These islands we call home
have a rich and varied history stretching back thousands of years.
But hidden under the ground
and under water
are some amazing treasures just waiting to be found.
- Woo! - Wow! - Yeah, wow.
So each year, all across the country,
archaeologists dig, dive and explore their way down...
Ah, this is brilliant.
...searching for fresh discoveries.
And it is completely intact.
Revealing traces of ancient cultures...
This shoe is 2,803 years old.
Oh, wow!
...and unearthing fascinating artefacts.
Ooh, that's a nice thing. What is it?
I've never seen anything quite like it in my career.
Every dig adds new pieces
to the ever growing archaeological jigsaw...
That's so cool.
...That is the epic story of our islands.
This year, I visit digs in some extraordinary locations...
The ceiling just got a bit lower.
...and I call on the help of a trio of expert investigators...
It's quite difficult to find any other evidence
of things that just don't leave a mark in the archaeology.
This is a really powerful document
because we're getting to hear the voices that we don't usually hear.
...Who delve deeper to answer the questions raised by the finds.
Is all of this already recorded in books?
There was none of this in a book anywhere.
Finally, the archaeologists
bring their most amazing discoveries into our tent...
Astonishing!
...for up close analysis.
Genuinely rewriting history.
Welcome to Digging For Britain.
This time I'm exploring the east of England,
looking at the region's most fascinating and unusual digs.
In Norfolk, we go back to the time of the Iceni tribe,
once led by the rebellious Queen Boudicca.
This feels like some special kind of witchcraft.
I'm baffled by arguably the strangest object
we've ever had in 11 series.
This is just extraordinary.
Look at that!
And we even set sail for Belgium
to revisit the site of one of Britain's most famous battles.
There are loads of books written on Waterloo.
Not one of them mentions this.
As Rome's invading army crashed its way through Iron Age Britain,
the architecture of occupation took root in our landscapes.
Imposing fortifications announced a new regime was here to stay...
...with a transport system to boost the economy
and a transformation of Iron Age settlements into Roman towns.
Our first dig takes place at Bracebridge Heath
on the outskirts of Lincoln.
Today, Lincoln is famous for its grand cathedral,
which stood as the world's tallest building for more than 200 years...
...and the imposing Lincoln Castle
built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century.
But Lincoln was an important town a thousand years earlier
during the Roman period.
This is the oldest arch in Britain that you can still drive through.
It's actually Roman. It dates to the third century,
and it was the original north gate of Lincoln or Lindum Colonia,
as it would have been called then.
And this road is part of Ermine Street,
which links Lincoln down to London.
Previous archaeological digs in Lincoln have revealed
that it had all the trappings of an important Roman town
with a forum, baths, temples
and houses with richly decorated mosaics.
But what's less well-known
is what the area outside the town was like,
along the route of Ermine Street.
Just a few miles to the south of Lincoln
archaeologists have been trying to find that original Roman road,
Ermine Street.
And they've done it,
but that's not all they found.
Whenever a large infrastructure project gets underway in the UK,
among the first people on the scene are the archaeologists.
Anglian Water suspected that their new pipeline
would run right through the path of Ermine Street -
once a bustling Roman highway -
but they didn't know exactly where it was
so they brought in a huge joint venture team
from three different archaeological companies
York, Oxford and Pre-Construct Archaeology.
And Kelly Sinclair is one of the project officers.
- Kelly, hi. - Hi.
- Hello, hello. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you, too.
- This is your trench? - It is, yeah. - It's huge.
And this is it. This is Ermine Street.
It is, yes.
Wow, that's fantastic.
Ah, are these grooves real? Are they...
- Are they Roman? - Yeah. So they are the wheel ruts
from sort of the wagons, the traffic
that would have been coming along the road here.
So that means you know you've got the surface of it.
- Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, yeah.
These wheel ruts are evidence of heavy use
of the many travellers that used the Roman roads of Britain -
soldiers, officials and civilians.
There are no obvious buildings right beside Ermine Street here,
but just a few hundred metres away,
they've uncovered something remarkable.
- Oh, walls. - Yeah. - Lots of them.
Yeah, in all different directions.
We were quite surprised when this much came up
when we stripped the area.
The remains of a completely unknown settlement.
But when does it date to?
And what about the pottery? You've got some of the pottery there. It presumably helps with dating.
Yeah, absolutely. So, generally,
we're looking at mid-second to late fourth century,
sort of the span of the settlement
and then we've got this quite nice piece here that's actually got a maker's stamp on it.
So that's Lincolnshire mortaria.
- That's the maker, is it? - Yeah, that is.
And that will be, that's actually quite precisely dated
to 100-140 AD.
- Really? - So that could be a sign of sort of the earlier side
of when the settlement started here.
The artefacts from this incredibly finds-rich site
suggest that this wasn't your average rural Roman settlement,
and archaeologist Paul Rayner
has brought a particular highlight to show me.
Oh, Paul.
Hi.
So this is the special find.
