together some
of the highlights.
Oh, you've got some
beautiful finds here.
You've got some copper alloy pins,
are these? Yes.
Would that have been a? Do
you think that's a clothing pin?
Maybe for, if we had nuns here,
we believe it could be for sort of
tying in a wimple.
So for pinning headgear? Yes.
Yeah, yeah. There's another,
more decorative one.
That's very decorative. Yeah.
That's beautiful on the end. Yes.
Is there anything
that's particularly ecclesiastical
that's coming out?
There's one thing,
and that's a piece of glass. Yeah.
And it's got this
gold trailing on it. Yeah.
And that proved to be possibly
part of an inkwell.
Ah! So you may have a scriptorium
here.
There could be writing here
of some kind. Yeah.
It's quite fascinating, really.
It is.
It's just so lovely, isn't it,
to have that tiny fragment
and to be able to draw that story
out of that
and to know that you've got
literate people here? Yes.
And often literacy is
associated with monastic sites,
ecclesiastical sites.
That's lovely. Yeah.
The team are also finding
early medieval coins.
Do you know when it dates to?
Roughly 8th century.
Yeah. So maybe another connection
to Mercia. Could be, yeah. Yeah.
A definite connection
with Cynethryth herself
is proving elusive.
But this dig does mean
that we're finally able to start
piecing together a picture
of a lost monastery.
We knew that there had to be
an early medieval monastery
at Cookham, and we're starting
to see this monastic settlement
emerging before our eyes, taking us
back to the time when the abbess
of this monastery was here -
Oueen Cynethryth.
It's incredible.
Coastlines are
constantly shapeshifting,
and archaeological evidence can be
destroyed by erosion,
or sometimes buried and preserved
and then it can re-emerge
centuries later.
Although it's not always
archaeologists
who get the first glimpse.
Our next dig takes us
just outside of Dungeness,
25 miles south-east of Dover.
This headland has one of the largest
expanses of shingle in Europe.
Deep banks of sand and gravel
deposited by the ocean
over many thousands of years.
But half a kilometre back
from today's shoreline,
a team from Wessex Archaeology are
working in a gravel quarry,
recovering huge pieces of oak that
have been hidden for centuries.
It's not something you see every
day. It's really incredible.
Marine archaeologist Andrea Hamel
was one of the first to be alerted
to the discovery.
People working at the quarry
were doing dredging to get gravel,
and they came across
sort of an obstruction.
Andrea's team
sent a mini submersible
to the bottom of the pond
to inspect the find.
It turned out to be a
remarkably complete section
of a very old ship's hull.
The wood preservation is exceptional
thanks to the wreck being locked
deep beneath layers of
protective waterlogged shingle.
Watch your fingers.
Looking at the building techniques
that were used,
it looks like it could be
a Tudor vessel.
It brings to mind ships
like the Mary Rose,
or especially the Gresham Ship.
It's clear the ship dates
back several centuries.
But just how old is it?
They plan to investigate by
taking it apart piece by piece.
Disassembling a centuries-old ship
in this condition is a rare
opportunity for archaeologists
like Ben Saunders to learn
about the shipwrights' craft
straight from the source.
It's almost like we're constructing
the ship in reverse.
We're taking it apart, working out
how people built it at the time.
Pinning the massive wooden
planks in position
are yet more pieces of wood.
This ship is held together
with treenails,
which is spelt ' "tree nail'",
and that is because
it is literally a tree nail.
It's a round piece of oak timber,
usually, and these are used instead
of iron nails because they could use
that iron for something else.
You could use it for guns,
you could use it for cannon,
you could use it for whatever.
So we're going to take off
this ceiling plank.
So there's 20-odd treenails
in there.
Snip out as many
of these as possible.
Driving wedges between the timbers
allows Ben to cut the treenails.
You get that little snapping noise
just as it goes.
J ust sort of snipping along
with the plank.
Doonk! Hey!
It's off.
There we go.
Right, then.
J udging by what is being unearthed,
the team estimate the ship
would have been more than
25m long,
weighing perhaps more than
150 tonnes.
The component pieces are massive.
The first bit we had was
6.4m x 3m.
