Digging for Britain (2010) s12e06 Episode Script

1
These islands we call home have a rich
and varied history
stretching back thousands of years.
But hidden below the surface
Look at that!
..are some amazing treasures just
waiting to be found.
- Wow! Look at me, I'm shaking.
- So each year across the country,
archaeologists dig,
dive, and explore their way down,
searching for fresh discoveries
There's something quite magical about
digging down
through this dark soil, and then
suddenly, there's the gleam of gold.
..uncovering traces of ancient
lives
- It's amazing, isn't it? There's
nothing like this
anywhere else in Europe.
- It still moves.
- Yeah.
- ..and finding fascinating objects
I've never seen anything quite that
profound.
..as every dig provides a new piece of
the puzzle,
new details of Britain's forgotten
past.
This is the epic and unfolding story
of our islands.
In this episode, I'll be looking at
the best digs
from southern England.
In the New Forest, we follow the
first-ever archaeological excavation
of a British Romany site.
So that's come out of your dig.
- Yeah, so this is not just any vinyl
record.
It's a 1968 Cream record.
- Now, how can you tell that? Because
the label is gone.
In London, an incredibly rare find
reveals Roman secrets.
- These objects we're finding, some of
them we've only ever seen
in pictures or paintings.
- And on a bleak island off the coast
of Portsmouth,
archaeologists discover gruesome
details
about Georgian crime and punishment.
- After the person has been executed,
you put the body into an iron cage,
effectively, and display it.
- It's brutal, isn't it?
But first, we travel to Killerton,
seven miles north of Exeter.
Today, the National Trust estate at
Killerton
is best known for its grand Georgian
manor
and some of the finest landscaped
gardens in the country.
But there's another house buried on
the estate
that's been lost for 300 years.
And it played a key role in one of
England's bloodiest conflicts
..the Civil War.
The Acland family have been wealthy
Devon landowners
since the 12th century.
They bought Columbjohn Manor in 1580,
and then purchased the neighbouring
Killerton estate in 1612.
Killerton estate is enormous.
It's got an extinct volcano and an
Iron Age hillfort,
and a bear hut, where the family used
to keep their pet bear.
Now, this family was the Aclands,
and they were here for some four
centuries.
They built that rather wonderful 18th
century manor house,
but there was a manor house before
that one
right at the other end of the estate.
But its precise location is a bit
mysterious,
because it was so thoroughly
demolished
that it's disappeared from the
landscape.
Until now.
This year, the National Trust is
starting a landscape recovery
project at Killerton to encourage
wildlife to flourish.
They want to make sure this doesn't
damage any of the estate's heritage,
so they're undertaking an excavation
to locate the lost manor house
once and for all.
I'm meeting National Trust
archaeologist Cat Lodge
at the only upstanding clue to the
site of the lost manor house.
- So this is kind of all we've got in
terms of the upstanding,
just this arch. But actually, we're
stood in what would have been
the gatehouse for the manor.
- So this would have been an actual
building.
- Yes.
So we've had a range of different
surveys undertaken.
So we're stood here and this is the
avenue up through.
And can you see there's a much more
sort of concentrated area here,
a lot darker? This is essentially
showing us
that there's loads of rubble.
- Right.
- And so this is where we've largely
positioned our trenches.
- Should we walk down and have a look?
The geophysical survey shows nothing
but rubble,
so the team are excavating to see if
anything more substantial
has survived below the ground.
In one of their trenches, they're
getting their first glimpse
of what was once a grand country pile.
Dr Sue Greaney from the University of
Exeter
is the site's co-director.
Oh, you've definitely got some
archaeology here, then.
- Yeah, that's right, we've got a wall
running all the way down that side.
And then another one, similar sized,
coming across.
And these are really chunky walls, so
probably a two-storey structure.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And then just here, we've got
this lovely cobbled surface.
- That's beautiful.
- Yeah.
- And intact.
- Yes, completely intact.
- Yeah.
- So at the moment, my thinking is
that this might be some kind of
raised walkway so that you can get
between different rooms
in the ranges of the buildings without
getting too wet.
- Yeah. So a roof, but with an open
front on it.
- Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And so, we've got two substantial
ranges here,
a corner, as it were. So this is a
really good indication
of the layout of the manor house. So
perhaps it's a U-shaped manor house,
perhaps with a porch in the middle.
Erm, but we don't yet know what
exactly these buildings are,
but they're definitely part of the
Elizabethan manor.
- The manor was built in the reign of
Elizabeth I,
a period sometimes referred to as the
Great Rebuilding.
Under her leadership, the economy that
had been decimated
by her father, Henry VIII, began to
recover,
heralding a building boom.
- We've got another wall coming across
here.
- That chunky wall
- Yeah.
- ..turns the corner there.
- That's right. And then we've got
this lovely internal
floor surface.
- That is beautiful.
- Yeah.
So we think we're inside one of the
ranges of the manor house here.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But by this time in the Elizabethan
period,
people are looking for things like
long galleries,
much more kind of ornate spaces,
much larger, and probably getting away
from those dark, smoky halls
that we think of of medieval houses.
And so we suspect that this new manor
house that John Acland builds,
befitting to his wealth and his
status,
was probably along the lines of one of
those
new-style Elizabethan manors.
- Just 60 years after Columbjohn was
completed,
England descended into a bloody civil
war,
and tiny clues start to emerge
suggesting that the household here was
involved in the conflict.
Have you got something else there?
- Yes, I've got this little musket.
It's got a good weight.
- Heavy.
- Yeah.
- Lead.
- Yeah.
- Over in the finds' tent, the team
have gathered a collection
of objects giving clues to what life
was like at Columbjohn.
- We've got some lovely items that we
found on the floor of the house,
erm, which must be from the last
occupation of the house,
or potentially from demolition layers
that have kind of Things have
fallen down.
I've got a little glass thing.
- Hmm.
- Have a look at what you think it is.
Feel free to take it out of the little
bag.
- Ooh.
That's lovely.
- What we actually think is it's the
bottom of a wine glass.