Yes, this is the commemorative carved stone.
So it's got an inscription on it, hasn't it?
- Yeah. - But it's really hard to read that.
Oh, my goodness.
I can make out a D here. Is that an E?
Looks like an E, potentially.
Does anybody have any idea what it might say
and what it might have been used for?
Yes. So we think they were usually found on altars or tombstones.
- OK. - This one's more likely to come from a tombstone.
And the inscription says something along the lines of,
"Laid in commemoration."
The person who's laid it commemorating that they've laid it
- and that they laid it with their own money. - Yeah.
So it's quite a status symbol, I suppose,
of them sort of saying that, look what I could afford.
And the small finds also get us closer to the people living here.
- Can I take the lid off? - Yes, you can lift the lid, yeah.
What have we got here?
Lots of metal finds.
That is a little key.
- Isn't that lovely? - Yeah. Yeah.
They clearly had something that was worth
- keeping under lock and key. - Yes.
- Something they didn't want someone else to get their hands on. - Yeah.
- So, again, you know, they're not just eking out an existence here,
- are they? - No. - They have some nice things.
They definitely got some nice things, things they don't want
- other people to have. - And what about this mysterious box here?
This is one of the star finds so far. This is a...
It's a nice enamelled brooch.
Oh, that's incredible.
It's been brought in from the continent, and that's again...
- Has it? - Yeah, yeah. It's continental design.
Isn't that lovely?
I mean, we're just getting an idea of how elaborate it is,
but we're not really seeing just how beautiful
- and bright it would have been. - No, yeah.
Yeah, so the enamel will have dulled but that would be
very vibrant greens
and things shining through.
Yeah.
We know from previous excavations that Roman Lincoln was a rich,
bustling commercial centre,
but these discoveries show that this wealth
seems to have spilled out beyond the town walls.
I think there's a lot about this landscape
that just hasn't changed in 18 centuries,
but there's an important difference -
that right here there was a settlement, a big settlement,
and that's been an unexpected discovery.
The archaeologists knew that Ermine Street
was around here to be found,
but the scale of this small town
has really surprised them.
And not just the size of it,
but the fact that the people living here were clearly affluent.
And then, for some reason, after the fourth century,
this whole place is abandoned, falls into ruin,
disappears under the fields of wheat.
The landscape of Britain is full of traces of past lives,
some of them still evident today,
but many hidden and forgotten,
until archaeologists come along and bring them into the light.
Whole communities have disappeared from sight and memory
and sometimes we stumble upon the remains
of not just roads and settlements,
but the people themselves.
Our next dig takes place on a large infrastructure project
that's still ongoing
in the County of Lincolnshire.
An ambitious national grid scheme called the Viking Link
will involve laying the world's longest electricity connector
between Britain and Denmark
to enable the sharing of green energy across borders.
It provides a unique opportunity to explore huge swathes of landscape,
and Wessex Archaeology, who are working on the scheme,
have made an astonishing discovery...
...dating back to the Early Medieval period.
We're in the Lincolnshire Wolds
and I think the most spectacular thing that we have here
are several inhumations.
There's a little bit of debate at the moment as to
what period they date from.
Speculatively, it could either be the first century AD
or I'm kind of erring towards Anglo-Saxon, now.
This period is so sparsely documented,
it's sometimes still called the Dark Ages.
So archaeology becomes supremely important to understanding
communities in Britain at this time.
And here there are 23 burials, 23 people with stories to tell.
Some of the grave goods we're pulling out of them
I've never seen anything quite like it in my career.
So we're getting copper alloy brooches,
a lot of the burials have small iron knives at their waists,
and that seems to be quite a standard practice within
early Anglo-Saxon burials
and they tend to be associated with female burials.
Archaeologically speaking,
this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Absolutely incredible.
These people would have been buried fully clothed with their jewellery
and personal possessions.
So we learn about the material culture from these burials,
but the bones themselves also contain precious information
about who these people were.
As a howling gale batters the tent,
osteoarchaeologists Jackie McKinley and Ceri Boston
join me to talk about the post-excavation work
they're doing on this site.
Jackie and Ceri, thank you very much for bringing these burials along.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the site itself,
the context of it?
Right, OK. It's an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.
- We had in total, I think, 22 graves with 23 individuals in them. - OK.
And the reason there was one more individual than graves
is because one of them had two individuals in it.
And that is where these two individuals came from here.
The other thing you will notice
is the bone is not in very good condition.
No, it is a bit fragmentary, isn't it?
Especially this child's skeleton.
The ends of the bones are missing completely
and all you've got left are the shaft,
where you've got the more compact bone.
How well preserved bone is is nothing to do with how old it is.
It's to do with the burial conditions.
But having said that, we can still do quite a lot with it.
And Ceri indeed has done quite a lot with working out
what we have here in terms of age and perhaps the sex
of the individuals, which is not always so easy, is it?
No, and particularly when they're very young.
- Yeah. - I think we're just starting to see some changes
on the old skeleton.
