Digging for Britain (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - The Tudors - full transcript
We might be a small island,
but we've got a big history.
Everywhere you stand,
there are worlds
beneath your feet.
And so every year,
hundreds of archaeologists
across Britain
go looking for more clues.
Who lived here, when, and how?
You can even see
the architecture of the bone
inside the jaw there.
Archaeology is
a complex jigsaw puzzle
drawing together everything
from skeletons to swords,
temples to treasure.
She's got a very
cartoonlike face, hasn't she?
From Orkney to Devon,
were joining this year's quest
on sea, land, and air.
We'll share all of the questions
and find some of the answers
as we join the teams
in the field
digging for Britain.
For me, the Tudor Age
conjures up images
of magnificent kings and queens,
daring adventurers,
and an explosion of literature
under writers
like William Shakespeare.
But this period
was about much more
than just those personalities.
It was a time
of enormous political,
social, and economic change,
which heralded the beginning
of modern Britain.
And I'm hoping that archaeology
can offer us fresh insights
into the Tudor world
and even provide us with
glimpses of the everyday lives
of those who witnessed
that momentous era.
I'm searching for the vanished
world of Tudor Britain.
Just beautiful.
I get hands on with discoveries
at Shakespeare's house...
I want to find
Shakespeare's sock.
I so want to find
Shakespeare's socks.
...learn about the popcorn
of Tudor theater...
...and investigate
a mysterious wreck
from this age of exploration
and trade.
My journey begins
in the heart of London
with a love story and the birth
of British theater.
Romeo, Romeo,
wherefore art thou, Romeo?
Perhaps the most famous line
from the greatest love story
ever written.
And I'm sure, like me,
you can remember
the first time you read
or watched "Romeo and Juliet."
But the very first time those
words were spoken was here
at the newly discovered Tudor
theater in London's Shoreditch.
By a remarkable coincidence,
as this site was being cleared
to make way for a new theater,
the remains of a much older
theater were discovered.
It wasn't just any old theater,
but London's
original Tudor playhouse
where Shakespeare
first became an actor
and began his career.
Morning, Jo.
Oh, good morning.
Jo Lyon of the Museum of London
Archaeology Service
is supervising the dig.
Her team have just six weeks
left to excavate the site
and learn all they can
before it's covered over.
So this is the very first place
where Shakespeare worked
as a playwright?
Yeah, absolutely,
and there's so much here.
There's literally meters
of Tudor archaeology.
Really?
Actually, it is
the most important site
I have ever done in my life.
The dig is a real jumble
of medieval, Tudor,
and later archaeology.
A few bits of glass
and pot coming out.
And they think
they've discovered
the remains of a pub,
which may have been part
of the theater complex.
Supporting the chimney...
But what's really exciting
the archaeologists
lies in the far corner...
The remains of one small
but significant section
of the theater's floor.
Now were standing exactly
as an audience member
would have stood
back in the day.
We're standing
at the back of the yard.
You can buy a cheap ticket
and go and stand in the yard
and watch the play,
or you can sit in the galleries.
And you'll see that the floor
slopes slightly
in that direction,
and that's on purpose so that
you can have a better view.
So the people at the back
can still see
over the heads
of the people in front?
And what about this wall here?
Is this the foundations
of a wall?
So this is the edge
of the galleries.
The galleries would be
coming up behind us
off of this foundation wall,
and we'd be stood at the back.
And that means the stage would
have been sort of over there,
perhaps 10 meters
away from here.
Isn't that amazing?
400 years ago, there were people
standing exactly where we are
watching Shakespeare.
Looking at a young
William Shakespeare
performing "Romeo and Juliet."
You know, for me,
that's amazing.
It does send a bit of a shiver
down the spine, doesn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
They're discovering fragments
of pottery all the time,
but amongst them are some
really interesting objects,
including this
almost-intact wine goblet,
which dates to exactly
the time of the theater.
That's really lovely
and such a gorgeous color.
It could perhaps have been
a stage prop
or belonged to a theatergoer.
Just a couple of days ago,
we had this amazing find,
which is an absolutely
complete jug.
There's not a flaw in it.
There is no chip out of it,
nothing.
So, they're called bellarmine
or Bartmann jugs,
and they all have this
bearded male face on them.
It's really distinctive.
Isn't that amazing?
I mean, it's just fantastic
to have a piece of that intact.
So what would this
have been used for?
What would have been in it,
do you suspect?
- Beer.
- Beer.
So possibly someone
buying their beer,
making their way to the theater?
Yeah, why not? It could work.
Well, the digging
that's going on all around me
will finish
in just a few weeks' time,
and then the site will be
handed over to the developers,
and very fittingly, a new
theater will be built here.
We're just so privileged
to get this glimpse
into Shakespeare's world,
because, despite the fact
the Tudors were so influential
in shaping modern Britain,
they're not an easy bunch
to track down.
In later centuries,
many of the old Tudor buildings
fell out of fashion
and were either completely
renovated or pulled down,
erasing much of our Tudor past.
And since Victorian times,
the fashion for deep cellars
has obliterated many traces
from earlier periods
beneath the ground, as well.
So, today there are
only fragments
of Tudor Britain left behind,
even in this, the capital
of their kingdom, London.
The river Thames
was of vital importance
to the Tudor kings and queens.
London was firmly placed at the
center of their political power,
and they ruled their kingdom
from a series of palaces
dotted along the river.
Westminster, however, was not
the real seat of Tudor power.
That was several miles
downriver at Greenwich.
This palace was located
on the riverfront
at the site of what is now
Christopher Wren's iconic
Old Royal Naval College.
If I asked you to name
a Tudor palace,
chances are you'd say
Hampton Court.
But the palace
that once stood here
was much more important
and much more interesting.
But it's been largely erased
from public consciousness.
We've only just begun
to understand
the grand scale
of the palace here,
thanks to a series of digs
over the last 30 years.
