The Time Team has just three days to answer questions raised by a local farmer about the archaeological history on his Somerset doorstep, asking whether this once-impenetrable, marsh-encircled site was Alfred's hiding place.
The village of Ribchester is midway between Preston and Clitheroe, in a tranquil setting beside the River Ribble. In Roman times, however, it must have seemed like the last outpost of the empire to a legionary of the newly conquering army. Jim Ridge, a local resident, asked Time Team to investigate the Roman remains in his garden.
Old foundations found in a garden may be one of the first houses to be built in the town - is this so? How did Much Wenlock become a big market town as it is today? The 'Time Team' reveal evidence of a 13th-century aisled hall in a present-day garden in Much Wenlock. Through the identification of 13th-century pottery finds and tree-ring dating, they link the building with visits by Henry II.
In the Dark Ages, a powerful king decided to show how powerful he was. He built an island in the middle of a lake, and stuck a palace on top of it. Who was the king, who were the builders, and what happened to them all? The time team visits the site of this Dark Age man-made island, known as a Crannog, in Llangorse Lake near Brecon in Wales.
The Time Team have just three days to investigate a site in the remote Western Isles of Scotland. On Islay, home to some or the finest malt whiskies, the team join a dig that is running out of time. Battling against the elements they try to crack the mysteries of the Lord of the Isles - where were these 13th Century Kings crowned and how did they live?
A building site in the village of Winterboume Gunner, near Salisbury, stands abandoned. Previous developments on the surrounding land unearthed evidence of a Saxon burial ground and the council placed a protection order on the area halting all further building. The Time Team, aim to establish the full extent of the burial ground and in the process reveal the history of Saxon settlement in this small Wiltshire village.
The Time Team visit the picturesque village of Tockenham, deep in the heart of the ancient Wiltshire countryside. Despite the fact that there are no Roman remains in Tockenham, the village's 15th century church, St Giles, has a small pagan Roman statue embedded in one of its outer walls. The Time Team have just three days to solve this riddle. If there is no evidence of Roman settlement, where did the Roman statue come from? Is the church on an earlier Roman site and does it have ancient ceremonial significance?
The Archbishop's Back Garden. Historically it was believed that the original Roman road into London veered east and crossed the river at Tower Bridge, placing the original site for the Roman capital of Londinium in the financial centre of the modern day city. But 60 years ago an amateur archaeologist, Bernard Davis, upset the status quo when he excavated what he believed to be the remains of the first Roman road into London - in the gardens at Lambeth Palace. Yet the existence of the road has never been verified and the site left unexplored. The Time Team have just three days to try and relocate Bernard Davis' Roman road and solve some of the fascinating questions its discovery poses. Did the first road the Romans built into London really cross the river at Lambeth rather than Tower Bridge and if so, does this mean that Lambeth, and not the City, was the site of the original Roman settlement?
This episode takes an in-depth look at archaeology as it happens in a derelict medieval castle stranded in the middle of a Sunderland housing estate. Local residents want to renovate Hilton Castle and design a new park in the surrounding grounds. Archaeologist Mick Aston and Tony Robinson team up lo provide the archaeological information that will enable them to achieve this in keeping with the castle's illustrious past.
A 2,000-year-old underground chamber - or Fogou - takes the team deep into the far west of Cornwall. The fogou is located in the garden centre for alternative studies, and Tony cannot resist trying his hand at a spot of dowsing.
Archaeological survey. The team attempt to unearth evidence of the past existence of mammoths and other prehistoric animals in the river valleys of Oxfordshire. However, as the vital clues lie in a gravel pit which is soon to become a waste tip, the group must race against time if they are to complete their task.
The Time Team visits the village of Templecombe in Somerset, where the Knight's Templar - a major power in the 12th and 13th centuries - established a preceptory in 1185. It is here that they would have admitted new members and trained them for the Crusades.
The team attempt to identify an ancient ship that was wrecked some 400 years ago off Teignmouth beach in Devon. Twenty years ago, a teenage scuba diver found a bronze canon belonging to the wreck on the seabed. But after all that time under water, will there still be enough of the ship left for the Time Team to identify it?
Palace of the Irish Kings. The fort of Emain Macha in Ireland was once the home of princes and kings of Ulster, and, according to Celtic legend, was built by King Conchobar, who also built two other palaces. The team go to Navan, the modern-day site of Emain Macha, in search of evidence of the other palaces and attempt to find a connection between what may have been a sacrificial pool and an ancient hill called Haughey's Fort.
Treasures of the Roman Field. Discover why for years a Suffolk farmer has gathered hundreds of pieces of Roman pottery, jewellery and coins from one particular field on his land. Where did all this rich material come from? The Time Team heads into Lavenham to find out.
An exciting trip for the Time Team sees them following in the footsteps of some of the first English settlers in America. They travel to the historic landing site of St Mary's City, Maryland, where they join American experts to unearth some important finds and challenge some of their original theories.
An exciting discovery is made when the team attempts to solve the mystery of a well-preserved female skeleton.
The team try to locate one of the most important sites in the history of the Industrial Revolution - Matthew Boulton's 18th century mint. But the task of locating the site of the largest coin presser in the world in only three days is a tricky one - given that its buried beneath the houses and gardens of Soho, Handsworth.
The team face a fascinating conundrum that sends them spinning back into the dark ages of Scottish history. On the banks of the River Clyde, several intriguing stone sculptures have been discovered in the graveyard of the parish church.
The team head for this picturesque village in North Yorkshire where nettle-infested jungle conceals 2,000 years of English history.
A mosaic in a partially abandoned army-barracks may be part of an ancient Roman villa. The time team head for an army barracks in Netheravon, Wiltshire, to test a theory that a Roman villa is concealed beneath the site. A colonel discovered a piece of mosaic pavement there in 1907, but until now archaeologists have not been allowed behind the barbed wire. Can the team solve the mystery before the troops return?
As a curtain-raiser for the 1998 series of Time Team, which started in January 1998, Tony and the team gathered. The first Time Team special to air took a look back over the last five years. Over the years, viewers have flooded the series with queries as to what happened after Time Team finished their three-day investigations – were the sites further excavated, were finds available to see in museums and how did local people react to finding an important archaeological find on their doorstep? Time Team returns to a few key sites for updated reports and the Team members also remember their favourite moments and finds.
The team descend on an immaculate croquet lawn at Trumpeters House in Richmond, Surrey, in search of the remains of one of the most opulent monuments of the Tudor dynasty, Richmond Palace.
The team go to the Somerset levels in search of a 4,000-year-old wooden trackway. The quickest way to get across the marshes that used to exist here in the Bronze and Iron Ages was across wooden walkways. Now the team hope to find evidence of these footbridges.
The team go in search of evidence of the invasion of the Vikings, and its influence on ancient Britain. The team travel to the Orcadian island of Sanday to try to find out whether four mysterious mounds there are evidence of a Viking settlement or even a Viking burial site.
Tony Robinson and the team return to the site of a previous dig in 1998 which unearthed a Roman villa in the Cotswolds. They discover that the villa dates from the very first days of the Roman occupation. Amongst their new finds is an entire, untouched Roman water course.
Time Team goes abroad to tackle one of its most challenging sites. They search for evidence of one of the most enigmatic cultures in the world on the Spanish island of Mallorca. The Beaker people flourished in Europe around 4,000 BC, but there is very little evidence of their civilisation, which is thought to have made the first use of metal.
The team travel to a Shropshire farm house in Aston Eyre and discover the great hall of a medieval manor complex.
The team travel to Downpatrick in Northern Ireland to excavate one of Britain's most important religious sites. Upon Cathedral Hill is the site of the first settlement of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.
In this episode, the 'Time Team' are in Worsall, near Middlesbrough. The archaeology fanatics have just three days to solve the mystery of why the population of a medieval village disappeared into thin air.
Everyone knows the name of Wedgwood when it comes to pottery, and this is what they have in mind, this blue and white design, it’s famous throughout the world. But few people know that it was here in Burslem on the outskirts of Stoke-On-Trent, that Josiah Wedgwood’s climb to fame and fortune first began. This is actually the site of his first factory, which was at the heart of the pottery industry when it took off in the eighteenth century, but does any of it remain under the paving stones of present day Burslem.
While they were building this extension to their house here in Papcastle in Cumbria, the Buckingham family discovered this piece of Roman pottery. Can you see that little bird on the tree there? But that was just the start of their discoveries. They came up with these two quern stones, whole boxes of finds and they’ve even got what appears to be the outline of a Roman building right here. Being fans of Time Team, they contacted us because they want to find out what on Earth the Romans could have been doing here in their back garden nearly 2000 years ago. And as usual, we got just three days to find out.
The pupils of this Norfolk grammar school think it’s rather special, and I’ve gotta say, they may be right. It’s not everyone who’s got this kind of stuff in their playground. These walls are the remains of a monastic church that stood here 600 years ago, but that’s modern, compared with what they think is underneath. A thousand years ago a Norman cathedral, one of the most important in the country stood somewhere round here. And the pupils want us to help them find it. So, once everyone’s got out of morning assembly, Time Team’s going back to school. At least for the next three days.
It may not look very comfortable but before huts and houses, this was home. In fact this cave in Cheddar Gorge may well be one of the oldest homes in the country. Between five and ten thousand years ago, families of stoneage hunter gatherers, the old cavemen of legend, probably used this cave to eat sleep shelter and do whatever else they did. But to find what they left behind isn’t going to be easy. Thousands of years of rainfall have washed tons and tons of mud in to this cave and what an awful lot of the evidence, deep in to the tunnels behind. We’ve got just three days and if were gonna find anything at all, were gonna have to dig an awful long way down there, and an awful long way, into there.
I’m standing on top of the motte and bailey of Plympton Castle in Devon. You know mottes and baileys from your school days, they’re those great towering lumps that the Normans threw up all over the country. And these walls are all that are left of the original castle that was built here over 700 years ago. Now in towns and villages, normally the medieval stuff disappears, it gets built over and we lose it, but here in Plympton the local people believe there’s enough of it left down there, for us to be able to work out the layout and the boundary of the medieval town that existed at the same time as that castle.
You wouldn’t think that this ordinary looking field and this little drainage ditch had got much to do with England’s seafaring heritage. For a start, we're about ten miles from the sea at a place called Smallhythe in Kent. But around the time of the battle of Agincourt in the early 1400’s, somewhere round here, there was a royal dockyard big enough to build thousand ton ships. If that’s true then where are the docks now, and where’s there a river or an estuary big enough to launch those great wooden ships? As usual, we got just three days to find out.
This is the 13th hole of a golf course in East Sussex, but over here in these woods a Roman bath house has been discovered. It’s a fantastic find complete with under floor heating, tiled floors and walls right up to window height. But what is a Roman bath house doing here completely on it’s own 40 miles from the nearest Roman town, what on earth was happening around here 1900 years ago? Time Team have got just three days to find out.
February the 21st 1944. 800 American bombers are returning from a raid on targets in Germany. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, they’d been in the air for five hours and finally, they’ve left the last of the enemy fighters and flak batteries behind. Everyone relaxes as they pass over the Norfolk coast. Then... Tragedy. They were just minutes away from safety of their base when suddenly one of the bombers collided with another, and the two planes came plummeting down to earth somewhere round here in the Reedham Marshes. All 21 crewmembers were killed. So what exactly happened? We got just three days to try and shed some light on the mystery.We’re gonna be excavating one of the planes in the hope that its carcass may yield some clues if there’s any of it left, and we’re gonna try and find out as much as we can about the two crews and the events that led up to the crash.
Eighteen months ago, Time Team discovered under this Gloucester field what maybe one of the largest Roman villas yet excavated in Britain. We found whole ranges of rooms including a beautiful bath house arranged around three courtyards spreading all over this plateau. But at the end of the three days, just when we thought we finally understood the villa, geophysics came up with another whole range of buildings running all the way up that hillside. Could this simply mean that the villa was even larger than we’d originally thought, or was there something rather extraordinary happening here 1600 years ago? Time Team just had to come back to Turkdean to find out.
In 1990 someone flew over this Worcestershire field and took this aerial photograph, you see all these extraordinary crop marks that aren’t visible from the ground. But, what are they? Well, we got two clues. A couple of fields in this direction, archaeologists have discovered vast amounts of pottery and evidence of houses and deep pits all of it Bronze age and in such large amounts. It’s considered to be of national importance. But over here is Breedon Hill, one of the largest Iron Age hill forts in the whole country. So what’s going on here? Local archaeologists have called us in to sort it all out, in just three days.
This is Norfolk, over there’s the sea. The ground round here’s pretty flat and exposed, except for this little hill here, on the top of which is this deserted church. Now we know that it’s Norman, but all around here in the fields people have been coming across pieces of metal that go back as far as the Iron Age. In fact, this is probably the richest site we’ve yet come across in Time Team. So, what was this place, what was going on here? Was it a settlement, in which case, what kind of people settled here, and can we find out in just three days? To make matters worse, we’re covering this whole dig live. In fact, some of you may have seen the live shows that went out last August. But as yet, I haven’t got a clue, what’s gonna happen. All I can tell you is that this weekend is gonna be pretty exciting.
This is the Caribbean, well we’re not in Jamaica or Barbados, Time Team have come to the tiny island of Nevis because amazingly, 200 years ago, the Caribbean produced more wealth than the whole of the rest of the British empire put together. Primarily, because of sugar, and Nevis was covered in sugar plantations, and one of the wealthiest belonged to a man called Pinney who lived right up there. And we’re going to see if we can find out what remains of his long disused estate, but buried in the jungle out there aren’t just the remains of the wealthy lifestyles of the big landowners, there are also traces of the thousands of slaves that they relied on. So, Time Team have got just six days. That’s two programmes, to try and come to grips with an island that’s crammed full of archaeology.
Welcome back to the Caribbean. The first English settlers arrived here in Nevis 400 years ago and set up their first capitol Jamestown somewhere over there. But amazingly, as you can see it’s completely disappeared. No sooner had the settlers arrived and they killed off the local Amerindian population. All that appears to be left of them are a few scattered patches of pottery along the coast. We’re going to try and find both Jamestown and an Amerindian site. And don’t forget, we’re still on the hunt for the slave village that we started in the first programme. The next three days, archaeology should be just as challenging and even more exciting than the first three.