So it's a very small little drinking
glass.
- Yeah, I love that. You know, little
objects like that
where you pick it up and feel it and
you think,
"Somebody was really familiar with
that
"and the way that felt in the hand."
- Yeah. In that tray there,
there's some round, small, heavy lead
items.
- Oh, right. OK.
So that looks to me like a musket
ball.
- Yeah. Actually lost count of how
many of these we've had from
across the site now. We've had a lot
of them.
- So would you expect to find musket
balls at a manor house like this?
- Well, we know there was quite an
important
Civil War part of the story here.
We don't know which side these musket
balls belong to,
but it may even have been that they
were making them here on site,
they're certainly not used.
So presumably they're just gathering
stores and these are some
that went astray.
- It's great to have that physical
connection with that
Civil War history here.
- Really, really nice to have that.
- Yeah.
The team have discovered not only the
foundations of the manor house,
but these tiny clues to the role it
played in the tumultuous days
of the Civil War.
Historian Yasmin Khan is at Killerton
House
to explore the historical context in
more detail.
- In the middle of the 17th century,
England's bitter and bloody
Civil War affected the power
structures of the country forever.
It was impossible to avoid being drawn
into the conflict,
and everyone from the poorest to the
richest was affected,
and that included the Acland family,
and in particular, John Acland.
When the Civil War started, the great
and the good had to choose -
side with the king or with Oliver
Cromwell and Parliament.
John Acland chose the king.
I'm meeting Civil War expert Mark
Stoyle
to investigate the impact that
decision had
on the Columbjohn household.
Mark, the Aclands were really deeply
involved in the English Civil War
on the side of the Royalists.
This is a risky time and there's a lot
of conflict going on.
- Yeah.
- So to be royalist and to be
passionately royalist
was really putting yourself in the
front line.
- Particularly here in Devon, because
Devon goes over for Parliament
at the beginning of the Civil War.
And so Acland has to kind of keep low
at first,
but then eventually a Cornish army, a
Cornish Royalist army,
invades Devon. And at that moment,
he sort of rises up and rides out to
join them,
hoping that they're going to actually
take over the whole county.
And eventually they do.
But elsewhere, King Charles I's
fortunes are not faring very well.
Parliament's New Model Army sort of
rolls like a juggernaut
towards Exeter, and Acland is suddenly
very vulnerable.
- During the Siege of Exeter, Cromwell
took over Columbjohn
as the Parliamentary headquarters.
Many defeated Royalists found
themselves at the mercy
of a process called sequestration.
They faced a hefty fine, or having all
of their worldly goods
seized by Parliament.
Being sequestered, what would that
involve?
They come down with clipboards
effectively,
and they really just sort of going
through everything on the estate.
- Yeah, with a fine-tooth comb.
- And that's this document that we
have in front of us here.
- That's right. Well, there's a whole
series of different entries here
which show just how careful they were
in this process.
So here, for example, in the kitchen,
three table boards,
11 spits, iron cocks and other stuff
valued at £4.
- Every single thing, every single
item.
And there's also animals.
- Yes.
- Three bulls, is that? And
- Yes.
And even apples.
- Apples, yes.
- Some
- "Some apples."
- Valued at £1 and five shillings.
So they're being really meticulous.
- Do we have any insight into the
state of mind of the family
when all this is going on?
- Yeah, we do.
I mean, there are several really
lovely letters that survive
from John's wife, Elizabeth.
And this is one written to one of the
servants, we believe,
in July of 1646.
She says, "You write that I must have
patience
"and expect better times. I was never
in a sadder condition
"than now, seeing the many troubles
your master,"
that's to say, John Acland, is in,
"and feeling so many of my own."
And she goes on, "But I have eight
soldiers put upon me,"
that's to say, "billeted upon me."
"And I am fain to buy all the
provisions for them
"and their horses."
- Gosh, really comes off the page,
that sense of anguish and what she's
been through.
- She's actually a mother as well, of
course. They had children.
She says, "Where I intended to send my
boys to school,
"the sickness is fallen in so that now
I know not how
"to dispose of them." So you know,
she's worried about her children
at the same time. Plague is raging in
the countryside in this month.
- It's so poignant, the fact that she
wants to send her sons
to school and she can't any more.
- Yeah.
- And was that letter by Elizabeth
Acland
written in Columbjohn?
- We're not sure, to be honest, but we
know the next one
in the series is.
- So this is Elizabeth Acland again.
Oh, so this is to Cromwell himself.
- That's right. I mean, this is a
fascinating letter.
- Wow! So Elizabeth Acland is actually
writing to Cromwell directly.
- She is. She had met him during the
Civil War,
and now Elizabeth is trying to use
that relationship
in order to beg further assistance for
her husband.
And so that's what she's doing here.
"Sir, I received such ample testimony
"of your love when you were pleased to
quarter at my house,"
during the Civil War, "as that I
cannot sufficiently
"express my thankfulness for the same.
"The fine is so high that he must be
forced to sell all his lands
"for payment thereof." So she's
already terrified about
the size of the fine, worried that
it's going to become bigger still,
and begging Cromwell to do something
to make sure it
doesn't become too enormous.
- It's really striking how much of a
grasp she has of all the details.
She understands all the politics,
everything that's going on,
particularly how to appeal to
Cromwell.
- Just so. And it also shows how women
were so much more involved
in this than the history books often
suggest.
- John Acland died in 1647,
just a year after these letters were
written.
The family would eventually abandon
and demolish Columbjohn.
But it didn't disappear completely.
- This is a 19th-century image of the
gatehouse,
or the gate arch, at Columbjohn,
and you can see here it's been kind of
imagined
with sort of Civil War figures dotted
about in the foreground.
- So they haven't tried to wipe it
from the family memory.
Actually, they still remember their
loyalty to the Crown
during that time.
- Yes. They remember it, and it's
interesting,
I think, this arch has been left.
- Sort of folly, almost,
that the family could take people to
see, and it's not an accident
that it's left there.