She's probably a female.
She's probably 15 to 17 years old.
So still in the process of maturing.
And the little one is only three to five,
and so they're unlikely to be mother and child.
Just the ages are just too close.
That's interesting because I think when I first saw this,
you kind of assume that what you're looking at is a parent
- and child relationship. - I mean, they could've been brother and sister,
they could've been cousins, they could be a familial relationship.
But if you're living in a small community,
then everybody probably knew each other
and rather than burying them alone,
a little one alone,
they may well have put him
or her with somebody who they knew in life.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's where the DNA will come in.
We will ultimately do DNA analysis
and try and get an idea of that relationship.
And there are some grave goods in this grave?
There are indeed.
We've got a brooch, a little bronze brooch, penannular brooch here,
which is in such beautiful condition, you could almost wear it.
We do have these two wonderful gold and garnet pendants here,
but just look at how the gold has been formed on that,
little coils that have been joined together.
- Yeah. - It really is quite beautiful.
And when was she buried? Do we know?
What's the date of these graves?
Well, these items that we've got here are going to be
very late sixth century
and into the late seventh century.
And is it unusual to find grave goods and graves of that age?
They start to get rarer.
People didn't seem to be buried with as much goodies
staggered around them.
But they're very... These are very high status.
I mean, this is saying something about her status as well.
That's interesting because she's very young.
So we're looking at inherited status, probably.
Potentially inherited status.
And we are actually in the early stages
of doing this work at the moment.
So we'll be doing more detailed dating of some of the burials
so that we can find out the longevity of the cemetery
and doing the DNA is going to give us how the different graves
were related to each other.
We'll also be looking at things like the strontium and oxygen isotopes,
- which will give us where those people grew up. - Yeah.
- Because that gets locked into teeth as you're forming them. - Exactly.
So there'll be lots of other scientific work that we'll be doing
that will help us understand this community
and how they related to other communities within the area.
For a long time we had this almost endless debate
about the Anglo-Saxons
and how many people are coming over from the continent
and whether it's just a continuation of a migration that
kind of starts in the Roman era or not,
and I think we're getting some clarity about that now.
Clearly there's moving around within Britain as well.
It's quite obvious, looking at these things, the items we've got here,
that people in different communities and different groups,
quite often a long way apart,
would have interacted with each other.
And I like it because it's, you know,
they've been forgotten about, these people.
It's another form of sort of giving them a type of immortality.
♪ I trod with
♪ An ache for the ones who've walked before me
♪ And joy for the ones
♪ Who walk beside me. ♪
Much of East Anglia is a flat, fertile plain
perfect for agriculture.
But it also means that archaeology can be at risk of being demolished
by the plough.
Sometimes, though, seemingly against the odds,
something survives for thousands of years.
Our next dig in the east takes us to Warham,
30 miles north-west of Norwich.
This is Norfolk...
...home to the Iron Age tribe that the Romans tell us
was called the Iceni
and, of course, to the queen Boudicca herself,
who led a failed uprising against the Romans.
But this site takes us back centuries before Rome even looked at Britain
with a glint in its eye.
Boudicca's famous revolt against Roman occupation
happened in the year 60 CE.
But the history of the Iceni tribe stretches back centuries before
into the Iron Age.
The signature monument of the Iron Age is the hillfort,
and despite its famous flatness,
East Anglia has a few,
but most have not withstood the ravages of time.
The Normans built a castle on top of Thetford's fort
and Holkham Camp has merged into salt marsh.
But the spectacular preservation of the hillfort at Warham
makes it a prime site for investigation.
Andy Hutcheson from the University of East Anglia is leading the dig.
- Andy. - Hi, Alice. - Hello. Hello, hello.
This is utterly gorgeous and it's unexpected as well.
- Yeah. - A hillfort in Norfolk?
And you're obviously here hoping to find out something new
about this hillfort. So what do we know already?
Has it been previously archaeologically investigated?
Yeah, it has in 1914 and then again in 1959.
- Right. - And they established it was Iron Age.
- OK. - So we are here to further characterise it,
but also to date it, accurately.
Because the Iron Age lasts a long time, it's nearly a millennium.
Yeah, exactly.
It's 800 through to... well, in this part of the world
- 60, 61 AD. - Yeah, yeah.
The fort here at Warham
would have been an impressive stronghold,
with tall banks probably topped by a palisade
and surrounded by deep ditches on all sides.
And it's in the bottom of the ditch
that the team are hoping to find
something to help them date the fort's earliest phase.
- That's so deep. - Amazing, isn't it? - And full of water.
Yes, yes.
It's just filled up from groundwater.
Yeah, because the river is just over there.
We've come down onto a peat, which is very exciting
because we should be able to get interesting information
about the immediate environment,
probably also the wider environment as well at the time.
So pollen that will tell us about the trees in this area.
So you'll have the preservation of organic remains in that?
- That's the hope. - You've got some bones.