A muslim port in Spain. The team visit the small Spanish port of Denia in order to investigate what life was like in the town 1,000 years ago, when it was an Islamic settlement.
The Mosaic at the Bottom of the garden. The team of archaeological experts visits Cirencester, which in AD300 was one of the most important towns in Roman Britain.
One of the first spitfires lost in France. It was on 23 May 1940 that a young English pilot climbed into the cockpit of his Spitfire to join a formation of aircraft flying across the Channel to help defend troops retreating in the face of the Nazi advance. Paul Klipsch, aged 24, had never flown in a combat mission before; he was never to do so again. The young pilot was shot down over northern France. He had become one of the first of the 1,500 Royal Air Force pilots who were to give their lives during the early period of the Second World War. The RAF's combat report recorded simply that he had been 'Killed in Action'. The place where his plane came down, in a farmer's field outside the small French village of Wierre-Effroy, near Boulogne, has always been known. Two brothers, Auguste and René Mierlot, had seen it shot down by a Messerschmitt 110, at about 6pm that May evening. They remembered it well because half an hour later German troops entered their village. Despite the Nazi presence, local people retrieved Paul Klipsch's body from the remains of his aircraft and buried him in the village cemetery. His grave, now marked with an RAF headstone, remains there to this day. But while the time and place of this young pilot's death had long been known, we still knew little about how and why his Spitfire crashed. Time Team decided to see what could be revealed.
An iron-age roundhouse and a henge. The archeological experts have just three days to find out all they can about the tiny village of Wadden in Dorset.
The team dig up more than they bargain for when they exhume a Roman cemetery in Cumbria. Their discovery prompts them to present a shocking theory.
In search of the earliest traces of mankind. Mick Aston describes it as one of the oddest Time Team locations he's worked at. 'By day we'd be rooting about in this ancient clay and mud and looking for traces of our ancestors from 400,000 years ago, and then in the evening we'd all go back to this Center Park's holiday camp in the middle of the forest. Very strange.' Whether or not it was the oddest, it was certainly the oldest site that Time Team has ever excavated. It was also one of the rarest. Sites showing evidence of human activity dating back 400,000 years are so uncommon in this country that the only way that Time Team was able to become involved in investigating one was by joining an established British Museum excavation. Nick Ashton, a Palaeolithic archaeologist at the British Museum, was pleased to invite the Team to bring in their expertise and resources to help out on his ongoing project at Elveden, near Thetford in Suffolk.
The missing cathedral and the diabetic prior. The team break their three day dig rule for the first time after discovering a burial chamber containing the skeleton of a Prior in a medieval cathedral under Coventry's city centre.
The Royalists' last stand. The team visit Basing House in Hampshire, once one of the grandest homes in Tudor England.
A Bronze-Age barrow and walkway. Flag Fen, a few miles outside Peterborough, is one of the most important Bronze-Age sites in Europe. Discovered in 1982 by Francis Pryor, who is now director of the Flag Fen Laboratories and Bronze Age Centre, the area is unique in that large quantities of organic material from the period, including wood and leather, have survived, pickled in the waterlogged fenland peat. The centrepiece of this astonishing site is a one-kilometre-long alignment of posts passing across what would have been a stretch of open water during the Bronze Age and linking what was then the mainland with Northey Island. Where the alignment crosses the water, there is also a huge timber platform, some two and a half acres in extent.
In search of the palace of King Offa. The Time Team head for Herefordshire in search of the Royal palace of the great Anglo-Saxon leader, King Offa. Records show that he had a palatial palace in the area but its exact location has never been discovered. Tony Robinson and the team have just 3 days to come up with some evidence.
A Roman temple in sight of the Millennium Dome. The team is in the heart of London as they dig for the remains of a Roman temple in Greenwich Park at the invitation of the Museum of London. As the 3 day dig progresses the discovery of a rare inscribed Roman stone and new evidence on the position of the famous Roman road, Watling Street, have the experts jumping up and down with excitement.
Nuns in Northumbria. Time Team goes in search of a lost Anglo-Saxon monastery on the rain and wind-swept Headland at Hartlepool in Northumberland. They have just 3 days to find the exact location of a monastery that 1,200 years ago had a thriving community of monks and nuns, presided over by Saint Hilda.
The dig's archaeological highs and lows are crammed into just 60 minutes in York where the finds range from a Roman skeleton complete with hobnailed boots, a Viking's discarded leather shoe, and the pillars of a monastic hospital. But what does all the evidence show? Who were these people and how did they live?
On the surface it looks just like any other large Lincolnshire field. But when a pipe was laid across it a couple of years previously the trench dug then revealed a number of shallow graves. An exploratory dig in 1998 identified them as Anglo-Saxon – on a site which also threw up large quantities of Roman remains. An earlier water pipe, laid in 1954, had uncovered a lot of Roman pottery here too. So what did it all indicate? And what could Time Team learn about this possible Anglo-Saxon cemetery and former Roman settlement in the three days available?.
This special programme looked behind the scenes at some of the things that you don't usually see in the normal Time Team programmes.
A couple of years ago, local man Derek Batten was driving through the village of Alderton, near Northampton, when he was surprised to see a sign advertising a castle and moat for sale. He was intrigued because he didn't even know there was a castle in the area. He decided to find out more – and ended up buying what was believed to be the remains of a Norman castle, now almost completely covered by trees and vegetation. Unable to discover very much else about the site, he contacted Time Team. The Team's task was to find out who built it, when, and how much of it remains.
In a secluded valley in Wales, what may be a medieval or even Roman trackway leads down to a natural spring. Right in the middle of it is a megalith, a large standing stone, perhaps 3,000 years older than the track. Nearby, there are the remains of what appears to be a Neolithic tomb, and overlooking it what is reputed locally to be a Norman – or maybe Roman – watchtower. Stones in a ruined building on the site have early Christian symbols inscribed on them, leading to speculation that it may have been an early chapel. And in and around the spring itself the landowner has found hundreds of Roman coins, medieval jewellery, blades, buckles, statuettes and a strange collection of weirdly carved stone heads. Time Team set out to uncover the story behind this strange collection of archaeological features and finds.
The team try to paint a picture of a 2,000 year-old family from the Cotswolds, an area overflowing with Roman remains.
The Time Team excavate the world's first working railway at an eighteenth-century ironworks in Blaenavon in South Wales. The railway used to carry ore from the mountain to the factory and has been declared a World Heritage site.
The team have just three days to uncover the secrets of a great Oxfordshire house that supposedly played host to five reigning monarchs.
The team venture on to Salisbury Plain, the army's largest training ground and one of Britain's finest areas of unexcavated archaeology. There is Roman pottery lying on the surface and an Iron Age fort nearby. Was there a thriving community on this barren landscape 2,000 years ago? And if so, how can the team protect the area from marauding tanks in the future?
In 1838, navvies laying Brunel's Great Western Railway found two Roman floor mosaics, probably from a villa, at Lower Basildon, in Berkshire. The mosaics were broken up and the site almost forgotten until recent aerial photographs revealed a series of crop marks in the fields by the railway. Did Brunel's Great Western cut through a Roman villa? And what else might Time Team find in these fields?
The bones in a cave are carbon dated and trenches reveal no archaeology, but do show a trackway to the cave. Cannibalism of the bones suggests humiliation rather than need.
The team investigate a field known as the 'palace' on the beautiful and mystical island of Lindisfarne.
Welcome to what used to be the quiet backgarden of Coventry Cathedral's offices. Quiet that is, until Time Team kick-started an excavation into St Mary's, Coventry's first Cathedral which was ruthlessly destroyed by Henry the Eighth during the reformation. Over three days in 1999 we uncovered the remains of a building which would once have rivalled any Cathedral in England and yet work on this fantastic site had barely begun.
The people of Bridgnorth ask Tony and the team to create a picture of a 900 year-old castle, the only remnant of which is a 70-foot Norman Tower.
Over the August bank holiday weekend last year, Time Team took a crew of around 100 people to Canterbury for a three-day live dig. Or, rather, for three three-day digs because the live event focused upon three different sites. One, at Blue Boy Yard, in the centre of the city, saw the Team looking for signs of the Roman temple and precinct that once stood on this site. At a second, also in the centre of Canterbury, the Team was seeking out remains of Greyfriars, Britain's first Franciscan priory. And a third, on Tyler Hill on the outskirts of the city, saw them investigating a medieval tile-making industry. This programme tells the story of the three digs – the three tales of Canterbury.
The team journeys to historic Winchester, the capital city of England in the Middle Ages.
The team are in central London near Vauxhall Bridge where, at low tide, a group of mysterious prehistoric timbers are revealed. The team have just three days to excavate just one of these strange timbers.
The small Lincolnshire town of Ancaster lies on Ermine Street, which is a major Roman road heading north from London. The only Roman remains visible today are some massive earth banks and ditches, which have been dated to the 4th century. So what was here before these defences and why were they built?
The team investigate a beautiful jar found amongst the seaweed at Kinlochbervie to determine whether it could have belonged to the Spanish Armada.
The team are invited to the Military Intelligence base at Chicksands to explore the site of a thirteenth-century unisex monastery.
The team digs up a pub car park near Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire to find the remains of a seventeenth-century blast furnace for smelting iron.
The team search for the remains of a Roman settlement in Cheshunt where Roman brick, tiles and pottery were excavated in the 1960's.
The team investigate Cornwall's most important Iron Age site overlooking the Helston River. The area is so big that its purpose is a mystery. Can they solve the riddle?
The team are in Shropshire at the location of one of the bloodiest Civil War sieges - the manor house in High Ercall.
The team explores a disused RAF bomber base, which is revealed by a government geophysics survey to be a dense Iron Age or Bronze Age settlement.
The team are in Yorkshire to help the locals put Castleford on the Roman map by digging up a car park, a football pitch and the yard of the local British Legion.
A single stone stands on a hill at Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire. It's the only remnant of what was once a huge medieval castle. So where is the rest of this once-proud stronghold?
The archaeological acumen of the Time Team is tested against the clock, shedding fascinating light on important aspects of Britain's past. On the east coast of the Isle of Wight where early Roman pottery and metalwork have been found, but as yet, there have been no buildings.
Byzantine 'buckets'; Anglo-Saxon spear heads, shields and shield bosses; a disproportionate number of double burials. The cemetery that Time Team excavated for the 2001 'Live' opened an important new window onto the 'Dark Ages'.
The Time Team travel to a garden in Northamptonshire where a couple have unearthed a skeleton along with a Saxon knife and ceremonial pottery while digging out their new pond.
The archaeology series travels to Somerset when a farmer unexpectedly unveils a mosaic floor under his pigsties. Further investigations lead to the discovery of a field full of mosaics.
The team travels to the Peak District to uncover the story behind a mysterious collection of human bones found in a cave, many of them children's.
The team journey to the Shetland Islands to investigate the ancient myth of a cliff-top mound known locally as the Giant's Grave
The team travels to Greenwich to visit Henry VIII's favourite palace in search of the King's lost armoury and impressive jousting yard.
The team hunt for Liberty's first factory in South London and attempt to recreate 19th-century manufacturing techniques.
The team dig up the Royal Crescent in Bath in search of a Roman cemetery and a lost part of a Roman road called Fosse Way.
The archaeology series travels to Athelney for the 100th episode to excavate the site where King Alfred organised his campaign to wrest England from the Vikings.
The archaeology series travels to Kew Gardens, the site of a lost royal palace built by George III.
A rare Bronze Age cemetery prompts Tony and the team to take on a rescue mission in Fife before the developers move on to the land.
Not a blot on the landscape. When the team are invited to dig up the lawns of one Britain's grandest stately homes, Castle Howard in Yorkshire, there is little to assist their search for a medieval village that once stood there. But they make an astonishing discovery in a dusty basement.
Some startling aerial photos of fields outside Sedgefield look like a lost Roman town - can Tony Robinson, Mick Aston, Phil Harding, Carenza Lewis and their team of excavators and experts redraw the map of Roman Britain in just three days before local MP Tony Blair drops in for a history lesson.
The team visits Appleby police station, which stands on the site of the original 1771 gaol house and court where they unearth a prisoner treadmill room.
The team are at Syon House in Chiswick, West London, one of the country's best-preserved stately homes. Few people know that in its grounds once stood a 16th-century abbey.
Whitestaunton Manor is over 800 years old, but during the Victorian period the then owners, the Elton family, excavated the remains of what they thought was a Roman villa some distance from the main house. With a mass of finds relating to different building materials and pottery drawn from a wide area, the villa theory remained unchallenged over the years. That was until the young archaeologist Freya Bowles looked again at the site and came to the conclusion that the villa idea didn't stand up because of the suggested plan of the building.
The team are in Scotland on a prehistoric man-made island in Loch Migdale. What clues are there to the way of life in prehistoric Scotland two to three thousand years ago?
The team dig up a field near Lincoln where metal detectorists have discovered an array of Saxon brooches, pins and clasps and appears to be a cemetery.
Excavations conducted by the Kent Archaeological Field School at Syndale, in Kent, have produced some interesting Roman finds. The most exciting was the discovery of what is thought to be an 'ankle-breaker ditch', a special military design that incorporates a trap at the bottom to perform the task it was named after. A day or two's march from where the Romans landed in 43 AD, and on the north-Kent route they would have taken on their way to the Thames, could this be the site of the first Roman fort in Britain, dating back to the Claudian invasion?
The team have three days to investigate if Green Island in Poole Harbour was the centre of an industrial heartland.
Archaeology series presented by Tony Robinson. The team travel to what is now a quiet rural valley in Staffordshire, but which for centuries was the epicentre of Britain's iron industry, home to a mass of furnaces, blacksmiths and other highly-skilled iron workers.
Popular archaeology programme. Tony Robinson and the team uncover evidence relating to Britain's earliest inhabitants as they work on the beach of the River Severn. Flints, food remains and fossilised footsteps offer an insight into the lives of hunter-gatherers who existed 8,000 years ago. But the mud, the tide and the weather ensure that the team must work swiftly to preserve the archaeological finds.
The Time Team piece together one of the most extensive Iron Age landscapes ever discovered in Britain as they explore the surroundings of the impressive Iron Age fort in Wittenham.