- Yeah, it's a feature in the
landscape
as kind of talking point and a sort of
a site of memory, really,
for the family.
- From such detailed documents, we can
really imagine the anxieties
of the Acland family at this time,
and in particular, the worries of
Elizabeth Acland.
"Will my children be safe at school?
"Is my family going to face financial
ruin?"
But in the long run, the family
weathered the storm.
And you can see that from this
beautiful house behind me.
- Now we travel from the south west to
the south east
to a very different sort of
archaeological site
..in the bustling metropolis of
Britain's capital.
A city that grew up on the banks of
the Thames,
London's origins date back almost
2,000 years.
Our next unexpected discovery
comes from the centre of London, in
Holborn.
The Holborn Viaduct spans the valley
of one of London's lost rivers,
the Fleet. This river now flows
underground,
largely forgotten, other than giving
its name to a certain famous street.
And it's here, in the shadow of the
viaduct,
that a team of archaeologists are
finding
some of the earliest inhabitants of
the city,
dating all the way back
..to the Roman period.
I'm fascinated by burials,
by what bones can tell us,
but also by grave goods,
because we get a kind of time capsule
with these objects representing the
culture of the time
in the context of an individual.
Now, mostly, those grave goods will be
made of durable materials,
things like pottery, stone, metal.
But occasionally, the conditions are
just right
and we have exceptional preservation.
A team from the Museum Of London
Archaeology, MOLA,
are digging here ahead of a
large-scale office development.
The site lies outside the walls of
Roman London,
just where you might expect to find
burials.
Progress is slow in the thick, wet
mud,
but the hard work is worth it.
- Although the conditions make it a
bit tricky to work it,
due to its waterlogged nature,
preservation of timber structures
and features have been incredible.
- The wet conditions have preserved
materials that are often lost,
like wood,
and the team are finding rare Roman
coffins.
Lots of them.
- So this is one of about half a dozen
Roman wooden coffins on site.
As these things are exceptionally
rare,
there's only been a handful ever found
in London before.
These all seem to be made fairly
similarly.
There's these solid planks
that are made out of oak wood
that's been split into very, very
fine, high-quality boards.
I think about five, five or six,
heads of iron nails.
They've attached the footboard onto
here.
- Pieces of each of these
2,000-year-old coffins
are carefully removed to be taken away
for conservation
and scientific examination.
These rare finds could help the
archaeologists understand
Roman funeral practices better than
ever before.
But something even rarer is emerging
from the mud.
It's wooden, but this time it's not a
coffin.
The archaeologists have some idea
about what this intricately crafted
wooden structure might be,
but it will need further analysis to
test their theories.
- These features and objects we're
finding,
some of them we've only ever seen in
pictures or paintings.
- It turns out there's a whole range
of different burial practices here,
including cremations.
The team are uncovering several burial
urns.
And as they remove the lid from this
one,
the archaeologists get a tantalising
glimpse
of the ancient grave goods inside it.
- An oil lamp,
a glass vial,
a melon bead,
some burnt bone,
and crushed pottery.
The significance of the site is that
it gives us an insight
of what life might have been like, or
at least how the first Londoners
would have treated their deceased with
love and care.
- Alex Blanks and Michael Marshall
from MOLA
have brought some of the site's best
finds to show me.
So these are some of the objects that
are associated
with the cremations, then. Were these
actually inside the urns?
- So all of these objects were found
within burials.
- Mm.
- The group over here was found inside
an oval bustum burial,
which is a cremation where the pyre is
set up over the grave
and allowed to collapse into a pre-dug
pit.
- Right, OK.
- You can see that the flagons are
quite heavily burnt
because they've been on the pyre.
- So this isn't from it being fired.
- No, no.
- This is from the funeral pyre.
- This is from the funeral pyre.
- Yeah.
- And then once the pyre had cooled,
somebody actually came in
and rearranged the contents a little
bit.
- Really?
- Collected up the human remains and
then placed this urn
in the centre with the cremated
remains,
along with a number of unburnt
objects,
which were placed in as a secondary
act.
- Yeah.
So you've got some beautiful Are
they glass beads there?
- They're faience.
- Faience.
- Melon beads.
- And a little lamp.
Has that got a seated figure on it?
- Yeah. So this is an image of a
defeated gladiator.
It's a sort of classic position.
He's waiting to find out whether he's
going to live or die.
Quite appropriate for the context of
mortality and funerary symbolism.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And in fact, this exact same image
on lamps
have appeared in, I think, about three
or four cremation burials
from Roman Britain now.
One of the really fantastic things
about this site
is that every burial is a little bit
different.
And the field archaeologists
excavating on site,
and the work we're now doing in
post-excavation,
we're able to sort of tease apart
all these different events and all
these subtle variations
between different people's funerals.
- And what about these objects at the
other end of the table?
I mean, do you often see dice?
Is that personal objects that are
being placed into the urn,
do you think?
- Yeah, I suspect so.
I think they might reflect a
particular interest or passion
for gaming, or just sort of portraying
yourself to be quite
sophisticated and, you know, into
things like gaming
and having these sorts of passions in
death.
- Yeah, yeah. And what about the date
of these burials, then,
these cremation burials? Do you know
when those people were interred?
- Yeah, these date to really pretty
early on within the occupation
of Rome and London. Really, the first
couple of generations
of Londoners.
- OK.
- So this burial here,
we're talking between the late 40s
and about 70, maybe.
- So we're seeing a brand-new culture
arriving in Britain.
- Yeah. This is quite different in
style to
late-Iron Age cremations in Britain.
- Yeah, yeah.
And then what about the inhumation
burials?
Because that was what really caught my
eye on this particular dig.
- Yeah.
So we've got inhumation burials within
coffins that have survived,
and that's incredibly rare.
I mean, there's been about seven or
eight well-preserved wooden coffins
that have been found in London.
- Yeah.
- We've essentially doubled that
number from just this one site.
- Have you got pictures of it
- Yeah.
- ..during excavation?
- So this is an example of one of the
bases of the coffins.