What bones are they? They're not human, certainly.
They're not. They are horse.
Nice to find a horse because the Iceni were known to be horse people.
Do you think it's deliberately deposited
or do you think this is just rubbish that has ended up in a ditch?
The fact that it's not mixed with cattle and pig
and all sorts, it's compelling...
- Yeah, could be something meaningful. - ..that it might be
something meaningful.
These organic remains will be sent for radiocarbon dating after the dig
to help establish a firm sequence of occupation for the fort.
This is a nature reserve as well as a scheduled monument,
so the team have had to be as un-invasive as possible.
In the interior,
they've dug 21 small test pits.
And they're painstakingly sieving all of the sediment
from each test pit,
looking for clues.
- Hello. - Hi. - Hi.
So what are you finding in here, apart from rocks?
Well, apart from rocks,
- we found shells, oyster shells, right? - Can I have a look?
- Then... - Some pottery. - That's not a bad haul.
...Even flints, like this is flints.
I'm an archaeologist from West Africa.
No matter where we are doing archaeology,
it's more or less the same -
we always use trowel, we always use spade,
we always we use bucket and we will see.
And you're all challenging history as well.
- You're finding a different strand of evidence... - Exactly.
...A different way of looking at the past.
This methodical approach is paying off.
They've gathered a substantial haul of finds from the fort's interior,
allowing archaeologist Matt Brudenell
to see how much activity was going on over time.
What about the finds that we've got coming out of here then,
because I've had a look at the trench that's going through the ditch
and that suggests that there's a long period of time that
there's something going on here.
Are you getting a good idea from finds inside the fort?
We are, yeah. We've got some evidence of Iron Age finds
- coming out of the site. - Yeah. - Some Iron Age pottery.
But as you can see, there isn't a great deal of material
of this period coming out of the site.
- No, it's only tiny pieces, isn't it? - And tiny pieces, yeah.
The bulk of the material that we're getting from the excavations
dates to the Roman period, but not the beginning of the Roman period,
actually, to the end of the Roman period,
so we're talking like 3rd and 4th century AD.
After the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 CE,
the king of the Iceni ruled his kingdom independently
but as an ally of Rome.
When he died, the Romans ousted his wife, Boudicca,
and seized the kingdom, triggering the Boudican revolt,
which ultimately ended in defeat.
But life in what had been the kingdom of the Iceni would go on,
and the evidence from this hillfort suggests it had a new lease of life
in the late Roman period.
Alongside the pottery, there are hobnails from boots
and intriguing signs of industry.
The sediment here contains one last secret.
I've never done this before.
OK, so if you take the magnet
and you just run it through the soil itself,
all those little tiny pieces of iron.
This feels like some special kind of witchcraft.
It does a bit, a sort of alchemy.
And there you go. And it's not... You can move it around.
- It looks just like dirt sticking to it. - It does look like dirt,
but hang on a minute.
- No, look at that. - It doesn't just come off,
it wants to stay on the magnet.
You can't brush it away.
So it is...
...it is iron, isn't it?
Little tiny bits of metal.
- Yeah, look at that. - When hot metal was being worked on an anvil,
tiny, tiny little flakes of hammer scale come off
and remain in the soil.
That's extraordinary!
Is that right across the site here?
Well, there seems to be a real density of it in this area.
So much so that when the metal detector was run over here,
it gave an almost continuous low signal...
- Yeah. Yeah. - ..across the area.
So we think we're standing in an area
that would have been a Roman forge.
These tiny scales of iron - so easy to miss in excavation -
are a clue that the abandoned hillfort
became home to an out of town blacksmith
centuries later.
There are still mysteries to be solved here.
More secrets will emerge as the dig ends
and the post-excavation work gets underway.
Here we've got an incredibly precious,
rare opportunity for archaeologists to bring modern techniques to bear
on questions like when exactly was this built,
and then what happens to it.
In the Roman period, there's a lull,
and then it seems people are back here
and they're back here with industry, with metalworking.
And I love the fact that we're getting that evidence out of those
subtle small traces,
pulling fragments of metal out of the ground with a magnet.
Some evidence of Roman Britain seems easy to interpret -
hobnails from boots, iron scales from metalworking,
the architecture of ancient amphitheatres,
but other Roman finds are very strange indeed.
Most of the time, when archaeologists discover an object,
they can work out what it is.
Sometimes it might be really obvious,
and it might be something we're familiar with in our everyday lives.
It might be a piece of jewellery or a knife.
But occasionally you get an object which is just so mysterious,
so enigmatic, that even the best archaeologists are left
scratching their heads.
Our next puzzling discovery comes from the tiny village
of Norton Disney,
12 miles south-west of Lincoln.
The village is named after the Norman lords of the manor,
the D'Isigny family.
But its history goes back much further
than just a mere thousand years.
In 1933, a Roman villa was discovered near the village.
Now team are hunting for more evidence
from the Roman period.
The team in question is the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group
now embarking on their third and biggest excavation so far
captured by their Dig Diary.