The team rip up the floorboards of a Northhamptonshire manor in search of a Saxon hall that once belonged to King Canute. They have three days to find out whether this site once played host tot the great Anglo-Danish king.
The team search for the remains of the largest Roman villa in East Anglia, digging up a suburb of Ipswich where Basil Brown first uncovered Roman remains back in the 1940's.
Tony and the team search for the remains of Roxburgh, one of medieval Scotland's four great centres, but which has vanished beneath the pasture surrounding the ruins of Roxburgh Castle.
The team followed ARCUS, the Archaeological Research and Consultancy at the University of Sheffield, on some of its excavations into Sheffield's industrial past. Early death, deadly machinery and the worst man-made disaster in British history were revealed as Time Team documented the work of the archaeologists who have spent more than six years digging through the remains of a city that was once the biggest producer of steel in the world.
The archaeological experts investigate various burial sites on a farm in Dorset which is situated in an area teeming with evidence of Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman activity. But untangling all the elements to determine exactly what relationship exists between the dead and their surroundings is a monumental task.
In 1534 Henry the Eighth visited this manor house in Buckinghamshire. The first of many visits by the king and his daughter Elizabeth. But the owner knew that the royals expected only the biggest and the best. So he had his home transformed into a palace. But magnificent though this Tudor building is, it’s hardly big enough to support the king and his entourage of over 300 courtiers, it must have been at least twice this big. So where’s the rest of it, and what exactly does it take to build a house fit for a king? As usual, we just got three days to find out.
This is the village of Nether Poppleton just outside York. As you can see most of the houses are modern, some are Victorian a few are eighteenth or at a push seventeenth century. Up here, it looks very different. Even I could recognize a traditional medieval village layout with the main street running up to the church and lots of different plots running off it. And those earthworks to the side of the church are an officially registered medieval site. But the locals think it’s older. They think they can trace the roots of their village back to the Normans or even the Saxons. Are they right? We got just three days to find out.
Sixty years ago this coastal marsh near Preston in Lancashire was the scene of a tragedy. A group of American A-26 bombers fresh of the production line were on their way to bases in France, but two of them didn’t make it. Shortly after take-off they crashed and all three crew members died. So what went wrong? Over the next three days, we’re going to use archaeological techniques on what’s essentially an air crash investigation. We’re going to locate and excavate key parts of the wreckage in order to piece together the series of events that led to the death of three brave and experienced airmen.
Time Team get invited to all sorts of places these days, but they don’t come any grander than this. This is Drumlanrig Castle near Dumfries in Scotland. But that’s not for us typical Time Team, what we’re interested in is something that’s been discovered round the back in the garden. There’s not much to see on the ground here, apart from a few lumps and bumps but look, this photo was taken from the air during a particularly dry summer and we see all these strange shapes and lines. The experts reckon these could be the remains of a Roman fort. If it is, we’re gonna have a real good story to tell. Because it would have been the front line of the Roman attempts to invade Scotland. Time Team have got just three days to solve this Roman mystery in what must be one of the largest back gardens in Scotland.
The Time Team is invited to a huge circular crop mark near Peterborough, referred to as a Causewayed Enclosure by archaeologists. Huge ditches mark the area, which date the site at around 6,000 years old. Some believe the ditches to be evidence of farming, others that they are of religious origin. Francis Pryor joins the team to get to the bottom of the mystery in just three days.
Under these murky waters on the River Hamble lies some remains of a medieval ship, but this isn’t just any old ship. We’re hoping this is the Grace Dieu, Henry the Fifth’s huge flagship. In fact it was so big that no bigger boat was built for another 200 years. But amazingly she only ever had one voyage and after Henry the Fifth’s death she was just abandoned and left to rot. So, was she too big to sail, was she a failure, and how much of her lies under here? We’ve got just three days to find out.
In autumn 1999, Paul Bevon found a Roman coin in this field in Standish in Gloucestershire. And he found another one, and another and an obsession was born. In five years, one archaeology course and several trenches later, he’d amassed boxes and boxes of Roman and Iron Age finds like these broaches, these tesseri, this Iron Age axe, all this building material. There’s clearly loads of archaeology here but what exactly is it. Well there’s only so much that one man however driven can find out with a Trowel and a metal detector, so Paul has invited this lot in to find out. And how long have we got to do it? Just three days.
Yesterday morning we came here to the Fife coast to look at some caves which had been inhabited on and off for some thousands of years. The first one we looked at was Jonathan’s cave which is way back there and there’s some great Pictish carvings on the walls, but we put a couple of trenches in and we haven’t found anything particularly exciting. But one of our archaeologists was footling around down this cave and came up with something which everyone thinks, could be really exciting, and obviously it had to be another cave that‘s a bit of a squeeze to get into. But tackling the appropriately named sloping cave is well worth the effort.
Long ago, two Viking marauders captured a lonely nun called Osyth and they chopped her head off. But they say she then picked up her head, carried it back to her nunnery and died there. And this miraculous act of martyrdom earned her a sainthood and the pilgrims flocked in and the local village adopted her name and prospered. Well, that’s the story. This little town on the Essex coast is still called St. Osyth, but it’s real origins are a mystery and the locals have called in Time Team to help them find out when and where their town really began. They also want to know if these ancient timbers sticking out of the nearby creek fit in to the story. Could they possibly hold the key to the mystery of St. Osyth. We and the locals have got just three days to find out.
Thirty years ago the Legg family took over this farm in West Dorset, almost immediately they discovered that one end of this field was difficult to plough and they put it down to the stony soil. But then earlier this year Roman finds started to crop up all over the field. Roof tile, pottery, Roman coins, broaches, what’s going on? The Legg’s are itching to know. Is there a Roman building here that could account for their broken ploughs. Time Team’s got just three days to find out and let them know.
Tony: Meet a real Time Team fan, this is Francis Davis who lives up here in Skipsea in blowy East Yorkshire, and to put it mildly your fairly interested in what was going on in this field aren’t you. Francis: Absolutely. Tony: Why, it looks like all your other fields? Francis: Except they plough deeper one year and we turned up all these finds. Tony: Which are really fantastic. We’ve got everything from this prehistoric arrowhead, right through to a Medieval. In fact, Francis was so excited that she paid at her own expense for our geophys team, this doesn’t blow away, to have a survey and as you can see there’s a heck of a lot of activity. So clearly something was going on here, but what exactly we don’t know. This place is an archaeological blank sheet. So Francis has invited us here and how long have we got to find out? Francis: Three days. Tony: Just three days. If we don’t get blown away. It is a bit windy isn’t it. Francis: Slightly.
Somewhere under this grass is a Roman cemetery containing the remains of soldiers from all over the empire who were stationed here in South Shields. We know it’s here because Victorian builders found loads of bodies. The fort was in use for 300 years, so the cemetery could be huge, and it’s not just full of your average Roman squaddies. There were troops from Spain & Africa there is even an intriguing reference to what could be a unit of Iraqi’s. There is just one problem, the whole thing is under a housing estate and we’ve got just 3 days to try to crack it.
800 years ago, England was a far from green and pleasant land. Civil war was raging between King John and a bunch of rebellious nobles, and among those nobles were the Mordwits who owned most of the land around here. A photograph of this field showed these rather unusual crop marks. Archaeologists thought they were probably prehistoric, pretty standard stuff. But some amateur archaeologists decided to have a look and blow me, they’ve found this twelfth century building, along with some lovely finds like this weird corbel, isn’t that strange. It was obviously a very important building but it was abandoned very suddenly. Time Team have been called in to help. What was this place and what was all around it? Was it part of the Mordwit estate and if so did King John destroy it in an act of revenge? We’ve got just three days to find out.
Tony Robinson presents the story of the excavation of a big Roman villa in Somerset, originally discovered by Time Team in 2002 and revisited in 2005. The programme demonstrates how the villa grew from a small farm building to a fine stone building, and how that was expanded again and turned round to face the busy new Fosse Way.
The Bodies in the Shed - Glendon's lost graveyard. Tony and the team return for a new series, visiting Glendon Hall in Northamptonshire to unravel the mystery of the human skeletons found under an outbuilding. In November 2004 Martin Hipwell was working in the garden converting a Victorian brick shed. He had to stop rather suddenly because as he dug up the old floors he came across a whole host of human skeletons. He contacted the local unit, Northampton Archaeology, who revealed 11 burials inside one of the buildings. They removed seven sets of human remains. But in another barn the builders discovered yet more remains. They left these undisturbed and Martin got in touch with Time Team. Before Martin carried on his building work he wanted to know who these people were and where they lived. All these burials were aligned east-to-west. They were closely packed and some had been buried on top of others. The density of the burials, the orientation and the lack of finds and gravestones suggested that these were the graves of medieval Christian peasants. Bone analysis indicates that these people suffered from lives of hard labour and poor nutrition. Could they have been inhabitants of the lost medieval village of Glendon? And what happened to Glendon's church dedicated to St Helen? Could the piles of old architectural stonework in the garden be a clue?
Villas out of Molehills. When a colony of moles brings up pieces of mosaic floor in a Cotswold field, Tony Robinson and the team investigate whether the findings could be linked to a nearby Roman villa discovered nearby almost 200 years ago.
Rubble at the Mill - The birth of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester. The team set to work uncovering Manchester's first cotton mill, built by one of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, Richard Arkwright. Over three days the team uncover the remains of a complex factory as they search for the heart of the first mill: a revolutionary steam engine that was decades ahead of its time.
The First Tudor Palace? The team visit Penny Rainbow's Surrey home that is all that remains of a palace that was grand it inspired the design of Hampton Court. Over three days they piece together the story of a site that evolved into one of the most stunning buildings of early Tudor times.
The Boat on the Rhine - A Roman boat in Utrecht. On the biggest building site in Europe, Tony Robinson and the team unearth a perfectly preserved Roman boat. Invited by Dutch archaeologists to help rescue crucial evidence from a 35-metre-long barge that once sailed the Rhine, the team have one chance to investigate the boat before the bulldozers move in.
Court of the Kentish King. Tony and the team descend on the orchards of Kent to search for the lost Anglo-Saxon palace of Eastry, and discover two likely contenders. Over three days, they dig the longest trench in Time Team history on their way to unearthing a fascinating story of power, politics and murder.
The Monk's Manor - Brimham Medieval Monastic Farm. Tony Robinson's archaeological team travel to the Yorkshire Dales to meet Chris and Barbara Bradley on their farm to uncover the remains of a monastic grange - a medieval forerunner to the grand country house.
A clip of the unaired pilot is found on an old VHS-tape at the director's house after 13 years. The clip is the only piece that remains of the unaired pilot.
Castle in the Round. At the mouth of the Thames, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, lie the remains of Queenborough Castle, built by Edward III during the Hundred Years War. The Time Team excavate the castle mound, but its circular design makes analysis difficult, and opinion is divided whether the castle was built for defence or as a royal bolthole from the plague. The surrounding town is also explored, leading to the recreation of a bizarre journey using a paper boat paddled by oars made of cod.
Sussex Ups and Downs. They travel to what could be a Neolithic settlement in the Sussex Downs in Essex. Initially discovered in 1923, the site is littered with remains of 6000-year-old flint mines.
Birthplace of the Confessor. The team descend upon the sleepy Oxfordshire village of Islip, the birthplace of Edward the Confessor, for one of the most challenging and intriguing excavations of the series. The villagers of Islip are celebrating the millennium of Edward's birth and want the team to discover the location of a medieval chapel dedicated to their famous former resident.
Early Bath. The team descend on the village of Ffrith in North Wales to discover if it is built on the remains of a Roman mining town.
The Taxman's Tavern - A Roman Mansion. Time Team travel to Alfoldean in Sussex to uncover a Roman coaching inn, and the story of the whole settlement. Atrocious weather and the sheer scale of the site push the team's resources to the limits.
Scotch Broch - Iron Age life at Applecross near Skye. Tony and the team journey to Applecross in the north west of Scotland to excavate a broch, a monumental stone tower that was amongst one of the largest Iron Age structures in Britain.
Finds on the fairway.The Time Team are on a golf course on the Isle of Man to investigate the remains of a keeill - a small stone chapel. Although thought to have been built by the Vikings, new finds suggest there is much more to this site than just the Vikings
There's No Place Like RomeThe Romans were here early on after the conquest; a gatehouse has already been excavated on the site - producing pottery and evidence of a military presence.
School Diggers.Today, Hooke Court is a school, but it's buildings date from the time of the English Civil War. Parts of the building suggest that it dates from an even earlier time and that it was once a much grander building.
The Druids' Last Stand.An aerial photograph revealed some enigmatic earthworks just outside the town of Amlwch, Anglesey. The druidic priesthood was based here until it's bloody supression at the hands of the Romans.
Shorncliffe Redoubt.On the 1st February 1793, the new French Republic declared war on Britain. Bracing itself for an expected invasion, the British began improving her defences. One year later, Parliament bought land at Shorncliffe and built a redoubt [a fort], a piece of land which was considered as an obvious point of attack from the French.
A Port and Stilton.The discovery of an almost complete Roman cheese press, along with countless other Roman finds leads Time Team to Cambridgeshire.
A Tale of Two Villages.In the village of Wicken, there is a long-running dispute as to who owns the oldest plot of land in the village. The discovery of an ancient church, a burial ground and Saxon activity give the Time Team plenty to do.
Tony Robinson talks us through the renovation of, perhaps, one of the most important homes ever built: Augustus Pugin's home in Ramsgate. In the mid-19th century, Pugin reinvented a medieval style of architecture that became known as Gothic Revival. Best known for his work on the Houses of Parliament, he built the Grange in Ramsgate in the 1840s using his own money and with, as he put it, "not an untrue bolt or joint from foundation to flagpole". Amazingly, the house was about to be destroyed in 2004 when the Landmark Trust set about restoring it. Time Team follows the transformation of the property and visits other Pugin creations around the country. It promises to be an intriguing mix of Grand Designs and Restoration - what could be better?
No Stone Unturned. The team arrive at a field outside Cheshire where metal-detector enthusiasts have made several valuable finds in the past, hinting the site was once a very active Roman settlement. As the dig progresses, their initial predictions are confounded and the team must redouble their efforts if they are to solve the mystery.
The Domesday Mill. Heading to the River Otter in Devon they excavate the site of a watermill that dates back to the Domesday Book of 1088 and beyond, yet the last mill building on the site was pulled down as recently as the 1960s.