- Yeah.
- And you can see that it's not a
solid piece of wood.
- No, it's like a pallet.
- Yeah.
Interestingly, the sides and the lid
were all solid pieces of wood.
- Yeah.
- But the base was these very, very
thin slits of wood.
One of the questions that we asked
ourselves on site was,
"Was this strong enough to hold a
coffin aloft without,
"you know, the body falling out?"
- That's really interesting, because
you assume that the body
is being put in the coffin somewhere
else and then being brought
to the cemetery, whereas actually,
if it looks like it's not strong
enough,
there's a possibility it could be
built in situ.
- Exactly, yes.
Also, this one had an oil lamp outside
of the coffin.
- Right.
- So they're putting these grave goods
in the grave,
not in the coffin. So there's a whole
sequence
that we're learning
- Yeah.
- ..because we've got this
really amazing preservation.
- And now, what about the really
extraordinary burial?
Have you got some images of that from
excavation?
- So, yeah.
Initially, we thought we had another
wooden coffin,
but we could see that this is actually
the leg
and the side rail of a bed.
This is what we've reconstructed from
the pieces.
It's really exciting, because
throughout Rome,
we see depictions of the funeral
happening
- Mm.
- ..of the body on a bed being carried
to the
Usually a cremation site,
whereas in this case, we've got,
unusually,
a skeleton underneath this jumble of
timbers.
- But the bed's on top of it.
- It's on top of it,
and it's been disassembled.
- And in terms of beds turning up in
burials,
I mean, how often does that happen?
- I mean, it doesn't really.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it's unique.
You'd expect a bed burial,
that the individual would be on the
bed.
- Yeah, not under it.
- It'd be like sleeping in the
afterlife
or something like that.
- Yeah, it is extraordinary.
Now, I automatically want to know more
about this individual.
Are you going to be doing further work
on the human remains?
- Yes, there will be. So at this
stage, we're just sort of
starting the analysis.
We can say that it was a young adult
male at this stage,
but, yeah, obviously it'd be
fascinating to know
where they're from.
- So more work to do.
- Mm.
- But what an amazing site.
Incredible preservation, brilliant
finds. Thank you.
# I dreamt I flew with the saints last
night
# I know them all by wing size #
Now we leave behind city life in
ancient Roman Britain
to join a dig which is uncovering some
very recent history indeed.
In fact, it's the most modern dig that
we've ever visited
on Digging For Britain.
And it takes place at Thorney Hill in
the New Forest.
People have been using this landscape
for thousands of years.
In 1079, it was secured by William I
as his own hunting forest.
Over a century later, local people
were granted rights
to gather firewood, cut turf,
and graze their free-roaming animals.
And for the last few centuries,
the forest has also been home to
free-roaming people.
But this community began to be
forcibly settled
..in the early 20th century.
This is a really unusual
archaeological site.
Most of the digs that I've looked at
over this series
are from hundreds, thousands of years
ago.
This one is much, much more recent.
The earliest record of Romany people
in Britain
goes back to the 1500s.
They brought with them a nomadic
lifestyle
that centred around itinerant work and
living off the land.
Many families drifted in and out of
the New Forest,
its landscape perfectly suited to
their way of life.
But in 1926, the Forestry Commission
introduced compounds,
designated campsites that aimed to
contain Roma people
and restrict their movement.
Thorney Hill was the site of one of
these compounds.
Archaeologist John-Henry Phillips, of
Romany descent himself,
is running the community excavation
here.
John-Henry.
- Hello, Alice.
- Hello.
- Welcome to the New Forest.
- Thank you.
He wants to recover the lost story of
his ancestors
through this difficult transition.
You're digging in this idyllic place,
hoping to uncover, actually,
a fairly recent story.
- Yeah, very recent.
I mean, the last people who lived in
this compound left in about 1974.
So, yeah, it's really recent
archaeology.
- Yeah, yeah.
Tell me about the compound, and when
did it start?
- So Romany people lived in the New
Forest for hundreds of years,
and then with more sort of nouveau
rich people moving into the area
building big houses, they didn't want
to see the Romany people
in the New Forest any more.
- OK.
- So the local authorities came up
with this idea of these
Gypsy compounds, essentially, and this
is one of them.
And at its peak, there was about 400
people living here.
- Really? Just right Just around
where we are?
- Just in this opening here.
- Yeah.
I mean, there really is nothing to see
here,
so how did you know where to look?
- Well, handily, there is an OS map
that has the camp marked on it,
and you can see it says clearly "Gypsy
Rehabilitation Centre."
And then the layout of a compound
right where we're stood.
- Yeah. I mean, even that,
"rehabilitation centre."
- Yeah.
- Why did they decide to put this camp
in this position?
- Because originally, Thorney Hill was
a traditional stopping place
where Romany people would travel
around
and come back to yearly to find work.
- So the idea in the 1920s, then, was
to take the community
who were quite nomadic in this
landscape
- Mm-hm.
- ..and encourage them to settle in
one place?
- Encourage them by force, absolutely,
yeah. There was fines.
They'd impound their animals and
they'd let them get them back
if they promised to move into the
compound.
It was all a very forced thing
to end that sort of nomadic life in
the New Forest.
- And kind of It's about
acknowledging the history as well,
rather than just tucking it away.
- Yeah, there's no point running from
it.
Let's talk about it, let's come
together,
let's start that conversation.
- The camp at Thorney Hill would
eventually evolve into
a more established settlement
with prefabricated houses replacing
tents.
And although the families here were
free to come and go,
the ultimate aim was to encourage them
to abandon
their nomadic way of life and settle
in one place.
Records from the time describe
attempts to teach women
to care for a house,
while men were encouraged to seek
permanent employment.
The team are only allowed to dig a few
targeted trenches,
but they are already uncovering
physical traces of the compound.
- So this trench has changed quite a
bit
since we started excavating it. We put
it here
to try and find the remains of one of
the huts.
- Yeah.
- And then when we got down, we
started finding
concrete foundations that had been
destroyed.