Julian Bowsher
has been closely involved
with revealing
this forgotten Tudor world.
The Tudor palace
built by Henry VII
was one of the greatest
of the new palaces of the time
because of Henry VIII himself,
who was, in fact, born here.
He was born probably
over in this corner here.
Right.
He married his first wife,
Catherine of Aragon,
in the church of the friary
just over here.
He married Anne of Cleves
right over at the other end
at the private chapel.
His daughter Elizabeth
was born over here.
It's very connected
with Henry VII,
Henry VIII, Elizabeth.
They're all here.
You can almost feel them
around you.
Archaeological finds
made at the palace
can tell us more about the lives
of the Tudor kings and queens
who lived here.
We've got a Tudor tile here
that came from the Chapel Royal
that we excavated in 2005,
and it's the private chapel
of the palace.
It's on this floor, if you like,
that Henry married
Anne of Cleves.
The Tudors used
a potent new symbol
to stamp their authority
on Britain, the Tudor rose.
That looks very Tudor to me,
this rose.
What is it?
It's lead-cast
decoration Tudor rose
with even traces of gilt
around the side,
and there would actually have
been these all over the ceiling.
So these would have been
colorful?
Yes, yes, indeed, yes.
It's a real stamp
of Tudor identity, isn't it?
Absolutely, saying,
"This is our palace,
Greenwich Palace,
the center of England.
We're here to stay.
This is Tudor. This is us."
There's nothing of those
buildings remaining up here now,
but down amongst
the shifting mud
and gravel
of the Thames foreshore,
there are tantalizing traces
of Greenwich's Tudor past.
On the foreshore, in front of
where the palace once stood,
a team from the
Thames Discovery Programme
think they may have found
a structure
that linked
the palace to the river.
Leading the team
is Nathalie Cohen.
- Nathalie, hi.
- Hello.
- How are you doing?
- Good, thank you.
So what have you got here
down on the shore?
We've picked up
a whole series of timbers
running along the front
of this wall here.
We think it's part
of a jetty structure
that may have related
to the Royal Palace,
sort of immediately
behind us here.
So what would this
have been in the jetty?
It appears to have been
part of the baseplate,
I would think,
pegged to the foreshore
or pegged to another piece
of baseplate
through those peg holes there.
You can just imagine
the royal barge landing here
and Henry VIII or Elizabeth
disembarking with a fanfare,
surrounded by courtiers.
This now mundane
stretch of the river
was once the most exclusive
in London.
It's not just structures
like piers and jetties
that can be found here
on the Thames foreshore.
There's archaeology
literally everywhere you look.
There's pottery, bones,
shell, fragments of clay pipe.
It's probably one
of the richest veins
of archaeology
anywhere in Britain.
There are other people
looking for clues
here on the foreshore...
The mudlarks.
They have a special license
that allows them to dig
for the historical objects
that litter the Thames beaches.
Over the years, they've made
some remarkable discoveries.
You might think they'd be using
metal detectors,
but, in fact, they work by hand,
because the sheer quantity
of metal here
makes detectors useless.
We've got
an Elizabethan fastener there,
and you can imagine
on your jacket,
this would actually fasten
like that.
Oh, like hooks and eyes?
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a fastener.
- So that's Elizabethan.
- It's Elizabethan.
And then on top of that, these
are in abundance down here.
These are Tudor pins.
A woman of distinction would
have had a thousand pins on her.
I think Elizabeth I
had 2,000 pins on her.
Doing what?
Well, for hair, for clothing.
An Elizabethan ruff
had 150 pins-plus on it.
And these are Tudor lace ties,
so exactly the same
as you get on your shoelaces.
Oh, yeah.
Like on jackets,
on shirts and stuff,
where you'd have crisscrosses
of, like, leather thongs
and stuff,
these would be on the end
so they could be treaded.
Well, the tide has come in now
and covered up all
of that archaeology
on the Thames foreshore.
It's disappeared very much
like Greenwich Palace itself
has disappeared
from public consciousness.
But we know now
not just from history,
but archaeology, too,
that this was the spiritual home
of the Tudors.
The raising of the Mary Rose
in 1982
was one of those rare events
that's etched into
the national consciousness.
But the recovery of the hull,
along with thousands of
artifacts and hundreds of bones,
was just the beginning
of a 30-year project
that's still going on today.
Well, if you'd like
to come in here, Alice,
this is going into our holiest
of holies, our holy grail.
Christopher Dobbs
has been closely involved
in planning
the new Mary Rose Museum,
which for the first time
will display the objects
and the hull together.
Baskets and barrels and chests
and fantastic bowls and plates,
but this one, this
absolutely superb bowl here,
I think that this is probably
a mess bowl.
And to actually
serve individually
into plates or bowls
to 500 down in the ovens
would have been
just too difficult.
So they almost certainly
transferred the food
from one whole mess
into a bowl like this.
And that then led us
to possibly identify this.
I mean, it might look like
a very minor object,
but it could well be a mess tag,
so you'd almost have
like a luggage label,
because they may have cooked
actually in cloth bags
in the cauldron,
because that would mean
you could keep all the food
for 8 or 10 people together.
And you could tie like
a luggage label onto this,
and that's what they were used
in later wrecks.
It does look as though
something's been tied onto that.
Yes, it was definitely a tag
of some sort.
Yeah.
It's almost overwhelming
being surrounded by
the worldly goods of 500 men,
all interred
in one catastrophic moment.
There's everything from dice
to musical instruments.
Look at that one.
That's absolutely perfect.
And even the combs they used
to get rid of their lice.
I mean, look at that.
I can't believe that's
a Tudor dagger handle,
knife handle.
It's just beautiful.
Even mundane objects
like grindstones
used to make flour on board
have a haunting quality to them.
Many people think that
the Mary Rose is something...