The Cheyne Gang. Archaeologists in Chesham in Buckinghamshire believe they've found the remains of a medieval building under the manicured lawns of a Georgian house.
Road To The Relics.
The Abbey Habit. Tony Robinson and the team travel to Poulton, Cheshire in search of an abandoned abbey that was once used by Cistercian monks. Local archaeologists had not been able to find any trace of the famous abbey and a number of theories and locations have been suggested as to its whereabouts. As the hunt drags on without any major progress, some of the team come up with a controversial theory.
In The Shadow Of The Tor. The Team descend on the bleak, beautiful landscape of Bodmin Moor to face one their biggest challenges yet. The dig aims to date a possible Bronze Age village of stone houses. But alongside the village is a vast and mysterious 300-metre-long stone structure. It's likely to be much older than Bronze Age but no one knows what it might have been. Could it be the biggest burial mound in England? The diggers battle appalling weather to unearth archaeological relics that take them back 7,000 years, when Stone Age man stopped hunting and gathering and settled down to farm the land. In a makeshift lab another investigation is underway involving test tubes and microscopes. By analysing the soil and the remains of tiny bugs, the scientists begin to build up a picture of a once lush, forested expanse, while also seeking to unravel how Bodmin Moor changed from a land of milk and honey into the windswept landscape it is today. Meanwhile, out in the water-logged trenches the diggers unearth much needed evidence of some of the earliest settlements in the country. And the 300-metre-long pile of stones proves to be much more significant than any of the archaeologists had dared hope for: a monument unique in British archaeology.
The crumbling ruins of Codnor Castle are a sad remnant of the imposing home of the De Grey family - knights who saw action in almost every important medieval battle including the crusades and Agincourt. Today Codnor Castle lies in ruins and there's almost nothing known of how it looked in its prime. As the remains above ground get an overdue renovation, the Time Team risk the dangers of hidden mine shafts in the Derbyshire coalfields to dig into the heart of a building that once dominated the landscape to trace the castle's history. It lives up to the team's hopes as they strike gold with a 600-year-old gold noble coin as well as uncovering a huge round tower and, for the first time in the history of the programme, a drawbridge.
Tony and the team tackle a huge Roman fort in County Durham. The stronghold was part of the defence of Dere Street, the main Roman road from York to Hadrian's Wall. The fort has fine mosaics and preserved rooms, but the Team have just three days to find out everything they can about the 'vicus', that's the civilian settlement around the fort, vital for the smooth running of the military machine and providing for the pleasures of the men garrisoned there. However, they soon discover something even more exciting during the dig - a series of military mausoleums, the first discovery of its kind for over 150 years. They also discover the remains of food eaten by the descendants of the dead during ritual meals.
Time Team reports on a prickly issue in the world of old artefacts whilst on a secret investigation into a possible Viking boat burial in Yorkshire. After metal detectorists make a major discovery of coins, silver and swords a small team of archaeologists set out to uncover the source of these remarkable objects. The programme lays bare the uneasy relationship between archaeologists and the UK's 50,000 metal detectorists, some of whom are unscrupulous when it comes to exploiting their finds. The battle lines are drawn (then pegged out, excavated and displayed) between two camps with different priorities: the archaeologists and the metal detectorists. The former want to preserve ancient relics to be studied; most of the latter do, too, although an unscrupulous few would rather make money by selling their precious finds without declaring them to the experts. The issue comes to the fore at an investigation into a possible Viking boat burial at Ainsbrook in Yorkshire.
The Team travel to the windswept island of Barra, 50 miles off the west coast of Scotland, for a unique rescue dig. This Hebridean outpost is famous for its strip of unusually fertile sand dunes all round the coast, land that has been home to settlers for the last 4,000 years. When a storm ripped apart one of the dunes, it revealed Bronze Age graves and the remains of ancient houses. The team must also work in the face of the fierce Barra winds to preserve a collection of Iron Age ornaments before they become lost forever, including the remains of a cooking pot, and tools crafted from animal bones and whale rib.
A Northampton family, the Colecloughs live on the site of a 900-year old nunnery with a rather fruity past, which was at various times accused of witchcraft, begging and debauchery. The burial of a much loved family pet provides the curious starting point for an investigation. When eight-year-old Amy Coleclough's cat "Paintpot" died and her father dug a grave, he uncovered a large old wall. So Tony and the team dig up their garden, including a mysterious sarcophagi hidden there.
Tony Robinson and his team unearth the secrets of a Cotswolds field. Hundreds of Roman coins and bits of masonry have been found on this land but it's the chance discovery of a piece of mosaic floor that has really got the archaeologists excited. The great and the good of Roman Britain built their posh houses in the Cotswolds, a sort of ancient stockbroker belt.
The Team delve into the very recent past to uncover the hidden archaeology of the biggest British battle that never was: the defence of Britain against a Nazi invasion in 1940. Along the busy main roads and in the quiet back gardens of a London suburb they uncover evidence of anti-tank weapons, secret bunkers and massive flame throwers.
The team descend on a field just outside Bath to investigate the remains of what could have been one of the country's grandest Georgian houses. An impressive set of stone arches is all that remains of the house built 200 years ago by local MP Sir Francis Popham, but a couple of paintings show the building in its prime.
An unassuming field in Leicestershire provides the team with a prize that has eluded them for 15 years. In a first for the programme, Tony Robinson and the team finally uncover the rarest of archaeological finds: an Anglo Saxon settlement and, in an attempt to discover the true origin of Britain's most famous Wessex Man, Phil Harding undergoes a DNA test to establish where his ancestors came from.
Under the Queen's private lawn at Windsor Castle lie the foundations of one of the most enigmatic - and significant - buildings in English history: the Round Table. The building was lost until Time Team excavated its remains and proved its existence. But finding the building was just the beginning of the story. Built by Edward III on the grounds of what is now the Queen's private lawn at Windsor Castle, the huge building stood for only half a century, yet was a stepping stone in Edward III's success. Robinson embarks on a journey of discovery that takes him back into the heart of medieval chivalry.
The team visit Northern Ireland to locate one of the most important sites in Anglo-Irish history. A hilltop castle above the city of Dungannon, stronghold of the powerful O' Neill clan, was seized by English forces in 1602, setting off events that would cause unrest in the two countries for centuries to come, the same hill was a top secret British Army base for the last 50 years.
Cornwall is probably not the first place that springs to mind when thinking about the Roman and Byzantine Empires but in a field overlooking a cove, just a mile down river from the famous Cornish village of Padstow, locals have picked up a wealth of 1,500-year-old pottery and metalwork from as far away as North Africa and Turkey. Geophysics results suggest an Iron Age village may have once been located on the site, but archaeologists think the cove may have also been a port for Mediterranean traders. The team dig for evidence which will support the theory, and after three days of work and initial difficulties, they believe they know how the site looked in its prime.
The Time Team travel to County Durham to investigate the origins of a mysterious large stone structure which has had locals baffled for centuries. The stone structure is known locally as The Castles, its five-metre thick walls enclose a space the size of a football pitch.With guesses ranging from an Iron Age farm to a Roman prison, Tony Robinson and the team attempt to come up with a definitive answer.
Tony Robinson and his intrepid team of archaeologists head off the beaten track in Lincolnshire to discover why a metal detector enthusiast has discovered hundreds of Roman and Iron Age artefacts in a muddy field. Add to that the mysterious Roman columns strewn around the surrounding village and the team have a challenging three days to come up with some answers. As the dig progresses, the evidence mounts to suggest that the local Roman population were conscious of the need to recycle.
For the final episode of the 2008 series the team head to the village of Portskewett in South Wales to investigate a field which is intriguingly named Harold's Field. Local legend has it that King Harold built a hunting lodge there the year before he lost the Battle of Hastings. The field is a mass of big earthworks and historical documents do record Harold building a lodge somewhere round the village of Portskewett. Within minutes of digging, the team discover that the site was not confined to just Harold and the Saxon period, having been used since late Roman times until well into the Middle Ages.
Tony Robinson and the Team are back with a new series and they make an amazing discovery in a Hertfordshire field when they unearth a complex of Roman temples.
The Team pieces together the history and the layout of a very special wedding present – Scargill Castle, in the remote wilds of County Durham.
Working with archaeologists from Queen's University in Belfast, the Team takes up the challenge to unlock the prehistoric secrets of the headland at Knockdhu, County Antrim.
Caerwent is the best-preserved Roman town in Britain. Laid out on a grid pattern, it has 20 blocks within its walls, which still stand at heights of up to five metres in places. Previous excavations have uncovered roads, temples, shops, baths, houses and villas, as well as the forum and basilica, the town's political centre.
Time Team visits the Yorkshire Dales to investigate the Risehill camp settlement, inhabited by the Victorian railway navvies during the construction of the Settle-to-Carlisle railway On a wind- and rain-swept Yorkshire moor – 'the most exposed site Time Team has ever dug on,' according to Tony Robinson – lie the remains of a settlement built by a tough, nomadic community that existed on the very edge of society.
Time Team gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dig in the hallowed grounds of Salisbury Cathedral – in Phil Harding's home town In 2008, Salisbury marked the 750th anniversary of the consecration of its cathedral. At the end of September the city played host to Time Team, who had been given the unique opportunity to investigate some of the lost architectural treasures of this magnificent building.
The Team are in Radcot, Oxfordshire, where they hope to uncover a long-lost fortress built in the 12th century during one of the bloodiest episodes of English history. The tiny hamlet of Radcot in Oxfordshire stands on a strategic crossing on the river Thames. Competing armies have fought over control of the crossing from at least medieval times through to the English Civil War.
The Team are invited to investigate a Bedfordshire field by a group of amateur archaeologists who have found countless pieces of Roman pottery, coins and building material over the years. In a field next to a science park in Colworth, Bedfordshire, a group of amateur archaeologists have turned up a huge collection of material dating back almost 2,000 years.
Legend says that tiny Looe Island in Cornwall was once visited by Jesus Christ. Could it be one of the earliest Christian sites in the country? Legend has it that Jesus Christ himself played on the pebble beach at Looe Island (also known as St George's Island), about one mile off the south Cornwall coast near Looe. It is a story that probably originated when the island was being established as a place of pilgrimage to rival St Michael's Mount further to the southwest.
The Team visits Lincoln's Inn, London where they have been asked to investigate the remains of a 13th-century palace that belonged to Henry III's Lord Chancellor There were only a few areas within Lincoln's Inn where any excavation could take place. As well as it not being possible to dig under the other historic buildings, a huge London plane tree precluded any excavation that would threaten its root system.
Time Team visits the cold and windswept Chapel Head, in the Cambridgeshire Fens, to see if a medieval chapel did once stand there Over the years, farmers working the fields have found large quantities of worked stone, medieval tiles and even two shelly limestone columns, adding credence to the local belief that a medieval chapel once stood here.
Time Team sets out to unearth the secrets of the deserted medieval village of Ulnaby in Durham The Team's challenge was to tell the story of a whole lost village – a once-thriving rural world
Tony Robinson and the Team travel to the picturesque expanses of the Suffolk coast to investigate a very special back garden. When the new owners of a house in Blythburgh explored their potting shed they were shocked to discover a cupboard full of human skulls.
In the first episode of the new series, Tony Robinson, Professor Mick Aston and the Team investigate one of Britain's greatest historic landmarks: Westminster Abbey. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of Parliament Square, the archaeologists have three days to pin down the location of a lost sacristy, a stronghold that was built by Henry III almost 800 years ago and is said to have housed the biggest collection of treasure this side of the Alps. Under the watchful eye of the Abbey's clergy and numerous tourists, the diggers' attempts to find this important building are continually thwarted by the driving London rain and centuries of later building work.
Time Team descend on the Isle of Mull at the invitation of two local amateur archaeologists to investigate a mysterious set of earthworks in a forest near Tobermory. Could they be the remains of a chapel from the time of St Columba?
Tony Robinson and the Team get their feet wet as they examine a stretch of the River Tees where local divers have discovered more than 2,000 high-quality Roman finds. The river flows past one of the most impressive Roman forts in northern Britain, and over three days the archaeologists cast their net far and wide investigating the buildings, roads and structures around this strategic crossing. However, the big challenge is working out what was going on in the middle of the river, where most of the finds came from, and that means a variety of Time Team's finest squeezing into wetsuits and braving the fast flowing river Tees.
In Sutton Courtenay Tony Robinson and the Team investigate a set of buildings once occupied by Anglo Saxon royalty. It's the rarest of archaeological sites and uncovers the biggest Saxon building ever discovered in Britain. Aerial photography of an apparently featureless Oxfordshire field revealed crop marks that suggested to archaeologists it was once the site of an impressive collection of 1,400-year-old buildings; but Time Team's digging expertise was needed to verify this. The trenches are big and the archaeology complicated but slowly the Team begin to build up a picture of life here over 1,000 years ago, with the help of heroic Saxon poetry. As well as stunning finds and the perplexing possibility that they have uncovered an Anglo Saxon totem pole, the archaeologists also discover a culture where heroism, story telling and drinking go hand in hand, and learn the finer points of how to insult your colleagues in Old English.
Tony Robinson and the Team visit the remains of Hopton Castle in Shropshire. Although it's picturesque, it was the site of a series of gruesome battles that took place at height of the English Civil War, when a Royalist force laid siege to a small garrison of Parliamentarians inside the castle. The Team use contemporary accounts and the evidence from their own trenches to separate fact from propaganda and piece together a blow-by-blow account of these violent days in 1644. The dig immediately produces evidence of battle. Over three days the archaeology begins to build up a compelling story of how the defenders fought off two attacks, killing hundreds of Royalists, before finally succumbing to the greater numbers of their enemy.
In the 18th century the Royal Navy was the most successful fighting force in the world. To maintain this status it desperately needed better ways of looking after its sick and wounded, so in 1746 it decided to build the best hospital the country had ever seen, near the Portsmouth dockyard at Haslar. Costing £100,000, it was the biggest construction project in the country, and for over 250 years Haslar treated sailors from The Battle of Trafalgar to the Gulf War, until in 2009 the hospital closed its doors on the sick for the last time.