Then we kept digging down, and we
actually managed to find
this massive sewage pipe.
- So there was sewage put in, so
presumably there's a cesspit
or a septic tank or something
somewhere.
- Yeah, so we ended up moving one of
the trenches,
because we were going to put it where
all the brambles are.
- Yeah.
- And I think if you dug there, you'd
find the cesspit.
There's one particular thing we're
really pleased with
with this trench. There was some
stories and some rumours
that there was a particular illness, a
particular disease,
that spread through the compounds,
perhaps due to the sort of
poor sanitary conditions of putting
all those people together
with one tap.
- Only one tap?
- Yeah, one tap for 400 people.
- Yeah.
- So we're taking soil samples,
because it'd be nice to sort of
confirm that, you know.
Put factual science to the anecdotal
stories that you hear.
- Did you expect to find more in the
way of foundations, then?
- Yeah, well, this is a bit of the
mystery. We didn't know
what happened once they actually moved
out
and what they did with the prefabs.
We've heard they were destroyed
or knocked down, but we wanted to see
if we'd actually find them.
- And it also looks like they've done
a pretty comprehensive job
of not just taking away the house
itself,
but actually digging down and digging
out the foundations.
They haven't just covered them over.
They could have just
covered them over.
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, who knows why they did it.
Maybe they wanted to return it to the
angelic New Forest landscape that it
now is.
But, yeah, they certainly did a very
thorough job
of getting rid of those prefab houses.
- Yeah.
One by one, the prefab houses were
demolished
and the families here were moved on
into council houses nearby.
Now the excavation is drawing visitors
who still live in the surrounding
area,
and it's giving them a place to share
their memories.
Bonk, you've got a personal connection
here, haven't you?
- Yes. My parents were born over
there.
- So they actually lived in this
compound?
- Yes.
Before they got moved into houses.
And some of the people, when they
moved into the houses,
actually slept in the garden because
they couldn't sleep inside.
- How many houses were there here?
- There were 13.
- OK.
- And they probably had three or four
kids each, some more.
- Yeah. And you remember it, you
remember being a child here.
- Well, I remember being taken out
through the forest
and being taught how to find mushrooms
and different things
you can eat.
- Yeah.
- Go out ferreting and bring some
rabbits home to eat.
- Yeah.
- Seriously, go and shoot a pheasant
in a tree
on a moonlit night, things like that.
Live off the land.
- You sound nostalgic about it.
- Yeah, I did enjoy it, though. You
have all this forest
as your playground and run wild and do
what you want.
- Yeah.
- Do you know what I mean?
And it's not all bad, is it?
Being a gypsy, is it?
- Alongside the trenches, the team are
fieldwalking
in the surrounding forest
and are finding a large collection of
objects
that once belonged to the people here.
The finds reveal that many were
keeping
their Romany traditions alive.
Tell me about this basket.
- Yeah, this is a beautiful, really
traditional basket
that came from the local heritage
centre.
It was made in Thorney Hill, it was
made in the compound.
It's made by a woman called Annie Doe.
It's made out of grass from the local
area,
but they've bound it with bramble.
- So we've got very much traditional
crafts
carrying on in the 20th century.
- Yes, because traditionally, Romany
people move around,
mainly for the economy, for work.
So once they put them into the
compound, they then sort of
have to resort to more craft making
and selling it
in the surrounding area of the
compound.
- Right.
- So then you start to see things like
baskets and pegs being made.
- Yeah. What about the objects that
you've been finding?
- Yeah, they're very varied, but
they're all very
sort of traditional Romany things.
So Romany families to this day
collect a certain pattern by Crown
Derby called Imari pattern,
for the most part targeted at
Romany
- Really?
- ..communities for them to buy,
right?
- Yeah.
- And this is a piece of Crown Derby
Imari pattern.
- Yeah, I recognise that.
- Yeah, but that is a lot older.
That's from around 1890 to 1910.
And that was made in Japan, not in
England.
That's an original piece of Imari ware
imported from Japan
that Crown Derby sort of adopted the
pattern of later
and sold their own version of it.
- We're often doing this when we're
looking at much older sites
and we're saying, "Oh, you know, the
pottery is an
"expression of identity."
- Mm-hm.
- And we're seeing that really visibly
here
in a way that, actually, we can still
understand.
Crown Derby is still making this
pattern.
- Of course, yeah.
And it lends itself to the fact that
the idea of these compounds was to try
and
make people lose that identity, and
you can see clear as day
that they weren't willing to give that
up easily.
- And then we've got a couple of
rather interesting objects here.
- Yes.
- This has only just emerged, hasn't
it?
- Yeah, yeah, just very recently.
- Yeah.
- This is really special.
This is the actual sharpening wheel
from a knife-sharpening cart.
- Yeah.
- Romany people would go out and
they'd go village to village,
town to town, sharpening people's
knives with a little cart.
- Yeah.
- Very, very traditional.
You know, a really sort of staple of
Gypsy culture.
- And from one disc to another.
- Yes!
- Ha-ha!
- Yes.
- So that's come out of your dig.
- Yeah, so this is very different.
- I can readily identify this.
It is a record.
- Yeah, you'd think so.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, I think so.
But not just any vinyl record, it's a
1968 Cream record.
- Now, how can you tell that, because
the label's gone?
- Yeah, so, the label is gone from
decades of being in the woods,
but one of our volunteers is a very
keen record collector
and was able to follow the matrix
number that, believe it or not,
still survives on there, a tiny
little
- Where's that?
- It is
It is here on this side.
Tiny little numbers.
- Oh, just tucked in there.
- Yeah, yeah.
Which was, er, Wheels Of Fire by
Cream.
And not just any, it was a double
album.
- Yeah.
- And this is side D.
- That's wonderful.
- So the sound of the compounds by
1968,
believe it or not, was Cream.
It was Ginger Baker, it was Eric
Clapton.
- So, yeah.
- ..there you have it.