That was really one of the biggest
chunks of stuff we've had.
As each huge section
is dismantled
Yeah! Another one.
the team are revealing surprising
construction methods.
That's still got the pine tar
and grit and stuff on there.
And then, for some reason,
when they're putting in
the filling frames, they're coming
through and chipping off
all of the pine tar, so they
can get the filling frames in,
which is weird.
That's what I think is so
fascinating about these shipwrecks,
is that they're doing things
that you're not expecting.
So if you weren't actually taking
them apart and looking at them,
you'd have no idea that
this is what, or how,
they used to build ships.
Every piece of the wreck
is painstakingly recorded
with a 3D scanner.
One of the great things
about using the scanner
is that you can really capture
the shape of the timber.
And once the scanning is finished,
we can create 3D models
of the timbers.
This technique will capture
even the most minute details.
On this piece of timber here,
you can actually still see
tool marks along the top, which
I think is really exciting.
It's really neat to see how people
in the past were interacting
with the materials and constructing
it. And some of the samples
we've had still feel so fresh
that you can still smell the tar.
The team think the ship
is probably from the 16th century,
but there is a way to narrow down
the date of construction.
The team have sent samples
of the timber to a lab
for dendrochronology dating,
and Cat Jarman has come to see
how it works.
I 've used dates
from dendrochronology
a lot in my own work but never
actually seen how the process works.
But today I 've come here to meet
Robert Howard,
who's one of the leading
specialists in this field.
He's been working on the samples
from the shipwreck in Kent,
and hopefully he'll be able to tell
us not just when those trees grew,
but maybe also
when the ship was built.
So this is very exciting.
These are the actual samples
from the shipwreck, are they?
That's right. Yeah.
We're going to try and date
when they were cut
and when they went
into the shipwreck.
So now you're looking at the rings
and then measuring the distance.
Exactly. Yes. The width of each ring
varies from year to year
according to the weather, you see.
Yeah.
So that, in theory, good weather
during the growing season produces
wide rings and bad weather
produces narrow rings.
So there's sort of a climatic
fingerprint imprinted on the sample.
And we obtain that fingerprint
by measuring very carefully
hundredths of a millimetre
each time.
It looks quite straightforward.
Can I have a go at doing it?
Please, feel free. Yeah.
Glide in there.
Have a little look at that and see
what you can see. OK.
So that's really, really clear,
isn't it?
And you can see the differences.
You've got some really nice
and narrow ones. Yeah.
Something upset the tree
for a few years there.
And then, further on, the ring
is probably widened up again.
Yeah, yeah. Got some nice,
big, wide, chunky ones here.
It's interesting to think of those
people who were there for that year.
Yeah, exactly. I very often think,
' "What was that year like?'"
Precisely.
Did they enjoy the long, hot
summer they clearly had?
So you can see how that gives
you a really unique signature.
That's right. That's exactly
what we're looking for.
But this sequence does not
give Rob a date on its own.
He uses a dendrochronology database
to compare our tree ring sequence
with thousands of other
wood samples.
The database shows where a sample
overlaps with older or younger
tree ring sequences.
Crucially, this includes trees
felled in the last few decades.
It's these that anchor the tree ring
calendar to a precise modern date.
So by counting back through this
long, combined tree ring sequence,
wood samples
can be precisely placed and dated.
We've got these database
of samples that we built up
over the last 40 years
that span from the present day
back to 4000, 5000 BC.
That's astounding.
That's 6,000 years of history.
I know.
That's why it's taken
40 years to build it up.
The database is also regional,
so we can factor in the variations
in climate found in
different parts of the U K.
So does that mean actually that you
could, by using this method,
you could actually give us
the origin of the ship?
I hope we can.
You know, it would be, it would be
nice to know where this ship
might have come from. Yeah.
Rob compares our sample to different
databases from around the world
and the U K, until he finds
the best match
in Kent.
This is an average
overall Kentish chronology,
and the match here is 8.6.
So, very high. Very high.
So it does suggest to me this
timber that this ship is made of
actually grew in Kent.
So we've narrowed down, this is
a ship that was built in Kent. Yeah.