Time Team visits the heart of Wiltshire for one of their most ambitious projects ever: to investigate an entire lost Roman town. Hidden under acres of wheat, Cunetio would once have been a bustling market centre. It's also the place where Britain's largest ever coin hoard was found. In the 1970s a pot containing 55,000 Roman coins was discovered, and one of the archaeologists called in to deal with it was Time Team's own Phil Harding. Now, 30 years later, he's back to dig this massive site and to find out how much effort is required to bury 55,000 coins. Over the three days, the scale of the site pushes the Team to the limit. Hampered by driving rain, the archaeologists battle to make sense of trenches that contain hundreds of years' worth of archaeology, while the geophysics team make almost half a million readings to complete the biggest survey ever recorded on Time Team.
Tony and the Team go behind the scenes at Westminster Abbey to explore the story of the Cosmati pavement: the mosaic floor being uncovered for the first time in 100 years. Also known as 'The House of Kings', Westminster Abbey has stood at the heart of the nation for nearly 1,000 years, surviving the Civil War and Reformation. While visitors marvel at the royal paraphernalia and the majesty of the architecture, it remains at the core of the Establishment, and still plays host to the Coronation. For a century, the Cosmati pavement - a huge, mystical mosaic floor in front of the altar at the centre of which the Coronation Chair is placed - has been covered by carpet. Now Time Team cameras are allowed unprecedented access behind the scenes at the Abbey as this extraordinary piece of living history is revealed. As well as exploring the story of the Cosmati pavement, the Team also have access to a night-time search under the floors for lost tombs and graves, a shrine that still attracts pilgrims after 800 years and the 1,000-year-old faked documents that gave the Abbey the right to host the Coronation in the first place.
The Team visit Norman Cross in Cambridgeshire, a site that is over 200 years old and housed the world's first ever purpose-built prisoner of war camp. It has never before been excavated and the team are keen to unearth the final resting place of almost 2,000 prisoners who died at the camp, but what they discover takes them all by surprise.
Tony Robinson and the Team find themselves lost in the mists of a Welsh forest as they investigate one of the biggest castles in Britain. Their task is to investigate the castle's mysterious interior and find out how this impressive structure fitted into a network of fortresses built by powerful English barons 700 years ago.
Tony Robinson, Mick Aston and Phil Harding follow digs around the UK that uncover a vast array of archaeology and provide fascinating insights into our Viking past. Three centuries of Viking occupation left an indelible print on the British Isles. Their legacy has shaped the Britain we live in today and the Vikings have had a huge influence on our culture; from the way we live to the words we use. The Vikings are notoriously known as fearsome, axe-wielding warriors who relished their reputation as bloodthirsty invaders, and the discovery of mutilated skeletons in this Time Team Special does little to alter this reputation.
Tony Robinson and the diggers visit the picture postcard perfect Oxfordshire town of Burford to respond to a very special challenge from Time Team's own Professor Mick Aston. Invited to investigate the location of a medieval hospital in the stunning grounds of Burford Priory, Mick found evidence of even earlier archaeology.
Tony Robinson and the team head to Governor's Green in Portsmouth, where they search for the site of a 13th-century hospital founded by monks. Although part of the building still stands, the whereabouts of the rest of it remain shrouded in mystery - and initial evidence from the trenches makes the task even more confusing, leading to a clash between the diggers and the surveyors.
There's a Villa Here Somewhere: Litlington, Cambridgeshire. The quiet village of Litlington in Cambridgeshire gets the full Time Team treatment as Tony Robinson and the digging team hunt for the missing remains of what is believed to be one of Britain's biggest Roman villas. A mysterious Roman building hidden in a copse and a 19th-century map suggest the next door field contains a massive villa. But little archaeological work has been carried out since the 19th century so the Team's task is to find this missing structure and help the people of Litlington put their town back on the Roman map.
Tony Robinson and the Team climb a remote Herefordshire hill to investigate one of the biggest prehistoric sites ever featured on Time Team. Aerial photographs and dogged local investigation suggest Dinmore Hill may have been a vast Iron Age hill fort. Can the diggers find the evidence to confirm this important discover
An eagle-eyed forest ranger spotted bits of Roman building poking out from the forest floor in Cambridgeshire's Bedford Purlieus Wood. And cutting-edge aerial visualisations reveal evidence of a complex of building foundations hidden in the woods. Tony and the Team investigate what these buildings were and why they were here. It's a straightforward question, but the dig is one of the most challenging of the series: it's almost impossible for geophysics to operate in the cramped woodland environment; the diggers can't see each other's trenches for the trees; and a thick layer of autumn leaves add to the general disorientation. But the Team manage to uncover substantial buildings, intricate finds and what looks suspiciously like a statue. Over three days they piece together a tale of Roman industry and trade, and what may be the key to understanding the site: the presence of a fancy bath-house.
The first stone henge to be discovered in Britain for a century would be cause enough for major celebration. But there's double bubbles as Tony Robinson and his hardy team of archaeologists celebrate their 200th dig. The site is the bed of a Devon reservoir with a strange assortment of prehistoric remains. The reservoir has been specially drained, but the diggers still face three days of wading through thick, sticky mud as they piece together the story of thousands of years of rituals performed in this beautiful secret valley high up on Dartmoor. The Team slowly uncover a network of monuments that suggest they have found a major prehistoric site. But the best discovery is left until the last day when they unearth the remains of that stone henge. It's the perfect end to a milestone in the programme's history
Tony Robinson takes his merry band of archaeologists to Leicestershire to investigate life and death in Anglo Saxon Britain. The Team are intrigued by metal detecting finds and pottery scattered across the fields, which suggest they're on the site of a high-status Anglo Saxon burial ground. By the end of the first day there's no sign of a cemetery, in spite of the evidence. But all that changes the next morning with a flurry of activity revealing burials, cremations and a glimpse of gold. Days of frantic digging reveal every type of Anglo Saxon burial - and perhaps the finest piece of jewellery ever discovered on Time Team. And the Team explore the unique way the Anglo Saxons celebrated their dead, when one brave digger stands in for a dead Anglo Saxon on a funeral pyre, in a fiery recreation of a cremation.
Tony and the Team get a unique opportunity to dig at an army firing range at High Ham in Somerset, and investigate a series of mosaics first discovered 150 years ago. The mosaics hint at a grand villa but as this part of Somerset has been in constant use by the army for the last century and a half, no one has ever had a chance to really see what's under the ground. To everyone's surprise the initial results suggest there's been more than one villa on this site. Over the following days a story emerges of the highs and lows of Roman life in Britain, from the grand rooms used for entertaining to the pitiful lives of the slaves who lived on the edge of this high society. The archaeology is impressive but the weather's not, and as the temperatures plummet the Team hold a crisis meeting. Could this be the first time in the programme's history that the conditions force the diggers to down tools?
Tony Robinson doesn't usually get to decide where the Team should dig, but in this episode he chooses his first ever site for investigation: a German anti-aircraft battery built during the Nazis' five-year occupation of Jersey. The archaeologists have never investigated anything like this before and must apply all their skills to make sense of a site now reclaimed by a forest. It's soon clear that the gun emplacements are part of a much bigger, complex fortified settlement that was home to hundreds of German soldiers equipped with a vast array of weapons. And, unlike with older sites, the Team can talk to people who witnessed life under the occupation at first hand. What emerges is the shocking story of a fortress island where German installations were built by slave labour and the local population began to starve as the war continued. Of terrible conditions that seem more fitting to the eras the Team usually investigate, rather than just 70 years ago. Over three days Time Team uncover a fascinating and frequently horrifying glimpse of life during war.
Dense and tranquil woodland in the County Durham countryside seems an unlikely venue for Time Team's investigation into the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution. But 200 years ago Derwentcote was at the heart of an iron and steel-producing complex that fuelled the spread of empire. Over three days the Team fight through the undergrowth to reveal the furnaces and forges that produced the raw materials of industry under appalling conditions. As well as their chainsaws and mechanical diggers, the archaeologists draw on an unusual resource: the memoirs of an 18th-century industrial spy who visited the site. And with the help of old records they can even put names and trades to the people who occupied the workers' cottages that once stood alongside the works. It's a story of how cottage industry gave way to the might of the industrial cities such as Sheffield, and the Team uncover the highs and lows of the working life of Derwentcote. On top of all that, Tony discovers how excited grown men can be when they get to analyse huge lumps of 200-year-old slag!
The Team face one of their strangest challenges ever: digging through a church graveyard in search of what could be one of the largest Roman structures ever built in Britain. Tony Robinson and his band are here at the request of the Reverend William Burke, vicar of the historic St Kyneburgha's church in Castor, Cambridgeshire. Under very close supervision, the Team must dodge the thousands of burials in the graveyard to get to an ornate mosaic floor that was reportedly discovered almost 200 years ago. It could be the missing link in a village that is crammed with massive Roman walls and old reports of exquisite finds.
The Battle of Bosworth was the decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses. It was the beginning of the end of three decades of treason, rebellion and dynastic warfare. Against huge odds, Henry Tudor won the day to take the English Crown. It was a turning point in English history, the end of the Middle Ages and the savage beginnings of the country we recognise today.
Groby Old Hall in Leicestershire was once home to the legendary White Queen: Elizabeth, the wife of Edward IV. The Team are here to help the new owners, who have saved the house from dereliction, to find out what has gone on in their garden over the centuries. It's full of tantalising glimpses of archaeology: a medieval wall with a window, carved stones and what looks like the remains of a Norman castle.
Tony Robinson and the Team head across the Channel to Jersey to investigate the origins of Mont Orgueil Castle: a fortress that came to symbolise the Channel Islands' bond with Britain. The massive castle that dominates the shore today is a Tudor structure built on earlier foundations, and it's that early castle, built by King John, that the Team are looking for.
Tony Robinson and the Team descend on the historic Llancaich manor house to investigate an archaeologist's dream. An ancient moat has been discovered in the next field and no one knows what it once protected. It may have surrounded an early Welsh chapel, a Roman Fort, a fortified cattle enclosure, or even the ancestral home of one of Wales's most important families: the Pritchards. A big empty field with a manor house in it is what geophysics was invented for, but what should be a straightforward search quickly becomes one of the most baffling and frustrating investigations Time Team have undertaken for a long time. As the three-day limit approaches the digging becomes more and more frantic, as fields and gardens are overturned by the diggers trying to get to grips with the missing manor. Even if very little is as it seems, they do discover that the history of the site goes back thousands of years earlier than they expected.
When Stephen and Stephanie Fry bought a few acres of prime Somerset pasture to graze their horses, they inadvertently also bought the remains of Buck Mill, an 18th-century water mill. But as Stephanie began to look into its history, she realised that there may have been a flour mill on the site since Domesday. So she called in Tony Robinson and the Team to help her unravel the mystery of their mill. For Professor Mick Aston, the prospect was too good to turn down. As the diggers get to work uncovering the whole of the 18th-century mill, Mick takes off into the landscape to look for clues from earlier centuries. He finds more than he bargained for: the whole area was awash with the tell-tale mill streams needed to power grindstones. The dig throws up constant reminders of the importance of wheat and bread to the medieval population, and of how rich millers could become. The only spanner in the works for this industrial dig is the surprise discovery of an Anglo Saxon comb.
Tony Robinson and the team visit a tiny windswept island off the coast of Wales. The only way to get to it is by rigging a 500-metre zip wire way above the wave-lashed rocks. Incredibly, it seems that Gateholm Island in Pembrokeshire was once inhabited, but whether by Romans, Vikings, Celts or druids nobody knows. A handful of mysterious objects were found on the island years ago, including a rare Roman stone phallus and a beautiful bronze stag, suggesting that it may have been some sort of religious centre. Of course, the team have to dig for answers, but the weather's throwing everything it has at them. To make their task that bit tougher, they discover they also need to dig at a second site a quarter of a mile away. Although this one, thankfully, is on the mainland. Team leader Francis Pryor thinks it looks like what they're investigating is a classic Iron Age fort, with curved banks and ditches on one side and a sheer cliff on the other. If he's right, it should give Phil Harding and his diggers at least enough work to keep them busy for three days. And if he's wrong, there's no hiding place on this beautiful but bleak coast!
There's a problem in the chocolate-box village of Bitterley in Shropshire. The village's school and cottages cluster prettily around the green. But the village church and the manor house lie more than half a mile away, on the other side of a lumpy, bumpy empty field. The villagers, led by energetic headmistress June Buckhard, have been exploring the field and believe that their village used to be much bigger, with the field full of houses and streets. They have called in Tony Robinson and the Team to see if they're right. But they're not expecting the professionals to do all the work. Half the village turn out, ready to dig test pits in their gardens and in any spare piece of land they can get on to. Trenches appear almost hourly in gardens, from the smallest cottage to the grand manor house lawns. And it takes every hour of the three days for the villagers to get their answer. But judging by how much they seemed to enjoy it, they're probably still out there digging anyway!
Tony Robinson and the Team head to Dunwich, a village that's literally falling off the edge of the UK. Coastal erosion has eaten away most of this once-bustling settlement, and before the whole place is lost to the sea, there's a last chance to find out more about the lost origins of this dramatically situated town.
Tony and the Team visit Newmarket, the birthplace of horseracing, in search of the earliest archaeological traces of the sport of kings. They dig in the heart of the historic town, in search of the remains of King Charles II's racing stables - arguably the world's first stables dedicated for racing.
Tony leads the Team to the village of Beadnell on a beautiful stretch of the Northumbrian coast, to explore an unusual promontory, from which mysterious fragments of human bone have emerged over recent years.
Two hundred years ago, Swansea was one of the wealthiest cities in the country, if not the world. The source of those riches was neither the coal nor the steel recently associated with the area, but copper. The Welsh port city once led the world in copper smelting, but today there's almost nothing to be seen of this unique heritage. So Tony Robinson and the Team investigate one of the very first copper works, White Rock.
Property magnate Paul Whight has two very expensive hobbies. He collects and drives classic racing cars, which he keeps in the grounds of his second obsession - his beautiful stately home and garden in Essex. Paul is so keen to know everything he can about the history of his home that he's rashly invited Tony Robinson and Time Team in to do their worst.
Tony Robinson and the Time Team cameras join archaeologists as they dig the site of William Shakespeare's house, New Place, in Stratford on Avon. There's little of it above ground now, but records show it was Tudor Stratford's biggest private home, with up to 20 rooms. However, in 1702, New Place was demolished to make way for a grand Georgian pile. But, with the site now accessible, the archaeologists aim to show for the first time not only where Shakespeare really did live with his family but also how grand his house was.