The project is something
that finished 20 years ago
or something, but it doesn't.
Daily we're finding out
new things and new stories
and being able to tell things
in new ways.
There's just a phenomenal
number of objects
recovered from the Mary Rose.
Look at these
beautiful longbows.
There are hundreds of them.
And, of course, we don't
just have the personal objects
that these people
carried around with them.
We do actually
have the skeletons
of the people themselves.
During the excavations,
the remains of 179 individuals
were carefully recovered.
As an anatomist,
these bones provide me
with a unique insight
into the lives of these men.
I can see
some interesting things.
I'm meeting Dr. Alex Hildred,
who's a curator
at the Mary Rose Trust,
to uncover the stories
of these men.
There were particular
places which must relate
to blocking access routes
to getting off the ship,
where you've got
20 or 30 individuals
and far more bones
than you can actually put
into those individuals.
People fighting
to get off the sinking ship.
Especially as there was netting
across the only really open bits
of the ship,
had anti-boarding netting.
I think it would have
been horrendous
trying to get off the ship.
The gun ports were so tightly
fitted to their guns
that you wouldn't have been able
to get through those easily.
Did anybody manage to get off?
About 35 survivors, but then
people didn't swim naturally.
It was quite rare
to be a swimmer.
So 35 survivors.
35 out of how many?
415 listed.
The men on board
were there to fight.
And many of them would have
wielded longbows,
which were amongst
the most feared weapons
in the medieval world.
One skeleton in particular
provides a direct link
to these devastating bows.
This chap was found
pretty much by himself
in the hold of the ship
in the bow,
but just literally above him
was a wrist guard
with the arms of England on it.
So it's interesting to suggest
with one of tallest individuals,
who's very robust, that he
may well have been an archer,
and that's what's been
suggested in the past.
He's incredibly well-built.
Now, some of that's
going to be genetic,
but some of it might be
what he's actually doing
with his body, as well.
But this skeleton has got this
rather interesting condition
at the shoulder where the tip of
his shoulder has failed to fuse.
I mean, what we're looking at
is the end of the scapula,
which starts off as a separate
little bone like this
but should fuse
during development,
but here in an adult skeleton,
it has stayed separate.
And there's been a suggestion
that this is to do
with heavy use of the shoulder.
Well, archers... Well, anybody,
any male in England at the time
would have to shoot a bow
at least once a week
from the age of about 7.
So if somebody was good,
needless to say, they probably
would have been encouraged
to do it more than once a week.
Knowing that archery
was widespread,
I suspected other skeletons
might reveal
a different telltale sign
of the damage archery
might cause.
So this here is evidence
for what we call
rotator cuff disease,
so this frilly bone here
with the little holes in it,
the pitting in it,
which looks like osteoarthritis.
Now, it's not osteoarthritis
because it's not happening
on the joint surface,
but it's happening
where the muscles insert
that stabilize the shoulder.
And this is associated
with stress
and strain on those tendons.
We get rotator cuff disease
happening in young people
when they are cricketers
or baseball pitchers.
- Or archers, maybe.
- Maybe, maybe.
It is such a privilege to look
at the bones from the Mary Rose.
It's something that I've wanted
to be able to do
for a long time.
And I think coming here
and looking at the collection,
as well,
I'm completely
bowled over by it.
There are so many objects
and so well-preserved
from the wreck.
And they really do make sense
when you look at them
all together.
When you've got the ship
and all these objects within it
and the people themselves,
we've got this very complete
picture of the lives
of these mariners
in the Tudor period.
I'm in West Wales,
on my way to the site
of Strata Florida Abbey,
which in its heyday
in the medieval period
was among the most important
religious places
in the whole of Britain.
Strata Florida stood
in the shadow
of the wild and remote
Cambrian Mountains,
far from the bustling towns
and cities of Tudor Britain.
It was founded
by Cistercian monks
striving for a life
of hard work and solitude.
Not much of their great abbey
remains today.
All that can be seen
are the desolate ruins
of the abbey's once-grand
church and its famous archway.
But in a field nearby, a team
from the University of Wales
Trinity Saint David
have spent the last few summers
slowly uncovering the remains
of this Cistercian monastery.
What they've found lying hidden
in the landscape
is truly remarkable.
Leading the team
are Professor David Austin
and Dr. Jemma Bezant.
They've undertaken
a geophysical survey,
which has revealed evidence
of the buried abbey site.
So is that where we are
just there?
This is where we are here,
in this corner.
You've got the church...
The abbey church is over there.
But also, I mean, there's
an enormous building complex
just behind you
and another really large complex
over by the river there.
And huge
industrial activity down here.
See these
enormous signals there?
So what do you think this is?
Well, we think
it's iron workings,
'cause we've excavated
an iron forge over here,
so it's the whole
of this southern area.
At some point
is processing metal,
coming out of their mines,
and their mines are just up
on the hillslope over here.
It's amazing to think that
this agricultural landscape
- was so busy...
- Yeah.
...full of industry,
full of people.
Exactly, this would have been
a really busy place.
This summer, the team are hoping
to reveal the full scale
of the abbey
and also to find evidence
of the great events
it bore witness to.
I hadn't realized how
important Strata Florida was,
but the whole of this valley
would have been home
to a massive monastic community,
and we're just starting
to get a real feeling
for the extent of that
from the excavations here.
The excavations have uncovered
the foundations
of a huge stone building,
which the team believe
is the great gatehouse
guarding the entrance
to the abbey.
Gradually the dig has begun
to reveal its original layout.
You can just make out the plan
of the building
from the remaining walls.
The gatehouse
would have dominated
this flat valley floor.
And the road the gatehouse
guarded would have stretched
to the abbey church
in the distance.
You really get a sense
of how visiting dignitaries
would have felt,
confronted by this
imposing structure.
The gatehouse dig has yielded
some evocative finds
which hint at the piety
of the monks
who once called this place home.