We don't actually have a date
for when it was
timbers were felled
and when it was built. No. No.
So can you please tell me?
We can. We can.
By matching our sample
to the Kentish dendrochronology
database, we are able to get
a precise date for the last
tree ring in the sample.
And we've got this sample,
sample four,
which has got a last ring date
of 1558.
But that's not exactly the felling
date of the timber. OK.
Rob must also factor in the
oak's outer sapwood
to reach his final date projection.
These trees, I think, were felled,
in round terms,
between, say, 1560,
but no later than 1580, I 'd say.
Fantastic. Brilliant.
So that kind of makes this, what?
Would that be Elizabethan, then?
That's right. That's right.
So this ship, in theory,
could have been sharing the wind
and the waters, you know,
with the Armada.
And, you know, it might have seen
Drake sailing down the Channel.
You never know. Fantastic.
So from these little
tiny bits of wood,
we get that big story of the ship
and its significance.
Yes, it's amazing what you can do
with a few bits of wood.
Absolutely.
Chancing upon an undiscovered
Elizabethan shipwreck
is an incredible,
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But now that every plank
has been recorded in detail,
the team will rebury the ship close
to where it was discovered.
Now, Andrea Hamel from the dig
and Historic England maritime
archaeologist Antony Firth
are joining me
in the Digging for Britain tent.
And they've brought a finished
3D model of a section of the hull
so we can see it
pieced back together.
This section is really beautiful,
isn't it?
You can really see that construction
with the inner planks there.
Yes. And this is the largest
section that we found,
and some of the individual planks
were actually 6m.
So they're absolutely massive.
Yeah. And at the end of a project
like this, you obviously
have to think about what you're
going to do with the material itself
and consider whether it's going to
be conserved and placed in a museum,
for instance, or whether
you preserve it in situ.
And sometimes that is the best
option. Yeah.
I n this case, timbers
like this are fantastic
in that they preserve
their appearance,
but if they were to dry out,
they would shrink
and you'd lose all the detail.
So in this case, the best option
was to return it to the environment
as close as we could
to where it was recovered. Yeah.
And hopefully, if techniques change
in the future, future archaeologists
could go back and recover the ship
and do more work on it.
Absolutely.
The low hills and flat plains
in the south
are punctuated with castles.
These huge stone fortresses helped
successive generations of rulers
and powerful landowners control
the landscape for centuries.
But the most famous castle
in the south
didn't just control the landscape.
It controlled the money.
Our next discovery takes us
to a magnificent fortress
that was at the heart
of medieval England -
The Tower of London.
The Tower of London was originally
a Norman Castle, but it's perhaps
more famously associated
with these stories of scheming,
treachery and retribution that
attended the reign of Henry VI I I.
But it was always much more
than just a prison,
somewhere where traitors
and heretics were incarcerated
and then taken off and beheaded.
It was the nucleus of Tudor power.
The Tower of London is still a royal
palace and home to the Crown Jewels.
But for more than 500 years, this
was also home to the Royal Mint,
where rulers like Henry VI I I
created their coins.
This process was always kept
behind tightly closed doors.
But recent renovations to what was
the Royal Mint here at the Tower
have given archaeologists
the unique opportunity to explore
what was the heart of Henry VI I I's
moneymaking machine.
I 've come to meet the Tower's
historic buildings curator,
Alfred Hawkins, who's been assessing
freshly uncovered ruins
from beneath the floorboards
of one of the Yeomans' houses.
The ruins date from the 16th century
and were once an active part
of the Royal Mint during
Henry's reign.
Alfred, I 'm OK to step down here,
right? Yeah. Yeah, of course.
And I have a rare chance
to get a very close look.
Alfred, this is quite incredible
archaeology that's been sealed
under the floor in this building.
How did it come to light?
So all of the remains you can see
here were excavated in 1976
by workmen, and then this large
floor was built over the top
of it and just sealed it away for
the last 40 years.
And what is it I 'm standing in?
What is this?
So you are standing
in the Assay House,
which is where
the assaying forge lives.
What we're looking at here are,
what, furnaces for the forge?
Yes. So we've got these two
kind of keyhole hearths
in this kind of
nominal furnace part of the ruins.