Eight hundred years ago the people of Kenfig on the south coast of Wales thought they had built the perfect town, nestled round a harbour with easy access to the sea and a sheltered position. The town appears to have been a thriving commercial success but then it vanished, leaving just a few castle walls to mark its existence.
The Roman legionary fort of Caerleon in South Wales is one of the most famous and best preserved Roman sites in Britain. It stood on the edge of the Roman Empire, but its huge amphitheatre and immense baths, and the scale of its ruined walls, are all testament to its power and importance. But just outside the fort, archaeologists have discovered signs of yet another huge structure leading from the fort down to the river. It seems to be a vast courtyard surrounded by stone buildings and with a mysterious square structure standing in the centre. Joining a large team from Cardiff University, Tony and the Team have just three days to help piece together the answer. And when they do, it casts new light on what was once seen as solely a military outpost.
For generations a family of Somerset farmers have been wondering if there was ever actually a castle on top of the hill they call Castle Hill. Records show there was a Norman castle in the area, but they are not clear about exactly where and there are several likely locations. The only answer is for Tony and the Team to dig - once all the kit has been hauled up the steep slopes.
Tony and the Team don their hunting green, pick up their bows and arrows and head for the fringes of Sherwood Forest, where residents of Clipstone village in Nottinghamshire believe some impressive ruins in a farmer's field may have played a part in the ancient tales of Robin Hood and Bad King John.
In July 2009, amateur metal detectorist Terry Herbert found an Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard worth over £3 million in a Staffordshire field. The hoard was saved for the nation by Stoke on Trent and Birmingham Museums, who, with the aid of a lottery grant and public donations, purchased it jointly. Two years ago Channel 4 told the story of the discovery of these golden, richly jewelled objects. Now, with the initial phase of the post-excavation process nearing completion, archaeologists are beginning to unlock the secrets of the hoard. After further digging and carefully unpicking the jumble of finds, experts from the museums have realised there were over 3500 objects buried in this small area with the gold alone weighing 11lbs. Thanks to their painstaking restoration work and application of the latest scientific techniques, they can understand the function of these objects, begin to explain how and why they came to be here, and pinpoint the origins of the hoard's raw materials.
Tony Robinson investigates how burial customs have changed and evolved over thousands of years of British history. Thanks to two decades of digging burial sites, Time Team can draw on extraordinary evidence from Neolithic bone caves, Bronze Age cemeteries, Roman mausoleums, jewellery-laden Anglo Saxon burials and even funeral pyres. And with the help of resident experts Jackie McKinley and Francis Pryor, Tony explores how, from the flowers on the grave and the black veil to the wake after the funeral, the way we bury our dead is rooted in customs that go back thousands of years. Some of the Team's most intensive digs have involved burials and the programme revisits many impressive sites, including one in the Outer Hebrides, one in the Peak District and a Roman fort near Hadrian's Wall.
With over 250 amazing sites and tens of thousands of finds to draw on, it's hardly surprising the Team find it hard to decide which has been their greatest discovery. Revisiting digs that produced rare and fine jewellery, gold coins, huge and intricate mosaics - and some extraordinary archaeological fakery - Mick Aston, Phil Harding and Helen Geake defend and debate their choices for top honours. It's down to Tony Robinson to adjudicate.
Golfers at a popular East Midlands golf club now know that a huge wooded bank beside their fairway is a rather special area of 'rough'. Time Team's experts discovered, that 90 years ago it was a machine gun firing range - and buried in the bank are tens of thousands of spent bullets. Belton House near Grantham may be one of Britain's finest stately homes but during World War I, the grounds were home to thousands of men training for frontline duties. It was where the Machine Gun Corps was created and its troops were trained. The Corps was set up as a response to German superiority in using these deadly weapons and became vital to the war effort. Most of the Machine Gun Corps' records were destroyed, first in a fire and then in the Blitz in World War II. Today almost nothing is visible above ground. Tony Robinson and the Team have quite a task to locate the hundreds of barrack blocks, kitchen blocks, roads, social centres and shooting ranges. To the Team's relief, the dig is rich in finds, revealing glimpses of the men's lives in wartime; whether from the site of the YMCA, where a cup of cocoa could be had for a few pence, or from the hastily erected huts where they lived for their six weeks of intensive training. They uncover stories of young men who went so bravely to their deaths. Of the 170,000 who trained here more than 12,000 were killed and another 50,000 injured. The Corps' nickname was 'the Suicide Club'. The sound of a Vickers gun reverberating around the park for the first time in 90 years provides a shocking but fitting tribute.
Tony and the Team uncover their largest ever range and number of items from Roman Britain, and undertake their most ambitious geophysics project to date. The archaeologists explore a spectacular site at Brancaster in Norfolk, which is believed to have been a Roman 'Shore-Fort'. Excavations could determine how large it was, what it looked like, and whether it was one of the key military outposts of Roman Britain. If the site turns out to be as significant as the Team hope, it suggests this question: Why build a major stronghold in such a far-flung corner of the country? As the Team try to answer, they unearth an unprecedented 2500 finds, which provide lessons about everything from Roman sports to the decorative arts and even cockfighting. They even find a spectacular piece of a legionary's armour in a previously hidden chamber. The Team also take on a high-definition geophysics survey covering 24 acres. It generates so much data that the computers grind to halt. Can they be fixed in time to reveal the site's layout? The biggest surprise reveals evidence of a staggering level of trade with the local population, and clues as to how wealthy nearby Britons became on the back of the Roman presence.
Time Team investigate a huge hill near Cardiff that may be immensely significant; is it the long-lost Iron Age capital of South Wales? During the course of their investigations the archaeologists make one particularly rare discovery: the most complete Early Iron Age cup ever found in South Wales, which proves that the site is from the earliest part of the Iron Age, at around 800BC. A huge hill dominates the Ely housing estate in Cardiff. Its towering ramparts and deep ditches identify it as a hillfort, and the effort of their construction indicates that this was no ordinary Iron Age homestead. The site's so big that thousands of people could have lived up here. It's never been explored before. If there were houses, none are visible now and the age of the fort has always been a mystery. Tony Robinson and the Team have five acres of hilltop, half a mile of ramparts and ditches and just three days to answer some very big questions. Fortunately local residents are keen to help, and finds such as jewellery and fine drinking vessels show that Iron Age domestic life in the area was rich and colourful. But finding any houses is harder than anyone imagined and provokes fierce arguments amongst the Team as time ticks away. But the hours of careful scraping and one spectacular find do pay off, revealing that Cardiff's hillfort is as old and as important as anyone could have hoped.
Tony and the team attempt to help Hektor Rous, the son of 'Aussie Earl' Keith Rous, work out the mysterious history of the family's Tudor country home in Suffolk.
Tony and the team work with veterans of the war in Afghanistan, investigating the ancient Barrow Clump on Salisbury Plain, where they discover burials from 2000BC and rare Saxon finds.
Tony and the team make their way to the Lake District on an expedition that takes them both higher and deeper than they've ever been before. They are looking for a forgotten piece of the nation's industrial heritage.
Oakham Castle is the best preserved 12th-century building in Britain, but there's much more to it than meets the eye.
Roman remains have been turning up in an Oxfordshire field for decades, where a student in the 1960s believed he had uncovered a Roman mosaic. Is this the site of a lost grand Roman villa?
Tony and the Team search for the remains of a renegade knight's Norman castle in one of Northern Ireland's most picturesque spots. King John sent John de Courcy to Ireland in 1170 as part of his invasion force, but de Courcy rebelled against his king's orders, instead establishing his own small kingdom and building a fine castle to defend it. King John refused to tolerate his disobedience and sent the loyal Hugh de Lacy across the Irish Sea to defeat him. De Courcy's castle was rebuilt, and much of its replacement is still standing. But the experts are convinced that some of what remains dates from de Courcy's time, and the archaeologists set out to find the lost structures. But as they survey and dig within the huge castle walls, they are in for a big surprise. It seems the site was occupied by tribal chiefs for many centuries before anyone had even heard of the Normans.
For 100 years schoolboys have been playing a few feet above the remains of the most opulent palace in Britain. The Manor of More was masterminded by Henry VIII's right-hand man, the all-powerful religious leader and statesman Cardinal Wolsey, who was also responsible for Hampton Court Palace. Tudor visitors remarked that it was grander than Hampton Court. But the palace went missing until the 1950s, when a group of pupils at Northwood School in Hertfordshire discovered its remains beneath their school playing field. Now one of those schoolboys - Martin Biddle, who is now one of the country's most distinguished archaeologists - joins Tony and the Team as they try to piece together the complete picture of this huge palace. In its heyday, the Manor of More would have been an opulent playground fit for royalty and state visitors. Like Hampton Court, it was built as a place in which to entertain. Thomas More and Catherine of Aragon would have known it intimately. But working out the layout of the palace is as tough a challenge as the Team have had for a long while. There should be a huge front courtyard, but where is it? There should be a long gallery running off the back range, somewhere under the school's tennis courts. But it's equally elusive. But finally enough pieces of this challenging Tudor jigsaw fall into place for the Team to visualise the splendour that once stood here, with its towered gatehouse rising majestically out of a wide moat.
When the Barlowsbought Upton Castle in Pembrokeshire they weren't sure if it was a Victorian folly or an Anglo-Norman castle. Time Team try to discover if it was one of the Anglo-Norman castles built to defend 'Little England beyond Wales' from the locals.
Tony Robinson celebrates the more than 150 practical experiments and re-creations that he and the Team have conducted over 20 years in order to unlock the mysteries exposed by their digs. Rebuilding - and even reliving - the past is a controversial area of archaeology. But it's one that Time Team has long championed, and one that has yielded some amazing results. This programme revisits some of the programme's greatest hits, from recreating individual objects such as Stone Age axes, Roman pewter bowls, medieval pottery and a Stone Age sword that throws new light on the myth of King Arthur's Excalibur, to building an entire Iron Age house and a Roman machine that lifted water from a deep well. The programme also revisits some of Time Team's forays into living history, from finding out what it felt like to be in Dad's Army to surviving 24 hours as a Victorian prisoner, in an attempt to see the past through our ancestors' eyes. Plus how a huge and - at times - contentious experiment for the programme finally solved the riddle of Seahenge.
Tony takes a look back at the best bits from two decades and over 250 episodes.
Time Team officially returns for its first brand new episode in a decade. New presenters Dr Gus Casely-Hayford and Natalie Haynes join team members old and new to investigate an Iron Age settlement in Cornwall with mysterious underground passages, known as a fogou. Armed with new technology, and with help from Site Director James Gossip and the Meneage Archaeology Group, Time Team have just three days to shed light on this fascinating prehistoric site on the Lizard Peninsula. Can they do it?
The team's investigation into the Iron Age settlement continues and Natalie tries her hand at making some Bronze Age pottery.
The final day of the Cornish dig and will the team be able to resolve whether they've found a barrow or some other structure? Elsewhere, there is news about Helen's coin and some exciting finds in Matt's Bronze Age roundhouse.
Time Team continues with its second brand new excavation in a decade. New presenters Dr Gus Casely-Hayford and Natalie Haynes join team members old and new to investigate a huge Roman villa on the estate of Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire. Armed with new technology, and with seasoned Site Director Neil Holbrook back at the helm, Time Team have just three days to shed light on this complex site.
Day Two, Matt extends Trench One in hopes of finding the north-west corner of the Roman villa, while the radar results reveal a significant structure in the south-east end.
The final day of the dig and the team re-investigate the stone sarcophagus first discovered in the 1960s. Elsewhere on the site, the trench containing the horse's head unearthed on Day Two is expanded.
Time Team returns to Broughton Roman Villa in Oxfordshire to investigate the mysterious stone sarcophagus that originally led to the site's discovery. In September 2021, the full team had the traditional three days to shed light on a huge villa on the Broughton Estate, originally discovered by Time Team's Keith Westcott. But with questions surrounding the sarcophagus remaining unanswered, we've sent in our new Expedition Crew for a closer look. Can the team relocate the burial? And what will we find? There's a lot to do and – on this occasion – only two days to do it!
Time Team returns to Broughton Roman Villa to investigate the mysterious stone sarcophagus that originally led to the site's discovery. In September 2021, the full team had the usual three days to shed light on a huge Roman villa on the Broughton Castle estate. But with questions still remaining unanswered, we've sent in our new Expedition Crew for a closer look. It's our second and final day in Oxfordshire. Can we answer all of our questions in the time remaining?
Time Team are at Halston Hall, Shropshire, where Stewart Ainsworth believes he's found a lost Knights Hospitaller preceptory. Is Stewart right? The team have just three days to find out!
It's Day 2 at Halston Hall, Shropshire, where Time Team are trying to locate a possible Knights Hospitaller preceptory.
It's the final day at Halston Hall, Shropshire, where Time Team are trying to locate a possible Knights Hospitaller preceptory. Can we make sense of another complex site? Join us to find out!
Time Team's Dr Derek Pitman and Lawrence Shaw join an international team of experts investigating an ancient settlement in central Greece. This ongoing project is uncovering a thousand years of history buried just beneath the surface. In Time Team's very first international Expedition Crew episodes, we join the team for a season to help shed more light on this fascinating site.
Time Team's Dr Derek Pitman and Lawrence Shaw are part of an international team investigating an ancient settlement at Vlochos, in Thessaly. This ongoing project is uncovering a thousand years of history buried just beneath the surface. In Time Team's very first international Expedition Crew episodes, we join the team for a season to help shed more light on this fascinating site.
Time Team's Expedition Crew returns to investigate a Medieval shipwreck off the South coast of England, laden with a fascinating cargo. Derek Pitman and Lawrence Shaw spend a day with the dive team from Bournemouth University Maritime Archaeology to uncover 700 year-old secrets hidden beneath the waves.
Time Team have been called in by Dr Helen Geake to investigate the site of an early Medieval burial in Norfolk that has unearthed some incredible finds. Can the team relocate the grave and is it the site of a larger cemetery? We have just three days to find out!
It's Day 2 in Norfolk, and Time Team have been called in by Dr Helen Geake to investigate the site of an early Medieval burial that has unearthed some incredible finds. Can the team relocate the grave and is it the site of a larger cemetery? We have just three days to find out!