- # Pressed rat and warthog
# Have closed down their shop
# They didn't want to
# 'Twas all they had got #
I think if I'd walked through this
clearing in the New Forest
earlier in the year,
I would have passed straight through
and I wouldn't have even realised
there was archaeology here.
The ground is slightly undulating,
but essentially, that history has
disappeared.
And what's really surprised me about
this dig
is that it's quite small and targeted,
but it's already bringing people in,
not just to dig,
but to share their stories.
It's already having an impact,
and it's opening up conversation.
From the forests of Hampshire to the
tidal estuaries
of the south coast, the rich natural
resources of southern Britain
have been harnessed by generations
seeking not just to survive,
but to prosper from their local
bounty.
# The sea below lends strings to bow
# If I can't jump
# Just push and shove #
Mass manufacture isn't something that
we usually associate
with prehistory,
but at our next dig, in a stunning
marshland location,
archaeologists have discovered
evidence from 2,000 years ago
of a uniquely British product being
made
on an absolutely massive scale.
Our next dig takes us to Poole
Harbour,
six miles from Bournemouth.
The Arne Peninsula, beside the harbour
in Poole,
is one of Britain's most precious
wetland habitats,
and it's home to countless wild
species,
from sika deer to spoonbills.
But the mudflats here have also proved
to be a rich resource
for humans in the past.
And at our next site, archaeologists
are uncovering secrets from
..the Roman period.
There's a plan to extend this
saltwater marshland habitat,
but before that happens, Wessex
Archaeology
have been called in to investigate the
heritage here,
specifically, the evidence for pottery
manufacture.
Phil Trim and Greg Chuter are leading
the project.
- We've known about pottery production
in Poole Harbour
probably for about 100 years.
What's exciting about this site is the
preservation we've got.
We're finding quite a lot of features
here.
We're also finding quarry areas for
the clay.
But most interestingly, we found this
rectangular area
which we're calling a building at the
moment.
It's made up of a series of walls
around the edge,
and we think this is the potter's
workshop.
- The team need a clue to help them
date this workshop.
Luckily, the pottery produced here is
very distinctive.
- They're making a type of pottery on
this site
which is called black burnished ware.
It's something that is a local
industry in the Iron Age,
and it's when the Romans come here,
they take a real interest in it.
- Poole Harbour was one of a number of
landing sites the Romans used
in their invasion of Britain.
They found local potters already
manufacturing hard-wearing cookware,
and they ramped up production for the
mass market.
- It's difficult to say exactly why
the Romans took a liking
to black burnished ware.
It is a very distinct black colour.
It has a very nice shiny finish.
It isn't the type of pottery that
you're using as fine tableware,
so you're using it as cookware.
I often refer to it as sort of Roman
Tupperware.
By the end of the sort of second and
third centuries,
everyone seems to have some in their
cupboard.
- The actual production process that
goes into making
black burnished ware has always been a
bit of a mystery,
until the discoveries here at Poole
Harbour.
- One of the most exciting features
we've got on site is this kiln,
which my colleague here is excavating.
The basic structure of it is this
circular chamber area here.
The edge of that looks like it's been
partly fired
during the firing process.
You can see that the clay has been
affected by the heat
and has turned a pink colour. It's the
iron in the clay
that's made it go that colour.
- This shows us how the kiln was
built,
but it still doesn't shed light on how
the pottery was fired in it
in order to achieve that distinctive
black burnished ware finish.
But Phil has uncovered more clues,
plenty of examples of this pottery
that didn't make it to market.
- So the first thing you'll notice
about this piece of
black burnished ware is it's not very
black.
So, basically, the atmosphere during
the firing process
has not been right, and they've not
been able to reduce the iron content
of this clay to make the black colour,
and it stayed this sort of buff
colour.
- Now Phil wants to put his
discoveries
at Arne Moor into practice.
So archaeologist Stuart Prior is
meeting Phil
and master potter Bill Crumbleholme
at the Ancient Technology Centre in
Dorset.
- Phil has used his knowledge of the
Arne Moor production site
to construct a fully working Roman
kiln.
He's even brought stone from Poole
Harbour
to create the main structure, and clay
to line the inside.
Right, guys. This is a Roman set-up.
So what are we firing?
- So we're firing pots that I've made
that look like this. So this is a
terracotta sort of clay.
Quite a bit of iron in it, and when
fired normally,
it would turn out looking this sort of
colour.
So what we're trying to do with these
is to make them go black.
- So there's a lot of processes
getting them to go black.
- Yes.
- It's all to do with the iron content
of the clay.
So iron oxide or rust gives you a nice
orangey colour.
And by removing some of the oxygen
from the iron oxide molecules,
you end up with, hopefully, a deep
black colour.
- So oxidisation - orange or red in
colour.
Reduced - black or grey in colour.
- Yeah.
- You've been making them for a long
time.
How would the Romans have made their
pots?
- Well, I reckon they were making them
as pinch pots.
- OK.
- So basically, you get a big lump of
clay
and you put your thumb in it and you
squeeze.
You start off with soft clay,
and that's easy to form up into the
shape.
You let it dry a little bit so it
stiffens up,
and then you can thin it out and it
won't collapse.
- I'm really impressed that that is
not wheel-thrown,
because it's beautiful.
- It's a bit like throwing but in slow
motion.
So you are turning the pot round,
but when you're doing the rim, for
instance,
if you can turn it round and hold your
fingers against it,
you can sort of feel any bumps and
lumps and change it.
And quite often, I'll use something to
carve the edge off
to get the edge completely circular.
- So what's the next step, then?
- The next step for us is to
- Light a big fire.
- Well, we've got a few steps before
that.
We've got to load the kiln with the
pottery.
Get it all stacked in there so that
it's stable.
It's not going to move during the
firing.
And then we're going to build the
superstructure up above it.
Once we've done that, then we can
light the fire.
- So this is experimental archaeology
at its best,
because we don't yet know what the
outcome is going to be.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Bill has spent the last four months
making dozens of pots by hand
for this experiment.
Each one is polished before firing to
create the smooth, shiny surface.