We've got a nice find
from inside the gatehouse.
This piece of Bath stone
that probably would have
lined the archway,
and you can see here,
if you look very carefully,
- an incised cross.
- Yeah, yeah.
And it's almost like
a good-luck talisman.
We think people
would have just touched that
as they passed
through the gateway
on their way
into the abbey church.
Other finds remind us of the
great wealth the monks enjoyed,
which they lavished
on their grand buildings.
Are these floor tiles here?
These are floor tiles here, yes.
You can see this nice
one shaped like a griffin
or a dragon, if you like.
You can see the wings
and the head.
And we know it was
an impressive building.
It was a large building,
so maybe it had
this large impressive floor.
You tend to think of Cistercian
monks seeing out solitude,
finding some remote corner
of the Welsh countryside.
Now, it certainly is that today,
but it wouldn't have been like
that in the medieval period.
And those monks were incredibly
wealthy landowners,
controlling all the agricultural
land around here,
as well as the lead mines.
And the wealth they accumulated
would be their downfall.
After divorcing his first wife,
Catherine of Aragon,
Henry had set himself
on a collision course
with the Catholic Church.
The Pope excommunicated
the king,
and Henry responded
by declaring himself the head
of his own church.
The break with Rome was final.
After Henry's schism with Rome
in 1534,
the time had come
to finally crush the abbeys,
which Henry's ministers
had described
as bastions of corruption
and papal power.
And rather conveniently,
the king could seize the
monasteries' wealth for himself.
Here at Strata Florida
and across the country,
the crown seized
the monks' wealth and land.
The king then sold off
the monasteries' assets quickly
to free up much needed revenue.
The greatest beneficiaries
of this process
were the middling gentry,
who now had the lands
to create new estates.
Evidence for this lies
just beside the abbey ruins.
So what have we got here?
Well, this if part of the
arrangement of the gentry house,
which lies behind us here.
It's now a farmhouse.
But it was a gentry house,
probably originally built
around 1600.
When you say a gentry house,
who were these gentry?
Who would have been living
in that house?
It would have been
a member of the Steadman family.
They come with
the Earls of Essex
here in the early part
of the 16th century,
and the Earls of Essex
acquire the lands of the abbey
cheap off the crown,
and then the aristocrats
sell on to the local gentries,
and so this money filters
down through the system.
And indeed a lot of the houses
in the surrounding area
used the abbey as a quarry
and took stone from here.
So it's not surprising
that, in fact,
the abbey is in such a ruin
and there's not much
of it surviving.
It is surviving,
but it's not there, it's here.
It's a quarry. It's an asset.
We're in the early stages
of capitalism.
You don't leave assets
lying around the landscape
doing nothing.
You strip them.
Due to the actions of Henry VIII
the landscape and belief system
of Britain had changed forever.
Strata Florida represents
this change in microcosm.
A new Protestant church
was built right next to the
ruins of the Catholic abbey.
It's a sweet little church.
It's a bit of a contrast
to what the abbey church
would have been like.
Yeah, abbey church,
massive, hugely ornate,
full of sculpture,
full of vivid paint.
And you come in here,
and this plainness
and the simplicity
is a wonderful counterfoil
to all that glory
and magnificence
that lay in that church
on the other side of the wall.
It's very much a secular power,
and that's one of the great
marks of Protestantism.
There is an organized church,
but it's a state church,
and the head of that church now
is a secular authority,
is a secular king.
That's what Henry VIII delivers.
We can only guess
at what the monks
who once lived and worked here
must have made
of the dissolution.
Their lives were torn apart and
their world turned upside down.
The ruined monasteries
that lie scattered across
the British landscape
provide a lasting reminder
of the dissolution.
It marked the beginning of a new
chapter in British history.
Not only did ordinary people
find themselves living
in a Protestant country,
they also witnessed
an unprecedented redistribution
of wealth and land
that would have
far-reaching consequences
for our island nation.
It was during the Tudor Age
that we began to look beyond
our own shores to the New World.
After Columbus
discovered America in 1492,
waves of daring
merchant adventurers
set out on voyages of discovery
to find new lands
and boundless wealth.
And those voyages are
all the more remarkable
when you consider that those men
were traveling to the very edges
of the known world.
The remains of one
of these merchant ships
is now being preserved at
a saltwater lake in Portsmouth.
Today, a team of divers
is going to inspect it
for signs of decay.
Well, this is what we've
got to do today, guys.
Gustav Milne has played a key
role in researching this ship.
Time waits for no man.
What are you waiting for?
The ship was originally
discovered in a channel
in the Thames Estuary
during dredging
and then moved here
for safekeeping.
If the ship was simply brought
to the surface,
it would soon begin to rot away.
By studying
the remaining timbers,
it's been estimated it was
a sizable merchant vessel
of up to 300 tons
and 80 feet in length.
Perhaps surprisingly
for a merchant vessel,
they discovered four cannon
at the wreck site.
You can just make out one
of the surviving gun ports.
These ships carried merchant
adventurers across the globe
and needed protection
in uncharted waters.
Despite all we know
about this wreck,
its precise identity
remains a mystery.
However, a vital clue was found
on one of the recovered cannons.
A team from the Royal Armouries,
led by Phil McGrath,
discovered an intriguing link
with the most powerful
financier of the Tudor Age,
Sir Thomas Gresham.
The first thing that struck us
was, on the surface,
quite clearly we have
the "T" and the "G"
for "Thomas Gresham,"
and then above that,
we have the family crest
in the form of a grasshopper.
Gresham's legacy
can still be seen
in London's financial heart.
The dissolution
of the monasteries
released a huge amount
of capital
into the British economy,
and that money eventually
filtered down
to entrepreneurs
like Sir Thomas Gresham.
It was men like Gresham
who would help create
the City of London
that we know today.