It's our final day in Norfolk, where Time Team have been called in by Dr Helen Geake to investigate the site of an early Medieval burial that has unearthed some incredible finds. Can the team make sense of this intriguing site? We have just one day left to find o
He's back! Sir Tony Robinson returns to Time Team to investigate the US 101st Airborne Division in Britain. Time Team have been invited to Aldbourne, Wiltshire, by Operation Nightingale, on the 80th anniversary since Easy Company were stationed here in 1943, shortly before D-Day. Working alongside service men and women from the US and UK, the team have just over a week to investigate the camp, once home to the iconic 'Band of Brothers'.
For our latest three-day dig, Time Team joins forces with the people of Modbury to uncover their dramatic history. We hunt for clues throughout the town, in attics in living rooms, and under brand new lawns. We're looking for for evidence of Civil Wars that raged through the town in the 17th century. Time Team are joined by Jim Stetson, whose family sat at the heart of the community before they left for America to find their fortune making hats. But will we piece together the dramatic ups and downs of Modbury and its fascinating history? We have just three days to do it!
For our latest three-day dig, Time Team joins forces with the people of Modbury to uncover their dramatic history. We hunt for clues throughout the town, in attics in living rooms, and under brand new lawns. We're looking for for evidence of Civil Wars that raged through the town in the 17th century. Time Team are joined by Jim Stetson, whose family sat at the heart of the community before they left for America to find their fortune making hats. But will we piece together the dramatic ups and downs of Modbury and its fascinating history? We have just two days left to do it!
For our latest three-day dig, Time Team joins forces with the people of Modbury to uncover their dramatic history. We hunt for clues throughout the town, in attics in living rooms, and under brand new lawns. We're looking for for evidence of Civil Wars that raged through the town in the 17th century. Time Team are joined by Jim Stetson, whose family sat at the heart of the community before they left for America to find their fortune making hats. But will we piece together the dramatic ups and downs of Modbury and its fascinating history? We have just one day left to do it!
We've chosen a spectacular location for a very special dig. It's Time Team's 30th birthday and we are celebrating in style... Time Team heads to Wytch Farm, in the shadow of Corfe Castle, Dorset, where Derek and Lawrence discovered two Iron Age burials back in 2021. They've called in the full team to investigate. Was this a cemetery, and how long have people been living here? Where were they living, and, above all, what were their livelihoods? Will we uncover the secrets of Wytch Farm? We have just three days to find out!
We've chosen a spectacular location for a very special dig. It's Time Team's 30th birthday and we are celebrating in style... Time Team heads to Wytch Farm, in the shadow of Corfe Castle, Dorset, where Derek and Lawrence discovered two Iron Age burials back in 2021. They've called in the full team to investigate. Was this a cemetery, and how long have people been living here? Where were they living, and, above all, what were their livelihoods? Will we uncover the secrets of Wytch Farm? We have just three days to find out!
We've chosen a spectacular location for a very special dig. It's Time Team's 30th birthday and we are celebrating in style... Time Team heads to Wytch Farm, in the shadow of Corfe Castle, Dorset, where Derek and Lawrence discovered two Iron Age burials back in 2021. They've called in the full team to investigate. Was this a cemetery, and how long have people been living here? Where were they living, and, above all, what were their livelihoods? Will we uncover the secrets of Wytch Farm? We have just three days to find out!
In 1939, on the eve of war, a huge ship burial was discovered at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, laden with golden treasures, befitting Anglo-Saxon royalty. Now, a team of shipwrights and volunteers at The Longshed in Woodbridge are building a scale reconstruction, as accurately as possible, using traditional methods. Over the last few years, Time Team has been following the incredible building project, gradually watching the ship take shape. Join us for the story so far...
This pre-Christmas special offers a taster of what is coming up in the next series – and provides an update on previous Time Team digs. Presented by Tony Robinson from York's Barley Hall, where a Medieval Christmas celebration is in full swing, the show tells what has happened at many of the digs featured in the last series.
Last year, on this bleak and beautiful stretch of Norfolk coastline, a local man made an extraordinary discovery. Walking the beach at low tide he found a bronze axe head. Nearby, was a mysterious circle of eroded timber posts half buried in the sand, and in the middle of the circle was a huge upturned tree stump. It’s utterly intriguing nothing quite like it’s ever been found before and everyone wants to know who built it, what it was for and what it originally looked like.
Once upon a time, there lived the greatest hero we’ve ever known. He was brought up by the wise wizard Merlin; he became king of the Britain’s when he pulled the sword from the stone; he married the beautiful Guinevere; he rode out of Camelot protected from harm by his magic sword Excalibur; he sat in council with the chivalrous knights of the round table and sent them to find the holy grail. But as all hero’s will be, he was betrayed. First by the brave Lancelot, who fell in love with Guinevere, and then by his sister, who persuaded him to fight without Excalibur. Mortally wounded in battle with his treacherous son, his body was carried to the Isle of Avalon. From where it’s said in our hour of greatest need, one day, will rise again. This king was called Arthur, and his stories known to us all. But actually he’s shrouded in mystery, some people say that he was a chivalrous medieval king. Others, a gritty Dark Age warrior, others again, that he never existed at all. Time Team are setting out on a quest of our own to see if we can find out who he really was. It’s a journey back in time through centuries of myth and legend, on the way we’ll visit sacred lakes, pull our own sword from the stone and uncover the very first archaeological host.
Time Team takes a trip from the Palaeolithic to the present and plots the nation's past through the finds and revelations made across the last seven series. The Team pays a visit to classic UK archaeological sites, such as Grimes Graves and Bede's World, and examines key digs from programmes past to look at how archaeologists have interpreted the nation's history.
I’m in a remote farm in the Orkneys on a little hillock called Mine Howe. For years there have been stories around here of tunnels under the roads and mysterious underground rooms, which have never been satisfactorily explained until about six months ago when an extraordinary discovery was made. Acting on stories of a lost secret chamber first found in 1946, a local farmer and his friends set out to rediscover it. What they found was extraordinary. A set of stairs made of stone, disappearing into the earth and leading to a dark and secret chamber. A set of stairs leading into a hillock’s unique. And now the whole archaeological world is agog, everyone wants to know who built it and when and what it was put there for.
Time Team has been following an excavation in Ely, Cambridgeshire, for a feature-length documentary screened on 17 May. It has uncovered a remarkable picture of Ely in past centuries: channels where boats used to moor to load and unload goods; a medieval kiln with huge quantities of high-quality pottery finds; and a number of buildings fronting the road at Broad Street.
If you think archaeologists with their strange haircuts and their bizarre dress sense and their obsession with all the rubbish from ancient civilizations are a funny lot, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Phil and I are in Montana, in the wild west of the USA. And every summer, what seem like half the eccentrics in the universe turn up here to dig for even larger remains from times even longer ago. We’re here to meet the dinosaur hunters, we wanna find out what they do, and how they do it and hopefully even have a go ourselves.
I’m right at the top of Canterbury cathedral and a few hundred feet below me, the most ambitious urban archaeological project the country’s ever known, has just begun. One eighth of the entire ancient city is gonna be excavated to make way for a huge new shopping centre. The Big Dig as its known locally is right down there in the centre of town. So it should be jam packed full of exciting archaeology from the present day, back to the Romans and maybe even beyond. The Archaeologists are up against the clock though. The developers want them off site as quickly as possible. The Time Team are gonna be following the progress of the big dig both onsite and behind the scenes and were gonna be helping the local team to reconstruct the 2000 year story of this historic piece of Canterbury real estate. Oh… And we’ve got just nine months to do it.
2000 years ago, London didn’t exist. It was created by the Romans in the first century AD. They settled just over there in what we now call the city. It started as a simple bridge over a river, but within a hundred years had become a bustling city with a population of 30,000. But it was a long way from Rome, and Londinium has always been considered a bit of a frontier town, an unsoffisticated outpost perched precariously on the very edge of the Roman empire, until now. Over the last nine months, archaeologists from the Museum of London have been working on a site right in the heart of the city, and what they’ve discovered, suggests that Londinium was in fact one of the most soffisticated and advanced cities in the whole Roman empire.
HMS Victory, probably the most famous English warship of all time. Everyone knows the story of how the Victory, under the command of Admiral Lord Nelson routed the French at the battle of Trafalgar and how Nelson died a national hero. Quite rightly, this is a perfectly preserved piece of our maritime heritage, but what happened to the other ships under Nelson’s command, where are they? Well, the simple answer is, they’re all long gone. Either destroyed in battle, lost at sea, broken up or just rotted away. Well, maybe not quite all. This is a story about the underwater excavation of one of Nelson’s lost ships. It involves Nelson’s mistress, Emma Hamilton; her husband, amateur archaeologist, Sir William Hamilton; a priceless collection of antiquities; a shipwreck and the discovery and raising of one of the most important pieces of maritime art ever found in British waters.
Ten years ago university lecturer, Mick Aston was teaching archaeology to classes of just 30 students. Now, thanks to television, Mick, Tony and the team reach an audience of over 3 million. Time Team, Channel 4's award winning archaeology show is ten years old.
A team of expert engineers, archaeologists and craftsmen are about to join forces in an epic archaeological experiment, to build a full size working replica of a Roman water lifting machine. At almost 4 meters in height, capable of raising 7000 litres of water per hour, this was ancient cutting edge technology. But no-one really knows how it worked or what it really looked like. What we do know is that the machine has to be installed and working in the Museum of London in three months time.
Digs at Great Easton, Leicestershire; Wolverhampton; Barnet; Oakamoor; Preston; Cheltenham; Upminster and Groundwell Ridge in Swindon.
Loch Tay, and the kind of view that draws people to Scotland. But the landscape isn’t the main attraction for archaeologists Nick Dixon and Barrie Andrian, who are much more interested in what they can see in the shallow waters around the edge of this loch. They’re carrying out the first ever underwater excavation of a crannog, an artificial island built in the Iron Age. A structure that’s now completely submerged, but originally would have looked something like this. This full-scale reconstruction was built as an experiment based on timbers discovered so far. But ideas could change as new discoveries are made. But what makes Oak Bank crannog so important is that the preservation underwater is fantastic, all sorts of clues to life in the Iron Age are being discovered here. Unique 2500 year old wooden objects that only survive underwater. Not surprisingly, digging a site as rich as this has become a kind of obsession. Nick’s been diving here most summers since 1980. This summers excavation was different, husband and wife team, Nick and Barrie decided to run a field school, the students got to learn about underwater archaeology while they got extra help excavating the site. Having to both teach and excavate, time was at a premium. This year’s challenge, it was not only to unlock new secrets of the 2500 year old crannog, but also to introduce a bunch of rookies to the realities and rewards of working underwater. In this time team special documentary, you’ll be submerged into the world of underwater archaeology, and visit an Iron Age house that hasn’t been seen since prehistoric times. Are you ready? Stand by to dive into the Iron Age.
Hidden away in Kent is an architectural gem. A house that has some how survived with a little bit of every fashion imposed on it over seven centuries. This is Ightham Mote near Sevenoaks, bits of it date back to 1320 and officially it’s the most complete moated medieval manor house in the UK. At least it was until the National Trust started it’s most ambitious and expensive restoration project to date. Since 1989 this building has been literally taken apart brick by brick and beam by beam revealing the hidden history of the house for the first time. In this special Time Team documentary you will discover along with me that this is a totally different kind of archaeology. You’ll learn something about the twenty generations who lived here and see some of the things they deliberately hid away.
60 years ago on D-Day, the allies invaded Nazi occupied France. The invasion force made up of a 150,000 US, British and Canadian troops, was the largest in the history of western civilization. The Americans were to land on Omaha and Utah beaches, Canadians on Juno and the British on Sword and Gold. Almost half of the total troops were British and among them were the 400 infantrymen of the first Dorset regiment. They landed here on Gold beach on the 6th of June 1944, and this is the story of their day.
It might not seem it, but this damp piece of unprepresessing scrub is at the heart of one of the most important discoveries in British archaeological history. Just below the surface here, diggers found the tomb of an Anglo-Saxon King, crammed with ornate finds from across Europe, and that was just the start, of a fascinating detective story. Who was this mysterious King? Archaeologists have spent the last twelve months unpicking this site and pouring over the finds trying to find hidden clues which could reveal the identity of the person who was buried here, and Time Team has been with them all the way.
Tony Robinson, Phil Harding and Guy de la Bedoyere tell the story of the discovery of the only Roman circus ever found in Britain, just outside Colchester's Roman walls. They investigate the history of the circus and explore the rough, tough world of chariot racing.
Three thousand years ago the River Witham, just outside Lincoln, was a busy place. In the cold wet Autumn of 2004, archaeologists were given just six weeks to rescue the fragile evidence of a major Bronze Age settlement, before it would be buried under tons of clay when the river’s flood defences were strengthened. With frequent visits from Tome Team regulars, Mick Aston and Phil Harding, this Time Team Special follows the progress of this extraordinary dig, and witnesses the spectacle of literally thousands of prehistoric finds being unearthed and analysed.
Stonehenge may be Britain's most famous henge: a massive monument and ancient construction that is shrouded in mystery. But a mile away is an even bigger henge: Durrington Walls. In a major excavation this summer, archaeologists linked the two monuments and revealed an extraordinary and sophisticated picture of Stone Age life. The henge at Durrington was a mile round, a gleaming white bank of chalk sitting in the Wessex landscape. Leading down to the nearby river, a road was uncovered: the first Neolithic road to be discovered in Europe. Down that road would have tramped thousands of people, carrying the cremated remains of their recent dead. Can the team prove it was the start of a journey for the ancestors' spirits down the River Avon to the permanent memorial of Stonehenge? Even more remarkable, inside the henge was a huge wooden monument with 160 trees arranged in perfect circles. The piles of finds indicate the aftermath of great feasts, so to understand the monument better, Time Team takes on the mammoth task of building a full-size replica. It is impressive and the theories flow thick and fast. Could the midwinter alignment mean this may be the first recorded "Christmas", 2,500 years before Christ was born? Prod: Sian Price; Exec Prod: Philip Clarke.
In order to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VE day, archaeologists from the Museum of London enlist the aid of dozens of volunteers to excavate Dorchester Street in Shoreditch, London.