And then there's either a flue
or some other channel
coming out next to you.
And there's another potential flue
basically next to your feet
that comes out the
rear of the furnace.
So there's a void
right underneath there. Yeah.
And it goes all the way
through to me on this side.
What was going on
in this building, then?
What is this forge for?
So this is the first stage
of the creation of coinage.
So assaying is the process of
either refining gold or silver,
or testing its purity.
So once you have a known purity
of silver,
you can then send that
to be turned into coinage.
And you would know all of those
coins have the exact same amount
of silver in and would
be worth the same,
and then could be used
for trading.
So this isn't really about
controlling wealth?
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Private merchants brought precious
metals like gold or silver
to the Tower to sell them
to the Exchequer of the Mint.
And Alfred has given me special
access to where it's thought
these transactions took place -
The Exchequer's Office.
Alfred, you walk into this room
and your eye is immediately drawn
to this end and these beautiful
medieval wall paintings.
So when do they date to,
and what is actually depicted here?
So these date to around the 1390s.
And what it depicts is a
largely classic Crucifixion scene.
So you've got John the Baptist
Oh, that's beautiful, isn't it?
the Virgin Mary kind of
wringing her hands in grief
and the Archangel Michael, who's got
these fabulous wings and the scales
which he would use to weigh
the souls of the dead.
So you've got all the right
characters here to know that what's
missing is actually the Crucifixion
itself in the centre. Yeah.
I n the 16th century, the Tudors
decided that it was a bit cold
in here and smashed through the wall
in order to put this large
and fairly elaborate fireplace in.
And that's got the remnant
of a Tudor rose painting on the
front of it.
Yes. So this represents the ultimate
authority. Yeah, exactly.
So if you attempted to come in here
and lie about the purity
of your silver or the weight
of your gold, all of this kind
of iconography would be immediately
understood by you that, if you are
lying to the Master of the Mint,
the representative of the Crown,
you're lying to the Crown. If you
lie to the Crown, you lie to God.
And that's continued
with the Tudor rose.
I can imagine being somebody
who's a little bit worried
about the quality of the metal that
I 'd brought into the Royal Mint,
and it's gone off to that assaying
forge and I 'm sitting in this room
looking up at the Archangel Michael
with his scales
and breaking into a sweat.
I ronically, it was Henry VI I I
himself
who tampered with the purity
of silver in his mint.
Found in the forge ruins,
a collection of crucibles
for melting metal is evidence
of how coins could be tested
and their content manipulated.
Oh, wow. So what have we got, then?
These look like little crucibles.
Is that right? Yes.
The four different crucibles here.
But then we've also got
some lovely little things
which are called cupels.
What are they?
So these are tiny bone-ash
crucibles, effectively.
So what were they doing?
They were just taking little samples
of any bullion that was coming in?
Yeah. So sometimes these crucibles
would burst
and you get something like this.
This is a piece of vitrified
brick which has been burnt
from within the forge.
And you can see it's got
a splash of gold along here.
Yeah. J ust this edge here.
And then you've got these colours
here, which almost look a bit
copper-like there. And then the
lead is this black, is it? Yes.
Yeah. So you've got these smaller
crucibles and the capels
for checking the composition
of metals that are coming in
to the Mint.
What are these larger vessels for?
So these larger crucibles
are to be used
for creating copper alloys.
So they are using copper
to make coins? Yeah.
So before the Tudor period,
a pound of silver is worth a pound.
So that's where we get a lot
of our measurements from.
But as the kind of lavish lifestyle
and failed wars of Henry VI I I
start to have a real impact
on the treasury,
they start adding copper alloys
into silver coins
in order to create more coins.
And if you have a pound of coins,
they're no longer worth a pound.
So it's an incredibly dangerous
thing to do, as it means
it undermines confidence
in your own currency.
Henry VI I I multiplied his money,
adding more and more copper
into the silver coins,
watering down their real value.
But this sparked runaway inflation.
Is Henry VI I I really struggling
to control the economy?
Yeah, the coffers
are effectively empty,
so he needs to replace
that with new coinage.