He founded the Royal Exchange,
which was the forerunner
of today's Stock Exchange.
Sir Thomas Gresham
worked directly
for the Tudor kings and queens
and even helped save Britain
from bankruptcy
by manipulating the foreign
exchange markets.
So the Gresham ship provides us
with a tangible link
back to the beginnings
of modern capitalism.
In the labs
of University College London,
they're working to discover
more about the ship's role
and her crew.
Many of the artifacts
recovered are metallic,
and during a reaction
with salt water,
some of these objects
have become encased
by what archaeologists
call concretions.
By removing these concretions,
the team hope to reveal the
secrets of the Gresham ship.
Processing this work
is dirty, messy, heavy work.
We're using large tools,
not delicate scalpels,
and we're creating
a lot of mess.
A huge variety of objects
have emerged from within
the concretions.
Now, this, I think,
is the most exciting find
that we discovered
from the concretions,
and what we have here,
we have an additional cannon,
which is represented
by this powder chamber.
That is fantastic.
That really is a find and
a half, worth all that bashing.
We thought we had four cannons.
We have an additional
powder chamber now,
which suggest that there was
another cannon on board.
Their research has shown
just how heavily armed
this ship was,
and it's also revealed the cargo
which needed such
formidable protection.
They've discovered
numerous metal ingots,
some of which are solid lead.
These would have been
very valuable
and vital for industry
and warfare.
This is the first time
I've seen these ingots,
and these are,
one, extremely heavy.
Just get a load of that.
- No I can't. Sorry.
- I can't lift that.
We've got three of a cargo
of potentially 2,000
of these ingots.
Imagine 2,000 of those
in a ship.
That is a robust vessel.
But some of
the most moving objects
are those that tell us
about the ship's crew.
The small metal finds associated
with the concretions
I think have been
particularly exciting.
We have a couple of spoons,
silver spoons, tableware,
possibly from
the captain's table.
They're fairly
high-status objects.
So what do you make of this?
Wow, is this a candleholder?
The other possibility
is a salt holder.
The intriguing finds
which the team at UCL
carefully smashed
out of those concretions
provide us with a snapshot
into bustling Tudor London.
You can just imagine
the Gresham ship
sailing up the Thames laden down
with iron, tin, and lead.
These ships brought prosperity
to the city,
and they fueled whole new
sectors of the economy,
like entertainment,
which sprang up in a big way
to help Londoners spend
their hard-earned cash.
This is Stratford-upon-Avon,
the birthplace of a man
who would directly benefit
from London's new prosperity,
our most celebrated playwright,
William Shakespeare.
His plays and poems
are the most well-known
and widely studied works
of literature ever produced,
and his legacy is immense.
Our everyday language
is peppered with words
and phrases from his writing.
But despite all that fame
and influence,
the man himself
remains an enigma.
Only a few fragments of evidence
survive from his lifetime.
This summer,
the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
are hoping that archaeology
can shed some new light
on this remarkable man.
They're digging at the site
of his last home, New Place.
We're nearly at the first stage.
Richard Kemp was involved
in organizing the dig
and has brought me
to the city's Guild Chapel.
This medieval church would
have stood right next door
to Shakespeare's house
and today provides us
with a fantastic
bird's-eye view of the dig.
Now, Shakespeare's house
basically occupied this space.
So what would the house
have been like?
Well, according to the historic
sources that we've got,
we've got a C-shaped house
around an open courtyard.
But there's not much evidence
of this C-shaped house
at the moment.
No, there isn't because
the whole thing
was knocked down in 1702
by the construction
of a Georgian mansion.
The area at the back of the site
is exciting the archaeologists
because it's here
that the house's rubbish
would have been buried.
There's a real mix
or archaeology here,
and the team have found
14th-century pottery
right next to
18th-century rubbish.
An intriguing feature
has emerged,
a large mysterious pit.
Kevin Colls,
the lead archaeologist on site,
and Richard have conflicting
theories as to what this is.
I think it's a pit
that's obviously
been used to burn something,
and we're digging it out now to
see if we can find the bottom,
where hopefully there's charcoal
and lots and lots of burning
that we can find evidence for.
Richard has
a more intriguing theory.
He thinks it's a filled-in well.
If it is a well, it goes deeper,
and the stuff's waterlogged.
When it's waterlogged, you get
even more evidence preserved,
all the organics like socks.
I want to find
Shakespeare's sock.
I so want to find
Shakespeare's socks and shoes
and stuff that gets thrown away
and normally rots down.
Yeah, I suppose we're familiar
with the idea
that things survive
in peat bogs,
but equally well, things might
survive in the bottom of a well.
Exactly, exactly.
Now, maybe this is just a pit,
but if it is a well,
it will take the team a while
to get down
to the waterlogged levels,
where there could be
surviving Tudor rubbish.
Have you ever done
any archaeology before?
- No.
- Are you enjoying it?
Oh, I love it, I love it.
It's absolutely wonderful.
Just being here,
you really get a sense
of the excitement and passion
of everyone on site,
all hoping to find
something Shakespearean.
We don't do pot washing
all the time.
We do trowling, as well.
But you can say
"finds processing."
That always sounds better than
washing pots with toothbrushes.
Yes, yes, yes,
it certainly does.
It pretty much gets
no better than this, really.
You normally dig sites
which are Roman or Iron Age,
and you can't really
put yourself into the shoes
of the people who lived
and worked on that site.
But the archaeology
of this particular site
is just all about one man,
and it's his life and times,
and you can really begin to feel
you're linking to the person
as we're excavating
down through material
which he would have
walked on or threw away.
Yeah.
Kevin and the team
have already made
some fascinating discoveries.
We've got this
stone roof tile here
with the hole where the nail
would have been
to hold it in place.
And that begins
to build a picture
of what the building
may have looked like,
so you've got fantastic
yellow stone tiles on the top.