We've come here this year to try
and find out something about the Roman archaeology,
which has been hinted at for more than a few years now
by some of the geophysical surveys that we've done
and also some other local finds as well.
This is an elevated site in an otherwise flat landscape,
giving panoramic views across the Trent Valley.
A geophysical survey had revealed a mysterious feature at its centre
that, on excavation, turned out to be a large pit.
So Tom, tell us a little bit about what
you've been finding in trench four.
It's a quarry pit that's been filled with demolition material.
So we've been finding a lot of...
...a lot of Roman pottery and quite a few sort of rims.
A convenient hole in the ground becomes filled
with rubbish over time.
So far, it's a very ordinary story.
But, then, on the penultimate day of digging,
something extra ordinary emerges from the pit.
So, Richard, what is it?
So this is a Roman dodecahedron.
We don't really know exactly what they're used for,
but they're super rare.
But it's absolutely amazing finding this.
Richard Parker has come along to the tent
with expert Lorena Hitchens to try to shed some light
on this intriguing find.
So, Richard, what's in the box?
So, the big reveal today.
And this is absolutely astonishing.
Look at that!
This is our special find. This is the standout thing.
I mean, it's outrageous.
You know, we've got this kind of this pottery
and you think, yes, OK, we're on a Roman site
and, then...
And, then, this extraordinary object.
What was it like when you found it?
Well, I was making the tea at the time.
There's a big shout goes up, a bit of swearing and you think,
"Ooh, somebody's had an accident or something."
So I go running over there and then
Richard, who found it on site, was holding it up,
you know, and then, oh, my goodness me,
you've found a dodecahedron.
I've only read about those.
I've never seen one.
And work just stops.
- Can I pick it up? - Of course.
It's really weird.
So there are other examples of this type of object.
- Yes. - How many do we know of?
So there are 32 from Roman Britain.
That's including from whole to fragments.
- This makes 33 that I know of. - Yeah, so fairly rare.
And they're not necessarily Roman because they're
only found in the northern
and western provinces of the Roman Empire.
So it's more accurate to say Romano Celts or Gallo Roman
or Romano Brit.
- Yeah. - Something hybrid.
They don't come from Rome.
And do we know anything about what,
I mean, what is it?
- So here's a couple of models. - OK.
So this is a more typical size.
- This is a big boy here from the East Midlands. - Oh, really?
So these are life-size replicas?
Yes, yes. These are based on 3D models of existing examples.
So when you see that variation in size,
it can't be any kind of a measuring device
or a gauge because they're not consistent.
No, no.
Could it be something to do with textiles?
I don't think it's a tool because I don't find
wear on the necks of the knobs.
I don't find wear on the edges of the holes.
I think they are something symbolic
and I know that sounds like a cliche.
You know, when the archaeologist doesn't know, they say it's ritual,
but maybe it is something ritual.
Would it have been cast, do you think?
Yes. So it is cast copper alloy.
I think they're valued because the skill and effort
that goes into making one is very high.
I noticed when you first looked at it,
you said it's so complicated to look at,
but when you hold them in your hand,
it's not as complicated.
Put your finger in this hole.
- Yeah. - Put your other finger in that hole.
Now turn it with your thumbs.
Yeah, there you go.
- So it will spin. - Yeah.
But if you feel that raised design,
even if you had your eyes closed, I think you would be able...
- You can walk your way... - Yeah.
- You can walk your way around it. - You get used to those imprints.
You're thinking of it as something that comes alive in the hands, then.
It's that kind of ritual tactile object.
Something meditative, something that you personally know intimately.
Maybe.
It feels like it needs a manual to go with it
and we're missing the manual, doesn't it?
Well, yeah, good luck, because the Romans don't mention these at all.
- Really? - No inscriptions, no writings, no pictorial depictions, nothing.
What about where it was found on the site, Richard?
I mean, does that give us any clues?
The working theory is it's a quarry pit.
We know it's relatively near a Roman villa site.
The difficulty is, is it part of the Roman villa estate
or is it something different?
And, really, we need to go back next year
and the year after that, probably, to understand the context.
We think there's another building on the landscape,
but we're just not there yet.
I do love an archaeological mystery
and this has to be one of the greatest,
most mysterious archaeological objects
I've ever had the opportunity to look at up close.
It's just extraordinary.
And the mystery deepens
because it's not just the shape of this object that's unusual,
but its composition.
After filming, the dodecahedron was subjected to chemical analysis
and found to be 26% lead.
That's extremely high,
and at the moment we don't know why that is.
I have a feeling that there are still big revelations to come
from the Norton Disney site.
From the Elizabethan period onwards,
grand residences in Britain slowly evolved
to focus more on comfort than defence.
The great and the good no longer felt it vital
to hide behind castle walls for protection.
And so the age of the stately home began,
the ultimate symbol of status and luxury.
Our next dig takes us to Enfield on the outskirts of London.
This elegant stately home is Forty Hall.