And all of these items really show
us Henry VI I I's desperate need
to control every aspect
of the creation of coinage.
And we can see that
at the assaying forge as well.
I want to know just how
Henry VI I I's moneyers
managed to pull off his
industrial-scale fraud.
I n his garden
in the Lincolnshire Fens,
historic coin-making expert
Dave Grinnell
has built his own
mini medieval mint.
And Stuart Prior
is paying him a visit.
I 've come here to meet Dave to see
how the old rogue Henry VI I I
made money out of making money.
We're going to head to the forge
initially,
where we can start showing
how the alloys were made. Yeah.
To investigate how Henry VI I I
debased the currency,
we're going to mint our own
dodgy coins.
How's that? That's perfect.
Right!
I need just to take the temperature
of the forge up to red heat.
Dave's pop-up forge works on
exactly the same principles
as the assaying forge
at the Tower of London.
I hadn't enough notice to build
a complete Tudor forge.
The first step is to get the forge
going and heat the crucibles.
You'll be exhausted
by the time we finish this.
Oh, yeah. Hot and thirsty. Yeah.
The moneyer had an allowance of ten
pints of beer a day when working.
There you go! There you go!
Dave bellows air
into the base of the furnace.
Essential for reaching
over 961 degrees Celsius -
the melting point of silver.
We now can add the silver.
Silver would arrive at the
assaying forge in different ways.
So there we've got an assortment
of coin,
suave, ore.
All ready for melting down.
All different grades of silver.
So that will go in.
The Mint would melt everything
they received into pure silver.
I can see some impurities
in the flames, but
Yeah, that's the copper
coming out of the, er
Wow! ..The silver already.
Wow, that's amazing!
But if I put a little bit
of lead in
The lead attaches to the impurities
and draws them into the clay of
the crucible itself,
leaving just silver behind.
Let's have a look,
see how we're getting on.
So in there, we've got
molten silver.
That's pure silver?
That's roughly 98, 99♪%pure.
99♪%pure silver? Yep.
Look at that!
I nstead of sending almost-pure
silver to be made into coins,
Henry ordered the workers
to dilute the silver
with less-valuable base metals.
But what we would do is add 70%
copper to the weight of that silver.
70♪%copper? Yeah.
It went as much as 70♪%♪? Yes.
Crikey!
You can see the copper
dissolving in.
Copper is the perfect metal
to combine with silver in coinage.
It's cheap, malleable
and roughly the same weight.
But with less silver in the coins,
they would have less real value.
The wealth of the nation
was in its coin.
A coin being a piece of
precious metal
whose intrinsic value is equal
to its face value,
stamped with an official mark
guaranteeing its weight
and fineness.
So it did exactly what it said
on the tin.
Well, it did until the time
of Henry VI I I.
Once the copper and silver
have melted together,
it can be poured into a solid bar.
So, this is 30♪%pure silver
and 70♪%♪?
Copper. Copper. Yes.
Our bar of the best silver
is ready to be turned into coins.
But there's one big problem.
Doesn't look like much.
It's the wrong colour.
That's a lovely silver bar,
perfect for silver coins.
That one, you can clearly see there
is a portion of copper in it.
Dave hammers the bars
into thin sheets
uses a punch to cut out
the blanks
and finally soaks the blanks
in a bath of acid.
So we've been making some blanks.
We've got silver and copper coins.
Yes. So there we go.
That's one of the blanks we're going
to strike the coins from.
That's the silver one, right? No.
No?! That is 70♪%copper, 30♪%silver.
But that's just come out of the acid
and has brought the copper out,
enriching the surface.
That's how he got away with it?
Yeah. How it was done, yeah.
Soaking the debased blanks in acid
leaches any copper
from the outer surface,
which leaves a shiny silver face
and the appearance of a
pure silver coin.
Ready to strike it?
Yeah, let's strike it.
That's the lower die.
With a carving of Henry's face
on it.
And his titles, yeah.
That's called a pile.
Yeah. The upper die that we hit
it with is called a trestle.
All right. You take the hammer.
The blank's in there. Yep.
All you have to do is hit it once,
as hard as you can. Right. Ha!
Excellent! You want to take it off
and see what you've done?