We're also finding more sort of
domestic household objects.
- Is that a plug?
- It is a plug.
It is indeed, a copper plug.
Then we move on
to more Tudor pottery now,
so you've got this green-glaze
Tudor cooking pot
with burning on the bottom.
So this was...
This pot was put over heat.
This was used,
yes, exactly, exactly.
You can see it's...
Yeah, you can see the edge
coming up there
almost like a skillet.
Exactly, like a frying pan,
and that's perfectly in line
with the sort of
16th-century date
that we're looking for, really.
Could have been used
by Shakespeare.
You could be holding something
that's been touched
by William Shakespeare, yeah.
Shakespeare only
lived here at New Place
for around 20 years.
Archaeologically speaking,
finding traces of him
is going to be like looking
for a needle in a haystack.
But nevertheless, it's so
exciting to be able dig here,
where we know he lived
and where we imagine we might
be able to get a closer glimpse
of the Bard himself.
This site was first dug
by the Victorians
in a time before archaeology
was a rigorous
modern discipline.
Rather intriguingly, they built
a number of puzzling walls
and sealed brick boxes
to preserve what they found.
You can feel the buzz
of anticipation
as the team prepare
to open one of these boxes.
Here we are basically
excavating the cellar area.
There's all these
almost brick boxes,
so we're just about to open
the last one of them
and see what we can find.
It's really exciting!
So it's like the opening
of Tutankhamen's tomb.
Almost. Almost.
I know how Howard Carter felt.
That's the side, I should think.
It's thrilling to think
that after 150 years
its contents will be revealed.
Ah.
Snails have got in there.
Snails.
Well, not exactly like
Tutankhamen's tomb,
but there is
something else in here.
That's interesting.
So, Kevin, what do you
think we've got here?
What I think we've got
here is 1702 cellar walls
of the property that replaced
Shakespeare's house
on this site.
Whether any of these bricks
are reused from Shakespeare's
house, we'll have to look at.
So these could be Tudor bricks,
but they've been reused?
Yes, basically
the thinness of these bricks
seem to suggest
that these are quite old,
so these might be 16th-century
bricks, Tudor bricks.
It definitely feels like
we're getting closer,
but Shakespeare seems to be
just out of reach
here at the dig.
Shakespeare didn't leave much
evidence behind for historians.
So the few documents
that survive
have proved vital
in piecing together
what little we do actually know
about his life.
I've come to the Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust archives
to see a key piece of evidence
that tells us both about
New Place and the man himself.
Dr. Paul Edmondson
is a leading authority
on Shakespeare's life and works.
This is known as
the New Place fine,
and it established
Shakespeare's legal entitlement
to the property,
which Shakespeare paid £60 for.
And because the purchase deed
was usually half the cost
of the overall property,
we suspect that therefore
Shakespeare paid £120
- for New Place.
- That must have been
a decent amount of money
back then.
Quite a lot in those days.
Just remember that
a schoolmaster at that time
earned £20 a year.
It just kind of gives you
the scale of the investment.
And a kind of juicy fact
about this particular purchase
is that the person who
lived there before Shakespeare
was murdered by his son
Fulke Underhill,
- who was executed at Warwick.
- Really?
Yeah, and the surviving son,
Hercules Underhill...
- Fantastic name.
- Isn't that fantastic?
...is the one who's involved
in this purchase deed.
It's the biggest privately
owned residence in Stratford.
Yeah, and, Paul, even
though this isn't a document
that Shakespeare wrote himself,
we can imagine that he would
have held it in his hand.
Oh, absolutely.
He saved money on it, too,
because you'll notice
that there's a space here
for a grand capital letter
which has never been filled in,
'cause it would have been more
money, which is good to know.
"Paid my 60 quid. That's enough.
Thanks very much."
Well, the team
haven't found anything
that can change our
understanding of Shakespeare
just yet.
But I do feel I've got
a sense of this man,
his wealth, and his thriftiness.
And there's another place
where clues about his life
can be found.
Like many young men of his time,
Shakespeare left his home
in the provinces
and came here to London
to seek his fortune.
The streets weren't exactly
paved with gold,
but nevertheless, it was here
in the thriving city
that he made his name.
We've already seen
Shakespeare's earliest theater
being excavated.
But discoveries at the Rose
and the Globe playhouses
in the late 1980s,
have helped build
a picture of the world
in which he lived and worked.
This very ordinary-looking
building
contains an extraordinary
archaeological collection.
It's the Museum of London's
archives,
and it's the largest stores
of its kind in Europe,
housing over 750,000
individual objects,
including those found at the
Rose and the Globe playhouses.
I'm here to see Julian Bowsher,
who has led the research
into these playhouses.
Julian, we meet again.
- Alice, how are you?
- Hello.
Good to see you again.
Through this labyrinthine area.
Here, finds from across London
are brought to be washed,
dried, and cataloged.
The same system was used
for the thousands of finds
from the Rose and Globe digs.
...come in here,
where it'll get dried out.
After 20 years' work,
Julian and his team
have just published
their findings.
The artifacts recovered
offer us fascinating clues
about life
in Shakespeare's theaters.
Well, the interesting thing,
really, about the playhouse
is that it's the beginning
of modern theater.
These are purpose-built venues,
and you had to go through a door
and pay money.
And this is what you paid.
You paid a penny to get in
to the main door
so you could stand
in the center.
Or you could pay another penny
to get into the galleries
around the edge
and a third one
to sit at the top,
where you get the best view.
So they all went into one
of these ceramic money boxes,
of which we've just got the lid.
So this would have been
a completely sealed pot?
Oh, yes, like piggy banks,
so you've got a little slot
in the side there
where the coin's going to go,
and at the end of the day,
they would have gone back
to the sort of management area,
if you like, which is where
they were smashed.
That's why we have the pieces.
And the whole lot,
all the money,
emptied into a box,
and that's the box office.