It was built by the Lord Mayor of London in the 17th century.
Today it's a museum, open for visitors to come
and marvel at some of the best Jacobean architecture in the country.
But hidden within the landscaped garden is something far older...
...a lost royal palace
known as Elsyng,
dating from the Tudor period.
Now archaeologists are getting a chance to investigate
this lost palace,
which apparently was a firm favourite of Henry VIII's.
The Enfield Archaeological Society have been excavating here
in the grounds of Forty Hall for the last 19 years...
...painstakingly uncovering the remains of the palace
that has lain hidden for centuries.
I'm meeting archaeologist John Pinchbeck,
who's been involved with the excavations since 2004.
- John, hello. - Hi, Alice.
- Welcome to Elsyng Palace. - Thank you very much.
- Where is the palace, then? - Well, believe it or not,
we're standing in the outer courtyard.
The archaeologists used a laser-imaging technique -
known as lidar - to survey the grounds.
You just come down this, the avenue, can you see this kind of dark line
- crossing the avenue there? - Yeah.
And we're standing right there in this ditch.
- So, in Tudor times, we'd have wet feet right now. - Yeah.
This ditch formed the boundary of the outer courtyard
of this missing palace.
So you didn't have any contemporary plans?
- Unfortunately not, no. - That makes it quite exciting. - Well, that's part of the challenge.
- If it was simple, we'd have finished years ago and it'd be quite boring. - Let's go and have a look at
- what you're finding this year, then? - Yeah.
Parts of the palace were identified by archaeologists in the 1960s.
But, now, the team is hoping to find its grand entrance.
Martin Dern is the director of excavations on this lengthy project.
- Hello there, lovely to meet you. - Martin, hi!
Hello, lovely to meet you, too. Right, what have we got here?
Well, we've got a moat here that's sort of fronting the gatehouse.
Oh, OK, so there's a...
- I mean, there's a ditch around the outer courtyard. - Yeah.
- And, then, there's another moat inside it. - That's right, yes.
I mean, a much bigger moat than we ever thought,
- perhaps about 15 metres wide... - Really?
...Which would've been between the outer court,
where the servants essentially were, and the gatehouse that gave access
into the inner court with the royal apartments,
- and the kitchens, and so on. - Yeah.
Most Tudor palaces had two courts -
an outer court, where the servants lived and worked,
and an inner court, reserved for the wealthy owner
and their family.
At Elsyng, the two courts are separated by a moat.
Despite nearly two decades of excavation,
one key part of the outer palace, the gatehouse, has so far
eluded the archaeologists - until this year.
Oh, Martin, this is lovely. It looks like a...
- Is that a half-octagon? - Yeah.
What you've got here is a projecting angled turret,
just coming off of a larger wall,
and you've got the remnant of a brick floor
- that sat within the turret. - And what is it?
It's almost certainly a wall that comes off of the edge,
the side of the main gatehouse.
Oh, this is lovely, cos you've been you've been searching
for this gatehouse, haven't you?
We have been looking for this for about three years, yes,
so we're very pleased to see this.
How tall do you think that tower would have been?
Well, we know that the main gatehouse itself
is four storeys high.
It's presumably making a sort of a spectacular statement about
the status, certainly of the royal members of the family
who owned this, but also about somebody earlier
called Sir Thomas Lovell.
Thomas Lovell became Chancellor of the Exchequer for
the first Tudor King, Henry VII, in 1485.
When he inherited Elsyng in 1492,
he set about creating a palace that was fit to host a king.
Records show that King Henry VII did indeed visit the palace
several times, accompanied by his young son -
the future Henry VIII - who would later add Elsyng
to his already-impressive property portfolio.
Henry VIII swaps this for two of the monasteries
- that he had closed down. - Yeah.
It is quite a useful thing, to have shut down and
seized the monasteries, and then, you've got the means
to buy yourself a new palace.
That's right. I mean, Henry ended up with about 40 palaces.
The finds coming out of the gatehouse trenches include
evidence of wealthy visitors.
Ooh, that's a nice thing. What is that?
Isn't that lovely?
It's called a purse bar.
And, so, the top bar that articulates with the lower one
- went on your belt. - Yeah.
And the lower one is what you hung your leather or cloth purse from,
so that you had your coins ready at your waist.
And it's particularly nice because it's still articulate...
- That is lovely, isn't it? - ..and moves around. - Yeah.
And, usually, often the top piece is entirely missing or at least
completely corroded in.
A purse was an essential accessory
for both Tudor men and women,
and the wealthy would have had ornately-decorated purses
hanging from their belts.
As we know from all these iconic portraits,
Tudor fashion was all about power dressing.
It's great to see this evidence of the Tudor palace finally
emerging after years and years of looking for it.
This palace, when it was standing, would have been magnificent,
fit for a king.
Henry VIII loved it so much he bought it,
and it would've dwarfed the hall that was later built
to replace it on this estate.