I hope so.
Oh, yeah, OK. Terrific!
Look at that! Perfectly struck coin.
And there is Henry VI I I
in all his glory.
The coin looks silver Yeah.
but it's not silver. No.
So, how did people know
it wasn't silver?
Well, when the coin's in
circulation, they start to wear.
Yeah.
And the highest point on the coin
takes the most wear. Ah, OK. Now
Dave uses a file to simulate
a few months of wear and tear,
and it reveals
Henry VI I I's deception.
What do you see on there?
Henry VI I I seems to have
a copper nose.
Exactly!
And he was known
as Old Copper Nose.
There you go. That's why!
The high points wear away,
revealing the copper inside.
You can really see the copper on it.
It's so clever!
Henry carried on diluting
the silver with copper
until, eventually, foreign merchants
refused to accept the debased coins
and the economy began to suffer.
Even then, Henry's son Edward
carried on with the same tricks.
It took his daughter Elizabeth
to come along,
and she introduced
a mark that you put on coins.
Because I 've got one in my hand here
that shows a countermark
on the coin of Edward VI,
basically showing
what its true value is.
So it took his daughter Elizabeth
to fix the damage
that Henry VI I I
wrought on his own coinage.
The south is littered with monuments
that speak
of our nation's prehistoric past.
I ron Age hillforts,
such as Maiden Castle in Dorset
and Old Winchester Hill
in Hampshire.
We've learned a lot about
I ron Age culture
from centuries
of archaeological discoveries.
We know a fair bit about farming
in the first millennium BCE,
about tools and trade,
and connections between Britain
and the Continent.
But what was it like
to live back then?
What was society like?
Was it egalitarian or hierarchical?
And who exactly was in charge?
A careful look at the
people themselves
in their burials may provide a clue.
So next we journey to Dorset
and the village of
Winterbourne Kingston,
20 miles west of Bournemouth.
These chalky rolling hills were once
home to a mysterious I ron Age tribe
known as the Durotriges.
Since 2009, a team from
the University of Bournemouth
has been exploring this area,
uncovering a whole series
of ancient settlements
dating from the 2nd century BCE
into the Roman period.
Over the last 13 years,
they've been busy uncovering
the secrets of the people
that once lived
in this fertile landscape.
Back in 2010, I paid a visit
as the team investigated
one of the large, enclosed
I ron Age settlements here.
Among their discoveries
were 30 cylindrical storage pits,
in which they found remnants
of barley and I ron Age pottery.
So, were they using this
as a rubbish pit, then?
No, I don't think so.
I mean, we're not seeing a random
deposit of domestic waste.
We seem to be seeing a deliberate
selection procedure.
But most intriguing
were the burials.
One of the pits contained
the skeleton of a man
facedown on a pile of animal bones.
How strange!
There's something very odd going
on with these pits, isn't there?
There is, there is.
I mean, it's almost like,
I suppose, burying an ancestor,
burying an aunt or an uncle
in a cupboard in the kitchen.
It doesn't make sense to us.
This is the area where
they're living, they're working,
but their dead are going in
these kind of disused pits.
It's very peculiar.
12 years later, the team is back,
with dig leader Miles Russell,
and they're unearthing
four more burials.
But this time,
it's the female burials
that are causing a stir on site.
A lot of these pits have got bodies
that are in crouched positions.
So they are really sort of
tightly bound up into a ball.
And here, we've got
a young adult female.
She's lying on her left side
with the hands up towards the face.
And to us, that looks a little bit
disrespectful.
It looks as if a body's just been
bundled into a pit,
almost as a way of being
disposed of.
But I think, from the I ron Age
perspective,
here's a highly respected
member of society
who is actually being given a lot
of care and respect in the pit.
So although it looks unusual to us,
to them, it makes perfect sense,
and this is probably an honoured
member of the community.
Everyone from Roman writers
to 19th-century antiquarians
assumed that I ron Age societies
in Britain
were patriarchies,
where men ruled the roost.
But discoveries here may be turning
that assumption on its head.
What we're finding more
and more with the Durotriges is,
when you do find status goods,
they're always with female burials.