And is that where we get the
term "box office" from, then?
Absolutely. Yes, yes. Yes.
So a lot of the other evidence
we're looking for
is what people are consuming
inside the building.
We know about people who'd have
the kind of usherette's tray
of pints of beer, even,
bottled beer.
And here we've got one
of the most common comestibles
that they've got, hazelnuts,
found underneath the galleries
'round the edge.
So these hazelnuts
are the popcorn
and peanuts of the Tudor era?
It's the Tudor popcorn.
And, of course,
the other new comestible
that we find in the theaters
is the evil weed.
Tobacco, that'd only been
brought to Britain
about 30 years before
in the 1550s or so.
And these very typical
Tudor pipes.
They're all very tiny
because I think it's probably
related to the price of tobacco.
- Right.
- You can't fit much in there.
So this is the new fad?
It is,
and certainly quite popular.
As well as objects associated
with the audience,
some of the finds might relate
to the actors themselves.
This is a brush.
A very tiny, delicate brush
made of bone,
a nice little bone handle,
with just a fragment
of its bristles left.
The exciting thing about this
is it's just the sort of brush
that actors would use
for makeup,
and don't forget
that Shakespeare
was an actor, as well.
So we're looking at Shakespeare
and his fellows
probably rushing off
to do the final bit of makeup
before walking onto the stage.
Which is really rather nice.
Isn't that lovely?
But these stores
also contain evidence
of Elizabethan London's
darker side.
Outside the city walls,
prostitution, gambling,
and brutal blood sports
were commonplace.
Next to the playhouses
on Bankside,
there were animal-baiting pits.
So right alongside
the playhouses?
Yeah, next to the playhouses.
And they had bears,
horses that were being baited
by very powerful mastiff dogs
like this.
This was found in one
of the bearbaiting rings
next door to The Rose.
So do you think it would have
been a different class of person
that was going to the
bearbaiting and the theater?
I'm afraid not.
They regarded it all as part
of an afternoon's entertainment.
One of the interesting pieces
we've found is a bone.
It's a femur, the upper thigh
bone of a European brown bear.
In fact, we've found
teeth marks here
which our four osteologists
have identified
as precisely the sort
of teeth made by a mastiff.
And playhouses
and the bearbaiting arenas
were outside the city.
The city was becoming
under increasingly puritanical
jurisdiction,
and these sorts of activities
were slightly frowned upon
by the city fathers.
So they're very much situated
outside the city,
particularly in areas
like Bankside.
The plays, the blood sports,
the brothels, the drinking dens,
the gambling dens.
- The seamier side of Tudor life.
- Absolutely, yes.
The archaeology of Tudor London
gives us a real insight
into the city during this period
and allows us
to peer more closely
at all levels of society,
from kings and queens
down to the ordinary people.
It's like Shakespeare's plays
in that respect.
We get to peer inside
the royal palaces
and look at the rabble
who attended the bearbaiting
arenas and the playhouses.
The digs and dives I've visited
across Britain this year
have allowed me to reach out
and touch the men and women
who lived during
the Tudor Age...
...the wealthy monks,
who once thrived
in the now-desolate ruins
of Strata Florida
and suffered the full fury
of Henry VIII...
...the newly rich merchants
and financiers
who sent ships and crews
to trade at the edges
of the known world...
...and the men who fought
and died for their king,
as the Mary Rose went
to the bottom of the sea...
...and, most thrillingly of all,
Shakespeare himself.
It does send a bit of a shiver
down the spine, doesn't it?
But as always,
archaeology has unearthed
just as many questions
as answers,
and so the digging
for Tudor Britain continues.
but we've got a big history.
Everywhere you stand,
there are worlds
beneath your feet.
And so every year,
hundreds of archaeologists
across Britain
go looking for more clues.
Who lived here, when, and how?
You can even see
the architecture of the bone
inside the jaw there.
Archaeology is
a complex jigsaw puzzle
drawing together everything
from skeletons to swords,
temples to treasure.
She's got a very
cartoonlike face, hasn't she?
From Orkney to Devon,
were joining this year's quest
on sea, land, and air.
We'll share all of the questions
and find some of the answers
as we join the teams
in the field
digging for Britain.
For me, the Tudor Age
conjures up images
of magnificent kings and queens,
daring adventurers,
and an explosion of literature
under writers
like William Shakespeare.
But this period
was about much more
than just those personalities.
It was a time
of enormous political,
social, and economic change,
which heralded the beginning
of modern Britain.
And I'm hoping that archaeology
can offer us fresh insights
into the Tudor world
and even provide us with
glimpses of the everyday lives
of those who witnessed
that momentous era.
I'm searching for the vanished
world of Tudor Britain.
Just beautiful.
I get hands on with discoveries
at Shakespeare's house...
I want to find
Shakespeare's sock.
I so want to find
Shakespeare's socks.
...learn about the popcorn
of Tudor theater...
...and investigate
a mysterious wreck
from this age of exploration
and trade.
My journey begins
in the heart of London
with a love story and the birth
of British theater.
Romeo, Romeo,
wherefore art thou, Romeo?
Perhaps the most famous line
from the greatest love story
ever written.
And I'm sure, like me,
you can remember
the first time you read
or watched "Romeo and Juliet."
But the very first time those
words were spoken was here
at the newly discovered Tudor
theater in London's Shoreditch.
By a remarkable coincidence,
as this site was being cleared
to make way for a new theater,
the remains of a much older
theater were discovered.
It wasn't just any old theater,
but London's
original Tudor playhouse
where Shakespeare
first became an actor
and began his career.
Morning, Jo.
Oh, good morning.
Jo Lyon of the Museum of London
Archaeology Service
is supervising the dig.
Her team have just six weeks
left to excavate the site
and learn all they can
before it's covered over.
So this is the very first place
where Shakespeare worked
as a playwright?