I want to know a bit more about the transformation of Elsyng
after it became a royal residence.
Historian Onyeka Nubia has unearthed more evidence of this lost palace
buried deep in the archives.
I've come to the Bodleian Library in Oxford to investigate what
we can learn about Henry VIII and his family through
the detailed building records of the lost palace of Elsyng.
This document is nearly 500 years old
and records the first repairs completed six months
after Henry's initial visit.
When Henry acquired these estates, at first, they don't appear to be
at a standard that he would find acceptable.
It says here that there is "work to be undertaken
"in the great chamber".
This great chamber, of course, is the public face of the building
where Henry would entertain.
The accounts are divided into sections according to
common labourers,
carpenters, tilers.
And it details the work that each team had to undertake.
In a subsection entitled "Tilers",
it says, "Working not only in pointing and mending of the roof
"and about the Great Hall" -
it seems as if this building is somewhat dilapidated,
and is in need of considerable work.
There are subtle clues in the records that Henry intended to
frequently use this palace, despite having an extensive
collection of other homes to choose from.
We have another set of records which are really quite remarkable.
They include a sort of more rigorous set of provisions for
the imminent arrival of the king and the royal family.
So, we know that there is a degree of urgency.
But reading further into the accounts, we find out more.
It says, "This work is to be done because it is coming to Christmas" -
so these activities are taking place probably because the royal family
intends to spend Christmas at this estate.
Tiny architectural details have been meticulously recorded here,
revealing the work that had to be done to accommodate
the king's needs.
There's another section here entitled "Carpenters", and it says
they're working "not only in the making of a system of rails,"
it says, "and other accoutrements to ensure that the king
"can continue to hunt".
Now, why would they need to make these sort of special provisions?
The king at this point is ailing.
He is not the young, robust, athletic monarch
that he was in his younger days.
And these changes that are being made to the estate
are really because of the condition of the king.
By the time that Henry took ownership of Elsyng,
he was nearly 50 years old,
about to embark on his fourth marriage,
and in very poor health.
Less than ten years later,
the young Princess Elizabeth and Prince Edward
would be told that their father had died whilst visiting Elsyng.
And shortly after, the palace would fall out of favour with the royals.
It was eventually demolished.
By the 1700s, this formal garden concealed its remains
for more than 300 years.
When it came to Henry VIII's foreign enemies,
the French were top of the list.
In fact, Britain has been fighting with France
on and off for centuries.
All across the east are memorials to scores of conflicts.
But the last time Britain faced France in battle...
...it was on the other side of the North Sea.
For our last story, we're heading even further east, to Belgium,
to an unassuming farm called Hougoumont.
This farm was the setting for one of Britain's most famous victories -
better known by the name of the nearest town, Waterloo.
The history of war is, I think, inevitably written by people
who have their own political perspective,
and it will be biased.
They will include what they think is salient,
and there will be gaps.
So, archaeology provides us with the opportunity to uncover
not only a different perspective,
but to fill in some of that missing information,
even on some of our most famous and well-documented battlefields.
For 23 years, the rest of Europe had been at war with
the self-declared Emperor Napoleon,
who was hellbent on conquest of the entire continent.
Waterloo was the final showdown,
as Britain and its allies, led by the Duke of Wellington,
faced the French army one last time...
...in 1815.
Digging For Britain first joined the team
from the Waterloo Uncovered project back in 2016,
when they found a hidden track into Hougoumont Farm.
That route helped Wellington win the day,
despite his troops being outnumbered and trapped
inside the farmhouse.
If you've actually got quite an enclosed hedge line,
and you've got literally almost a tunnel...
...then that would've given him so much better cover.
They also uncovered evidence from the barrage of assaults
that the British Army endured inside the farmhouse.
These explosive shells set fire
to the chateau, the house, which burned to the ground,
and the various outbuildings were burned, as well.
But back in 2016, plenty of mysteries remained.
Most of the armies would've moved on by the time we get around
to burying the dead, so we're talking about the local people,
the farmers, the peasants, the people who lived on the land are
trying to get rid of these bodies.
So, they tipped into a grave and got rid of.
Around 12,000 men died in this battle,
and their graves have never been found.
What happened to the bodies of the fallen?
This year, the team are back at Hougoumont Farm,
armed with a brand-new survey of the battlefield
that has helped them identify new targets for investigation.
And they kept a record in their dig diaries.
So, here we are, day one, back in Waterloo,
and back in Hougoumont, as well.
Now, this is an interesting part of the battle,
because it's where basically the hostilities started.
So, this is where some of the first musket balls in the battle
were actually fired, on the 18th of June.
So, we opened this huge trench.
We've already come up with a whole big pile of bricks,
some kind of rubble.
And, then, we're just going to bring that down slowly,
see whether or not we can find anything else,
see whether we can find a structure.
Today, this area is an open field on the south side of the farmhouse.
But in 1815, it was heavily wooded,
providing cover for both armies as they fought.
Historic maps reveal a small cross at the site
where the team have uncovered a brick pile.