So far, we've had a whole pot,
a glass bead
and we've got a ring, potentially,
coming up there.
So, yeah, she was clearly someone
quite important.
This beautiful glass bead,
coloured blue with cobalt oxide,
is typically exquisite.
As is this delicate iron pin,
perhaps once used to tie a shroud
around a body.
So the feeling perhaps has been
more recently
that what we're seeing is that power
passes down through the female line,
and less with the male.
I want to learn more about
the status of women
in the Durotriges tribe,
so Miles and osteoarchaeologist
Megan Russell
have come to
the Digging for Britain tent.
And they've brought the most
extraordinary Durotriges skeleton
ever found near to
the Winterbourne Kingston site.
So, Megan, what about
this individual, then?
Something that's very obvious
are these areas of green staining.
So, presumably, that relates
to objects that were in her grave?
Yeah. This individual was actually
found by a metal detectorist.
And what they first originally found
was this big, late-I ron Age mirror,
which you can see
appearing just here.
And that was placed just around
the radius and ulna here.
If you can imagine she was crouched,
it was placed just on top,
like this.
Not only was this skeleton
buried with this extraordinary
bronze mirror,
there was also this armlet
and a stunning thistle brooch.
Green staining is so useful,
because a lot of the artefacts
were displaced
during modern ploughing.
So these tell us exactly
where her artefacts were.
And what kind of biographical detail
does this skeleton tell us?
So this individual
is a 19-to-25-year-old female.
They didn't make it past
early adulthood.
And we've got almost all of
the teeth, apart from two molars.
Yeah. And her teeth are amazing!
I mean, there's hardly any wear
on that.
That's so unusual
for an individual from this era.
So that definitely speaks
to her diet
and how well she was treated.
And what about any pathology?
I mean, she's very young,
but are there any signs of disease
or injury here?
Yeah. So we've got some woven bone
to the mid shafts of the tibia,
which have now healed.
And due to the symmetry,
we've predicted
that these were probably from
vitamin C deficiency, so scurvy.
Mm. And that means there was a lack
of fruit and vegetables in her diet.
Yeah. If you're not getting
vitamin C,
you're not making
structural proteins properly.
Absolutely.
Blood vessels become friable.
You get bleeds,
and bleeds can turn into bone.
Absolutely.
So it's not the lack of those foods,
it's not evidence of low
socio and economic status,
it's actually that she's
very, probably, high status,
but it's more the status
is attached
to the types of food
that she's eating.
Yeah. So actually, higher status,
like medieval societies,
is probably more animal products
and less fruits and vegetables.
And what about these objects,
though, Miles?
What do they tell us about her her
status in society?
Well, we can say with the mirror,
the handle's been replaced
on a number of occasions,
so it's probably an heirloom. Mm.
She's got tweezers - a nice sort
of personal item as well,
and I suspect the brooch is.
And when we look
across all the wealthy burials,
there's only potentially one
that's male.
All the rest, with mirror burials
and jewellery and other items,
are female. Really? So if you're
judging perhaps status symbols
as an indicator of power,
or lineage or heritage,
then certainly it looks like
it's the women
who hold the power and the status.
How fascinating to think that
we are looking at this society
where it's women who clearly have
that status,
that we're looking at
a matriarchal society in Dorset.
So, this could be I ron Age royalty?
Absolutely. Yes, yeah.
I mean, this is obviously
an ongoing work. Yeah.
When you start to pull that data
together, Miles and Megan,
I want you to come back
and tell me all about it. Gladly.
Next time on Digging for Britain
Nearly 300 skeletons
discovered under a shopping centre
in west Wales.
If I 'd known initially that it was
going to be this many,
I probably would have panicked.
The secrets of a burial chamber
more ancient than Stonehenge.
And I venture deep
Oh!
to the bottom of a 200-year-old
cobalt mine.
It's got pretty tight down here.
Oh, my God, some of the best stuff
you're ever going to see!
Come and search
for we would search
And looking for a scarred land
I dig for those whose stories lie
With buried pasts and futures won
And dig for us as we have done
And dig for us as we have done
And dig for us as we have done
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay us dead out in the sun. ♪