As he carefully stacks the pots into
the kiln,
I'm starting to get a sense of the
sheer amount of labour
it would have taken in Roman times
to make black burnished ware on such a
large scale.
So you were talking about it being a
big industry
down at Poole Harbour. Do you think
they're firing pots
every day down at Poole?
- Quite possibly, yes. It may have
been a bit seasonal,
insofar as the workers may have been
called away
to bring in the harvest or something.
- Mm-hm.
- But you have to remember, because
there's so many processes,
there were people collecting the wood
for the fuel,
people collecting the clay.
And I think perhaps a lot of people
don't realise what goes on
behind the scenes. You know, you just
see the pot come out
of the kiln, but actually, there's a
huge amount of work goes into it.
- After covering the kiln opening with
turf,
they can finally start the fire.
Here we go.
- Now is the boring bit.
- It's not, though, is it?
Because you've got a lot to do. It's a
lot of tending
of the structure, of the fire.
Is it going to be a big fire out here
eventually?
- It won't come out too far out the
firebox.
- OK.
- It'll be concentrated.
- Right, so, that's where all the heat
is concentrated.
- Yeah.
- Phil and Bill now face the laborious
process of tending the kiln
late into the night,
slowly adding more fuel to increase
the temperature inside.
If they heat the kiln too fast, the
pots could explode.
When the kiln is finally glowing red
hot,
they pile on soil to starve it of
oxygen,
hoping to create the right conditions
to blacken the pottery.
- That's exactly what we want. We want
it to smoulder.
- And the next morning, it's time for
the big reveal.
- It looks promising, though.
- It does look very good, yeah.
- Yeah, it's not a bunch of shards,
anyway,
which is nice to know, that they
haven't all broken.
I'm pleased with that.
- Yeah.
- Have they managed to crack the
secret of Roman
black burnished ware?
Hi, guys.
- All right?
- How did the experiment go?
- Well, we've had some really good
results and some more mixed results.
This is one of the best examples that
we've had.
- Oh, that's fantastic.
- Yeah, it's not perfect.
There's still areas of it which
haven't quite gone as black
as we like, but the majority of that
pot
is a really deep black colour.
And the burnish has stood up well to
the firing,
so it's got a nice shine to the
outside of it.
It really is a good result.
- So the process is working properly.
- Yeah. We think we're getting pretty
close to doing it the same way
that they were doing it. But, of
course, not all of the pots
that we fired went brilliantly.
- I can see you've got one in your
hand there, is that a slightly
different story?
- It is, yeah. So it's a bit patchy.
So there are areas where it's not gone
black completely.
And certainly, it won't be black all
the way through,
which I hope that one is.
But it's actually It's turned
ceramic OK.
So it's a good second in terms of it's
still functional as a pot.
- So that would be kind of sold up for
salt production
or something like that. And this one
could maybe make its way
to Hadrian's Wall.
- It might do, yeah.
- Yeah, I think
- Some unlucky soldier gets it.
- We can be really proud of, you know,
achieving that result
with some of the vessels. I think it's
a really good sign
that we're getting close to that
process
in terms of replicating what they were
doing.
- Well done, well done.
- Yeah.
- It's been a great day.
I've really appreciated doing the pot
firing
and actually building the kiln and
seeing the whole process
from start to finish.
And that makes you think about the
scale of the industry.
You'd have had people chopping the
wood, stoking the fires,
looking after and tending the kilns
for hours on end.
Poole Harbour would have been
completely full of pottery kilns
and black burnished ware production
sites.
- Some of the south's most elegant
buildings were created
by the Georgians.
The economy was booming,
sparking a cultural renaissance.
But while the higher echelons of
society enjoyed luxury lifestyles,
the poor suffered food scarcity,
austerity and unforgiving legal
reform.
200 years ago, the British government
had an issue
with overcrowding of prisons, a
familiar story,
and they came up with the bright idea
of housing prisoners offshore
in specially converted ships known as
prison hulks.
Tales abounded of the gruesome
conditions on board these hulks,
most memorably in Dickens' Great
Expectations.
And now archaeologists believe they've
found evidence
which links to those hulks.
Our next dig takes us to a small
island
in the intertidal zone just off the
coast of Portsmouth.
We first visited this site back in
after the unexpected discovery of
human bones
on Burrow Island,
or Rat Island, as it's known locally.
The island is owned by the Ministry of
Defence,
who sent their archaeologist, Richard
Osgood, to investigate.
He found a whole graveyard eroding out
of the muddy cliffs.
- The island is a huge palimpsest,
layer upon layer upon layer,
of human burials of the late 18th,
early 19th century,
which means that there's potentially
hundreds and hundreds of bodies
that have been put out on the island
in that period.
- Radiocarbon dating revealed the
burials are from the early 1800s -
the late Georgian era.
This year, Richard is heading back to
Rat Island.
- Tide is in about an hour's time for
low tide,
but we'll then have about three or
four hours out here,
so it should be enough time to get a
good lot of work in today.
We're straight into the archaeology
immediately. Thank you.
- Tidal erosion has exposed a new part
of the cemetery,
and Richard and his team are on a
rescue mission
to recover as much evidence as they
can
before it's washed away by the sea.
- We found a femur just here with a
number of other bones
that have come out of this area.
We're just trying to get this out
gently,
but without breaking it and without
breaking ourselves, basically,
because there's a lot of overhang
here.
- Social inequality and legal reform
in the 18th century
drove a burgeoning rise in the numbers
of convicted criminals.
But the prisons were full.
The solution was to offshore the
problem,
using decommissioned Navy ships, or
prison hulks,
to house not only ordinary criminals
but also prisoners of war.
- In the late 18th century going into
the 19th century,
this place was filled with ships that
had up to 800 people
incarcerated on them.
You put that many people in cramped
conditions,
people are going to have disease, and
that's going to spread
very quickly through the ships.
They need a place to be able to bury
them quickly,
and Rat Island was that choice.
- Most of the skeletons the team
excavate
bear no obvious signs of trauma.
