Shoot three navigation
For the bigger picture, Onsite spoke to Stewart Ainsworth. ‘We actually have very few maps to work on here, they just don’t exist,' he says. All I have to put together a wider view of what happened on this site are sketchy bits of evidence. I’m trying to identify boundaries and terraces in the landscape by looking at the maps I have, and also by walking the landscape.’
Are there problems regarding the change in use of the land? ‘A lot of monasteries that were shut down became country houses and as a result were often radically changed. However, there are clues in the landscape. Redesigned areas, for example for use as gardens, often follow the lines of original boundaries or walls. It’s a case of working with what we’ve got, looking at the landscape and joining up the pieces of evidence.’
Geofizz have been very busy on this shoot. Chris Gaffney gives Onsite the scoop: ‘We’ve got a lot of very nice manicured lawns with what appears to be some good archaeology in the ground. Our main problem is we came in here with a few preconceptions about what we thought we would find. The greater the area we’ve covered the more we’ve discovered how different it is. When using resistance techniques we found that we were mapping a lot of moisture in the sandy soil, but the ground radar has been great. I’m getting terrific penetration, at levels as low as three metres.’
For our round-up of day three, and the dig in general, Mick Aston happily discussed his thoughts. After all, this is his favourite period.
Why was a monastery built here? ‘That’s a good question. Quite often you’ll find that a land-owning family donate some of their estate to the church. It’s quite a big undertaking to look after, say, 80 nuns and 30 canons, and families would sometimes become patrons or sponsors of an institution. If you think about it, that’s quite a big thing to do because any heirs to the estate would have been losing out and that must have caused problems.'
Why would somebody give away their land? ‘Basically there was a huge surge in monastery building in the 12th century, a real renaissance for the church. People were very scared of hell and purgatory and donating to the church was a bit like an insurance policy.’
So was this a boom time for the church? ‘Oh yes, if you look at the number of monasteries in England at the beginning of the 1100s and then again 100 years later you see a colossal growth of monastic building’.
How about this dig? ‘We haven’t found what we expected to find. We’ve put so many trenches in that it's almost been a process of elimination. Even if a trench has nothing in it, it’s still useful to know that we’ve eliminated an area from the equation. Now we have some nice archaeology coming out and a group of us are putting together our theories. One of the things we have to keep thinking about is not to assume too much about what we should be finding. It’s very easy to come to a place like this with preconceived ideas, but we have to look at the evidence we’ve found and be as realistic as possible.’
Has this been a good dig for you? ‘Oh yes. It’s not just because this is my cup of tea. I like Time Team when we have a really gritty problem. Finding the missing buildings of this place has been really interesting. Tony pulls my leg and says "If they don’t find what you said would be in there you’re wrong", but it’s not really like that. I don’t mind having my opinions turned over as long as we find out what was really happening here. We’re getting some good questions answered here and I think it’s going to make a good programme.’
As with the two previous shoots, if you want to see all the goodies from this one (and find out about the special reconstruction cameo) you’re going to have to watch the programme, which will be screened early next year. Next stop for Time Team? Next month. Somewhere in England.