A special edition of the archaeology programme to mark The Queen's 80th birthday. Tony Robinson and his team of historians are granted exclusive access to investigate three royal sites - Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and The Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Until about 8,000 years ago Britain was part of the European continent. Then the ice melted, rivers flooded, seas rose and, hey presto, the land that joined us to France, Holland and Denmark disappeared under water. The excitable Tony Robinson and his team of eager archaeologists set about investigating the vast, flat landscape that's now under the North Sea and the English Channel. But it's one of the most difficult archaeological sites to work on. While the local fishermen regularly bring up ancient bones from the seabed, Robinson and co merely bring up their dinner. It's worth the discomfort though: vast mammoth bones, the jaw of a sabre-toothed cat, a lion's canine and sophisticated tools are among the treasures that enthusiasts have uncovered.
The Time Team archaeologists make a 400th-anniversary visit to Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America. Jamestown is the birthplace of the United States and brought the country the English language, as well as the English legal and political system. Piles of perfectly-preserved 17th century finds are pulled up from a disused well, bringing the team closer to the men, women and children who founded.
Tony Robinson takes us on a grand tour around some of our finest stately gardens, where he visits extraordinary grottoes and fanciful follies, and uncovers sexy secrets concealed in apparently classical designs. He starts at Prior Park garden near Bath, where a two-year project is underway to reinstate Alexander Pope's Wilderness and the 18thcentury Serpentine Lake and Cascade. But he also travels to the breathtaking Hadrian's Garden near Rome, the inspiration for so much that we see in the "traditional" English garden.
The team are given access to the largest dig in the programme's history as they scour the 42-acre site of the Paradise project in Liverpool to unearth the secrets of the new European Capital of Culture. Interestingly, they discover that a similar state of redevelopment existed 300 years ago as the small seven-street town on a muddy pool was transformed from an industrial backwater into a world-class port. Whilst excavating within the new buildings sites around the Pier Head the team takes a look at the city’s maritime history.
Britain is a land of monuments and buildings stretching back over seven thousand years, and in many ways they'd reflect the history of its people. Symbols of empire and civic pride from the proud Victorians; Elegance and proportion were defined by the tasteful Georgians; and the Tudors built palaces for prestige; Roman architecture asserted military might, power and civilisation; even our prehistoric ancestors left their mark on our landscape with stone circles, mounds and tombs. But the biggest man made monuments in Britain belong to one of the most mysterious periods in this countries past. These are relics of almost a thousand years of mystrery, superstition and violence, the Iron Age. But for centuries these huge monuments have been ignored or misunderstood. Now though with new excavations and new ideas we can at last come face to face with this huge chunk of our lost history.
To mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, Tony Robinson travels to the Somme. When shelling turned the battlefield of the Somme into a hell on earth, Britain's best miners and engineers created a maze of tunnels and dugouts that would become the setting for a secret war waged underground. One of the last dugouts constructed has been drained of water, enabling the first people to enter it in 90 years. Deep beneath Flanders fields the skilled work of the elite tunnelling companies is revealed to be in a remarkable state of preservation, allowing Tony and the experts to walk into what effectively is a time capsule of the Great War.
Somewhere in the Roman empire at the end of the 4th century lived a very rich man. The man's name was Sevso. How he got his wealth and what he did during his life are lost in the mists of time. But his name endures. Why? Because he left behind one of the greatest treasures the world has ever known.
In this feature-length Time Team Special , Tony Robinson and the Team make their inimitable contribution to marking the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne. In a spectacular and sumptuous film, they discover Henry the architect, designer, sportsman, devout Churchman and European statesman, far from his bad-tempered, murderous and overweight image. He was the most prolific, and probably the most demanding and talented, palace builder in the history of this nation. Inheriting a handful of draughty medieval castles masquerading as palaces, at the end of his reign he had no fewer than 55 buildings to his name, many of which had been built from scratch or renovated. Some were designed by Henry himself. Through his desire to copy the finest achievements of the European Renaissance and to surround his monarchy with splendour and pomp, Henry transformed the way the monarchy lived in Britain, forging a pattern that remains largely unchanged today. The team have unprecedented access behind the scenes at Hampton Court where they search for Henry's famous jousting yard and bowling alley. In Essex, the first palace Henry built for himself is revealed and excavated for the first time. They hunt down the site of the extraordinary temporary palace he built at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in France. A stone's throw from the Vatican in Rome, they discover the Palace that Henry owned, and the one nearby that inspired his greatest feat of building at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey. As Tony tracks the progress of his great building works, so the story of the man's life comes into focus: his loves and losses, fears and faith.
Stonehenge is the nation's most famous monument. For centuries, its age and purpose have been subject to speculation, excavation and fantasy. But over the last six years, a huge new team of archaeologists have been digging not just the monument but the entire prehistoric landscape that focuses on Stonehenge, to reveal the truth about this near-mythical place and crack its secrets. Time Team's cameras have been with the dig through those six summers. During their excavations the team discovered the biggest Neolithic settlement in Northern Europe, which suggests they have found the place where the people who built Stonehenge were based. But the digs also reveal that Stonehenge was just part of a vast ritualistic landscape where ancient peoples celebrated life and death in great man-made structures. The archaeologists believe that the landscape was turned into a huge and complex special ceremonial route for the remains of the departed as they pass into the afterworld. But these theories are only proved in their last summer of digging in 2008, as the team start to dig in the stone circle itself. The results surpass their wildest dreams and this pivotal excavation finally enables the team to reveal not only when Stonehenge was built and how it was built but, perhaps most importantly, why it was built.
Dover Castle has dominated the White Cliffs since it was built in 1180 by Henry II. But building it had nothing to do with defending Britain's shores; the story behind its vastly expensive construction is one of royal embarrassment and political prestige. It was the Millennium Dome of its day: vast, ridiculously expensive and built to show off the best we can offer. It looks like a quintessentially English castle, but is nothing of the sort; it's French to its foundations. It provides a fascinating insight into the medieval world. For years now, the castle has been empty, grey and dull: a shadow of its former self. But in 2008 English Heritage decided to undertake an extraordinarily bold piece of restoration. They planned to make over the main rooms of the castle to recreate them as they would have been in Henry II's time. It was a huge, ambitious project, bringing together historians, designers and around 150 craftsmen.
Tony Robinson joins a dig in France to investigate a terrifying British weapon that may have been used to fire burning oil at the Germans in the Battle of the Somme.
Tony Robinson and geophys boffin John Gater look back over 200 digs at the extraordinary achievements of cutting-edge geophysics technology, which has uncovered lost Roman villas, tombs, temples and ancient monuments, as well as a host of old broken tractor bits and enigmatic ditches. The science of geophys has changed out of all recognition: 20 years ago the team huddled around a dotmatrix printer as it slowly produced a geophysical picture of an abbey hidden underground; now they can produce complex three-dimensional images of whole buildings within minutes. In an effort to finally understand what geophys actually means, Tony buries 10 objects in a field and challenges John to use his technological arsenal to identify them all, without digging. Can geophys now tell the difference between a bicycle and a toilet?
Tony Robinson traces the story of the female warrior as he follows an excavation in Norfolk that may hold clues to what happened to her tribe, the Iceni, after their defeat at the hands of the Romans. The presenter visits Caistor St Edmund to investigate whether the Empire crushed Boudica's people or if she herself led them to destruction.
Tony Robinson and Mick Aston dig out the best bits of over 200 Time Team episodes to tell the story of how our domestic lives have changed over 10 millennia. Until about 10,000 years ago our ancestors moved from site to site setting up house where they could find food and water. Then everything changed. People realised they could control the land, stay put and build more permanent and more comfortable houses. Tony and Mick reveal how those very first houses evolved into what we know today, and find out how settling down changed the way we live.
Nowadays, London's East End is synonymous with the 2012 Olympic Games. Cutting-edge engineering and design have transformed the Olympic Park. But 150 years ago, the world was watching for a very different reason, although the spectacle on display was as high-tech as anything on offer today. The East End was once home to the most advanced shipbuilding industry - and best workers and shipyards - in the world. A century and a half ago, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Britain's most famous engineer, was about to launch a ship five times bigger than any that had ever been built before, the most revolutionary vessel the world had ever seen: the SS Great Eastern. Pioneering the transition from sail to steam and timber to iron, Brunel and East London's ship builders created vessels that were bigger, faster and tougher than ever before. But this launch was a disaster. Brunel went from hero to laughing stock overnight as his leviathan stuck on the slipway. Brunel died not long after. Today archaeologists are scouring the banks of the Thames to discover why launching such a big vessel proved a complete disaster. Examining the slipways, they hope to discover what went wrong and how it affected shipbuilding in London for ever. Tony Robinson joins them in their quest to solve the puzzle. But he and the team also explore some of the extraordinary successes of this long-gone industry and a time when the East End led the world.
Tony and the Team help investigate the Saxon roots of Bamburgh Castle, high on rocky cliffs in Northumberland above the vast North Sea beach and with the magical island of Lindisfarne visible in the distance. It's been a seat of power for thousands of years and has long held the attention of archaeologists. The Team are at Bamburgh to help the Bamburgh Research Project, which for a decade and a half has been digging through 1000 years of history to uncover the Saxon roots of this fortress. Bamburgh was once home to the 'Bernician Kings', Anglo Saxon overlords who ruled great swathes of Britain. Could there be a unique stone-built hall under the carefully manicured lawns of today's castle? As the Team hear stories of brutal death and financial wealth, and examine finds of gold jewellery and stone thrones, Phil and the diggers edge closer to a tantalising discovery.
For thousands of years, nomadic tribes roamed freely across Britain. But by 5000 BC they were starting to settle down, and a landmark of the south west - the Dorset Ridgeway - became a magnet for thousands. For many experts, the Ridgeway is as important as Stonehenge in understanding the lives of our prehistoric ancestors. The ridge of high land running parallel with the coast between Weymouth and Dorchester has been an important place for people since the Neolithic period, from 4000 to 2000 BC. There are no fewer than 1000 ancient monuments that record the history of the Ridgeway since that time, including baffling great henges that showcased unexplained rituals, at least one of which involves a giant stone penis; a town built on top of a massive Iron Age hill fort; and a deadly and terrifying Roman war machine. Time Team investigate, and reveal how the latest scientific advances are shedding new light on the way our Stone Age ancestors lived. The extraordinary range of monuments on the ridgeway make it one of the richest archaeological sites in Britain, and Time Team's journey along its length is a journey through thousands of years of human occupation.
Tony Robinson reveals astonishing new evidence that shows how, 8000 years ago, a huge tsunami swamped the east coast of Britain.
Lincoln has been dominated by its castle for over 1000 years. Its high stone walls and gatehouses were built to impress the locals with Norman power, and it has housed medieval dungeons and Victorian and Georgian jails. Extraordinarily, today the castle is still a centre for justice and punishment, containing an active court. As part of a £19million refurbishment programme, a preparatory archaeological dig at the castle is revealing new secrets about the horrors of its early jails. Sir Tony Robinson and the Time Team cameras have had exclusive access to the dig. With help from Phil Harding and Alex Langlands, Tony traces the story of punishment over the course of a millennium. He discovers that, behind the walls of Lincoln Castle, the Victorians launched an experiment in prison justice that pushed human beings to their limits. Some went mad, many died, and the prison regime broke down in shocking circumstances. In this grim jail in the heart of the city, something went badly wrong. This Time Team Special explores the hidden corners of this spectacular site and the extensive historical records to find out why.
Today's submarines are vast, billion-pound, high-tech monsters with a nuclear payload that can level cities. But the story of Britain's first submarines began over a century ago, with inventors risking life and limb in a range of bizarre contraptions.
Tony Robinson gives the history books one in the eye by discovering where the Battle of Hastings was really fought. The battle is the most famous in English history but not a single bit of archaeological evidence for it has ever been found. Have historians put the battlefield in the wrong place? Time Team set themselves the task of uncovering the true location of England's most famous defeat.
Seven hundred years ago the world's first lunatic asylum opened for business in Bishopsgate, London. It soon became known as Bedlam Hospital. Even today, it's a name that conjures up images of madness and terror. And, as Tony Robinson discovers in this Time Team Special, Bedlam's reputation is quite justified.
High above Dartmoor stands a windswept and spectacular country home that looks as ancient as the landscape it's set in: Castle Drogo. But this remarkable building was only constructed 100 years ago, the last castle ever built in Britain. Today, this landmark building is under serious threat. In their biggest current project, costing £11m, the National Trust is restoring the castle, replacing almost the entire roof before the building rots to pieces. Time Team has exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the hugely ambitious restoration project.
n 2500BC, Britain entered the Bronze Age, one of the most mysterious periods of our ancient past. As Tony Robinson discovers, most mysterious of all were the strange rituals, death rites and beliefs from this distant time. The Time Team cameras followed a spectacular dig in the summer of 2013 on a long-forgotten burial ground clinging to the coast of north east England. It's called Low Hauxley, and back in the Bronze Age it was completely surrounded by water. The whole area may prove to have bodies in it - but one more winter storm and it could be washed away, so archaeologists are racing against time to excavate it before it's too late.
A Time Team Special: Tony Robinson uncovers the truth behind some of the most gruesome events of the 19th century, when criminals would break open graves to steal freshly buried bodies.
The Bronze Age was the time when the British landscape became civilised, with fields, farms and the first roads, but little evidence survives of what life was like three and a half thousand years ago. In 1992, archaeologists in Dover town centre unearthed the most intact Bronze Age boat ever found. Tony Robinson joins a team of experts as they strive to reconstruct the Dover Boat and so unlock the secrets of this mysterious time in our past.
Between 1915 and 1920, hundreds of thousands of troops were based at Clipstone Camp, Nottinghamshire. Lawrence has assembled a team, including people from Forestry England, Operation Nightingale, Nottinghamshire Council and, of course, Time Team, to investigate a training area that's been protected by trees for nearly 100 years.
Time Team join forces with Cotswold Archaeology and the military veterans of Operation Nightingale to investigate an extraordinary Anglo Saxon site in Gloucestershire. But what starts out as a straight forward excavation of a 1400 year old cemetery, takes an unexpected turn, dialling the clock back several centuries and leaving the team scratching their heads about what exactly they are unearthing.