Further laboratory work may reveal
details about where these people
came from, their diets, and their
health.
But something here has caught the
archaeologists' eye.
There's one skull with
suspicious-looking damage,
and Richard calls in forensic
archaeologist David Erickson
to make sense of the find.
- To my eyes, Dave, it looks as though
it's got quite an obvious
bit of damage to it.
- Yeah, this is the first time we've
found any evidence
of trauma on this site.
This is very uniform, very square in
shape,
and this would need a little bit more
research, of course,
but this could be from a pole-axe or
some sort of weapon
that might be yielded by somebody
else.
- Do we think that's done at the time
of death, or was that?
- Most likely. I wouldn't imagine this
was a postmortem mark.
- This is really extraordinary,
though.
There's a real potential biography of
this individual
to tell us a lot more about the people
of Rat Island
and on the prison hulks.
- Absolutely.
- I'm keen to see this evidence for
myself,
so Richard is bringing the skull to
the Digging For Britain tent.
So, Richard, this is one skull from
amongst these burials
on Rat Island.
We've looked at Rat Island before.
I've even been there.
- Yeah.
- Are you still thinking that these
were probably convicts
that ended up being buried on that
island?
- Yeah, we are. So we've been there
for a few years now,
and there's a mixture of men, women
and indeed children
buried on the island, which makes us
think
more to the convict idea than the
prisoner of war story.
- Yeah, yeah.
- The reason we've got one skull that
we brought in this time
is because I think there's quite a
grisly story of crime, punishment
from the sort of Georgian period in
Britain displayed by
this one person's skull.
- So this is what caught my eye
immediately.
- Yeah.
And that's just one of a series of
quite obvious elements
on this skull that even my untrained
eye picked up as being unusual
and perhaps connected with the story
of the person, because
- Yeah.
- ..that actually has come from inside
the skull.
It's not damaged from above.
It's been damaged from something
pushed up inside.
- And it looks like it happened when
this skull was relatively fresh.
- I think so.
- Because it hasn't broken here.
When the skull is fresh, it's still
quite green
and it can bend a bit.
- OK. So there's some flex.
- Rather than just being brittle and
fracturing.
What's this?
- That's another of the things.
So it's a big square wound. Now, the
only time I've seen
something like that is from skeletal
material
connected with the Wars of the Roses.
So you're talking 14th century, done
by something like a pole hammer.
It's not a bullet wound, it's not a
musket wound.
See, it's quite a square thing.
- It's very neat.
- It's very neat, but it seems to
If you go through
- Oh.
- ..there's an exit on the other side
of the skull.
- Oh, my goodness, yeah. So there's
another hole there.
And then I can see I think I can
see
- An indentation.
- Yeah. Whatever's been pushed up
through there
has pushed through the inner table,
and then it's obviously pushed into
the outer table
- When it's still fleshed.
- ..but hasn't gone through.
Perhaps. I mean, at least when it was
green, I would say.
- Yeah.
So that was leading us to think
potentially, it's been on some sort of
spike or something
for display.
- Yeah.
I mean, obviously there is a hole
underneath the skull
for the spinal cord to exit,
but this has been made a lot, lot
bigger.
So this is really strange.
I mean, is this? When does it date
from?
- The bones we've looked at so far
have radiocarbon dated
to the end of the 18th, early 19th
century.
So these are fundamentally Georgians.
- Yeah.
- Convicts off the prison ships,
but
- Did Georgians display heads on
poles?
- So at this point in time, there were
still gibbets.
After the person's been executed by
hanging,
you put the body into an iron cage,
effectively,
and display it as a sort of warning.
I don't think this has been displayed
in a gibbet,
but I do think it's been displayed.
Are we looking at someone who's had
quite a violent end?
Because presumably that square
puncture that's come all the way
through could have been the cause of
death, rather than having been
inflicted when the person is dead.
- It's always hard, but you can't rule
out the possibility
that they were already dead.
- There's another slight possibility
in that the burials on the island
of these convicts, it's such a densely
packed burial area,
that when they're putting new burials
in into these stacked
coffins, they are taking the earlier
burials out and then backfilling
them at the end. So I suppose there's
a slight chance
that this skull is the victim
of being spiked out of the ground, but
it wouldn't explain
why there's a widening at the base of
the skull.
- No, no.
I mean, that's been done quite
carefully.
- Mm-hm.
- Erm, it's not as though this skull
has just ended up
being accidentally damaged.
This is not accidental, is it?
- No, it looks deliberate.
The skull is still, I think, being
displayed.
And so what's that about?
- It's brutal, isn't it?
You know, we're seeing we're seeing
people who
were convicts in terrible conditions,
first of all,
and then presumably executed
andand with their heads being
displayed on
- Heads being displayed afterwards. So
there's a, you know
What an attitude towards human
remains.
- We think about the sophisticated
Georgians, don't we?
- And the enlightenment. This is the
enlightenment.
- Yeah.
- This is when people are learning and
people are discovering
so much about science, but at the same
time,
there are really quite brutal acts
going on, and a lack of
Well, a lack of respect for what was
once a person.
- Yeah.
- It's a real mystery, but
nonetheless, one small item
giving an incredible story, really, I
think.
- I wonder who he was.
- Yeah.
- Ooh! There's mosaic everywhere!
Oh, my goodness.
What a year it's been on Digging For
Britain.
It feels like vertigo
looking back through that incredible
depth of history.
- Wow.
- Look at me, I'm shaking.
- We've uncovered exquisite
treasures
Ooh!
- This is going to rewrite the record,
I think.
- ..showing that our ancient ancestors
weren't all that different from us.
I mean, that's how not to lose a key,
isn't it?
- That's it.
- Yeah.
I should get some of these made.
- Yes!
- Who knows what discoveries are
waiting to be unearthed next year?
# Come and search for we who search
# And looking for a scarred land
# And dig for those whose stories lie
with buried paths
# And futures won
# And dig for us as we have done
# To lay the dead out in the sun
# To lay us dead out in the sun. #