This feature is likely to have been a small woodland chapel or shrine
predating the battle here.
This curve looks like you'd find on an apse, at the end of the building,
which we see on these chapels.
Exactly, so we still have to clean it to be sure of that.
But it seems to be the upside of the chapel.
And what's interesting is that you can see that inside...
...you have the discoloration that shows that the inside of
the building must have burned.
That's incredible. It'd be very tempting to say it was burned during
the battle, as we know, some of the buildings at Hougoumont.
But if this was demolished earlier than the battle, quite violently,
then that would make sense, as well.
But that's staggering.
Nearby, the team open up a second trench across another feature
picked up by the geophysics.
It appears to be a large pit.
Could it be a missing mass grave?
Wow.
It's very strong.
- And, as I'm getting closer, is that... - Oh, there you go.
- Oh, look, what's...? - Oh, wow.
Wow. That's a buckle straight off the battle site.
That's the best find yet.
As the team dig deeper, though, it appears empty.
There's no sign of the missing Waterloo dead.
Instead, this seems to be a quarry pit that was dug out much earlier.
But there's evidence it was used in the battle,
as morning broke on the 18th of June, 1815.
What we've come up with is something quite staggering.
This was here as a quarry,
and there is a lot of battle-related material in it.
And, so, it looks as though they've used the front lip to shoot at
the defenders to the north, who have come down from the farm,
and they will ultimately succeed in pushing them back to the farm.
There are loads of books written on Waterloo -
not one of them mentions this.
Tony Pollard and Stuart Eve join me in the tent
to discuss the findings of the long-running
Waterloo Uncovered project.
I think I caught up with you seven years ago,
and Waterloo Uncovered.
You've done quite a bit since then, and your focus has shifted.
We wanted to have a look at the whole of the battlefield,
- but this is where the fighting first started, isn't it? - Yeah.
In terms of the very early skirmishes.
You can see there's a lot of tiny little black dots.
So, we were hoping that we'd get a big pile of stuff,
and it would be great, and there'd be loads of stuff there -
I don't want to say mass grave, but I will say mass grave because
we've never found a mass grave on the battlefield of Waterloo.
But we didn't get that much stuff.
It was a big quarry.
That's what we found out.
It's close to the edge of the wood in the direction of the
French advance on the farm.
They would've entered it fairly soon after going into the woodland,
and they would undoubtedly have hunkered down behind its bank.
And we've got the evidence for that in these artefacts.
- Musket balls? - Yes, we've got thousands of these,
I would imagine, by now.
Importantly for us, if we're looking at two sides of a battle,
we've got the allies under Wellington...
All of these allies that have come together to face...
...but a lot of them using the same type of musket,
good old Brown Bess.
- And that's a 0.75 calibre. - Right.
- But the great thing is... - That's smaller.
...That that's smaller.
And that is 0.69.
And the French are, by and large, using a Charleville musket,
which fires a 0.69 musket ball.
So, we can tell who's shooting what.
That's incredible, isn't it?
So, we've got a kind of disappearing dead of Waterloo phenomenon.
Yes. It's unbelievable.
In the 1830s, they do away with all the crops that the battle was
fought through, and they go over to a monoculture of sugar beet.
But what they then discover is that what's fashionable is
- the white sugar that we're familiar with today. - Yes.
And to create that from sugar beet, what you have to do is process it,
and you need a substrate to filter it through.
And they found initially that charcoal worked quite well,
but then, they discovered the best thing is charred bone.
There is a sugar refinery in Waterloo-
it's still there, it's a hotel now -
and there's a huge market for this bone in the 1830s.
There's a story in a German newspaper from 1879,
and somebody says that a better choice to stir into your coffee
is honey, because then, you don't risk stirring in the atoms
- of your great-grandfather... - Ah! - ..In your morning cup of coffee.
- It's not just a rumour, then. - No, it's not.
- It really was happening. - It's not.
There are stories of industrialists buying the right
to mine the battlefield.
We're now looking for empty grave pits where they've been in,
and they quarried it out.
It's just bizarre, isn't it?
It's a strangely unsettling and macabre story.
Perhaps we're not finding any burials at Waterloo
because the graves were robbed...
...and the bones ground up to be used for refining sugar.
Or perhaps the graves are still lying there,
waiting to be found.
Next time, we head south to a Neolithic tomb in Dorset.
So, it's likely that this was the result of a fire.
Perhaps it was a mortuary event.
I explore a World War II gun emplacement.
Oh, how deep does this go?
This is a 40-metre long tunnel.
And the Thames Estuary turns up something truly remarkable.
The oldest shoe ever found within the British Isles.
So, this places it late-Bronze Age, early-Iron Age.
- It's late-Bronze Age, yes, early-Iron Age. - Yes.
Oh, my goodness.
♪ Come and search, for we would search
♪ And looking for a scarred land
♪ And dig for those whose stories lie
♪ With buried pasts 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. ♪