Yeah, absolutely,
and there's so much here.
There's literally meters
of Tudor archaeology.
Really?
Actually, it is
the most important site
I have ever done in my life.
The dig is a real jumble
of medieval, Tudor,
and later archaeology.
A few bits of glass
and pot coming out.
And they think
they've discovered
the remains of a pub,
which may have been part
of the theater complex.
Supporting the chimney...
But what's really exciting
the archaeologists
lies in the far corner...
The remains of one small
but significant section
of the theater's floor.
Now were standing exactly
as an audience member
would have stood
back in the day.
We're standing
at the back of the yard.
You can buy a cheap ticket
and go and stand in the yard
and watch the play,
or you can sit in the galleries.
And you'll see that the floor
slopes slightly
in that direction,
and that's on purpose so that
you can have a better view.
So the people at the back
can still see
over the heads
of the people in front?
And what about this wall here?
Is this the foundations
of a wall?
So this is the edge
of the galleries.
The galleries would be
coming up behind us
off of this foundation wall,
and we'd be stood at the back.
And that means the stage would
have been sort of over there,
perhaps 10 meters
away from here.
Isn't that amazing?
400 years ago, there were people
standing exactly where we are
watching Shakespeare.
Looking at a young
William Shakespeare
performing "Romeo and Juliet."
You know, for me,
that's amazing.
It does send a bit of a shiver
down the spine, doesn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
They're discovering fragments
of pottery all the time,
but amongst them are some
really interesting objects,
including this
almost-intact wine goblet,
which dates to exactly
the time of the theater.
That's really lovely
and such a gorgeous color.
It could perhaps have been
a stage prop
or belonged to a theatergoer.
Just a couple of days ago,
we had this amazing find,
which is an absolutely
complete jug.
There's not a flaw in it.
There is no chip out of it,
nothing.
So, they're called bellarmine
or Bartmann jugs,
and they all have this
bearded male face on them.
It's really distinctive.
Isn't that amazing?
I mean, it's just fantastic
to have a piece of that intact.
So what would this
have been used for?
What would have been in it,
do you suspect?
- Beer.
- Beer.
So possibly someone
buying their beer,
making their way to the theater?
Yeah, why not? It could work.
Well, the digging
that's going on all around me
will finish
in just a few weeks' time,
and then the site will be
handed over to the developers,
and very fittingly, a new
theater will be built here.
We're just so privileged
to get this glimpse
into Shakespeare's world,
because, despite the fact
the Tudors were so influential
in shaping modern Britain,
they're not an easy bunch
to track down.
In later centuries,
many of the old Tudor buildings
fell out of fashion
and were either completely
renovated or pulled down,
erasing much of our Tudor past.
And since Victorian times,
the fashion for deep cellars
has obliterated many traces
from earlier periods
beneath the ground, as well.
So, today there are
only fragments
of Tudor Britain left behind,
even in this, the capital
of their kingdom, London.
The river Thames
was of vital importance
to the Tudor kings and queens.
London was firmly placed at the
center of their political power,
and they ruled their kingdom
from a series of palaces
dotted along the river.
Westminster, however, was not
the real seat of Tudor power.
That was several miles
downriver at Greenwich.
This palace was located
on the riverfront
at the site of what is now
Christopher Wren's iconic
Old Royal Naval College.
If I asked you to name
a Tudor palace,
chances are you'd say
Hampton Court.
But the palace
that once stood here
was much more important
and much more interesting.
But it's been largely erased
from public consciousness.
We've only just begun
to understand
the grand scale
of the palace here,
thanks to a series of digs
over the last 30 years.
Julian Bowsher
has been closely involved
with revealing
this forgotten Tudor world.
The Tudor palace
built by Henry VII
was one of the greatest
of the new palaces of the time
because of Henry VIII himself,
who was, in fact, born here.
He was born probably
over in this corner here.
Right.
He married his first wife,
Catherine of Aragon,
in the church of the friary
just over here.
He married Anne of Cleves
right over at the other end
at the private chapel.
His daughter Elizabeth
was born over here.
It's very connected
with Henry VII,
Henry VIII, Elizabeth.
They're all here.
You can almost feel them
around you.
Archaeological finds
made at the palace
can tell us more about the lives
of the Tudor kings and queens
who lived here.
We've got a Tudor tile here
that came from the Chapel Royal
that we excavated in 2005,
and it's the private chapel
of the palace.
It's on this floor, if you like,
that Henry married
Anne of Cleves.
The Tudors used
a potent new symbol
to stamp their authority
on Britain, the Tudor rose.
That looks very Tudor to me,
this rose.
What is it?
It's lead-cast
decoration Tudor rose
with even traces of gilt
around the side,
and there would actually have
been these all over the ceiling.
So these would have been
colorful?
Yes, yes, indeed, yes.
It's a real stamp
of Tudor identity, isn't it?
Absolutely, saying,
"This is our palace,
Greenwich Palace,
the center of England.
We're here to stay.
This is Tudor. This is us."
There's nothing of those
buildings remaining up here now,
but down amongst
the shifting mud
and gravel
of the Thames foreshore,
there are tantalizing traces
of Greenwich's Tudor past.
On the foreshore, in front of
where the palace once stood,
a team from the
Thames Discovery Programme
think they may have found
a structure
that linked
the palace to the river.
Leading the team
is Nathalie Cohen.
- Nathalie, hi.
- Hello.
- How are you doing?
- Good, thank you.
So what have you got here
down on the shore?
We've picked up
a whole series of timbers
running along the front
of this wall here.
We think it's part
of a jetty structure
that may have related
to the Royal Palace,
sort of immediately
behind us here.
So what would this
have been in the jetty?
It appears to have been
part of the baseplate,
I would think,
pegged to the foreshore
or pegged to another piece
of baseplate
through those peg holes there.
You can just imagine
the royal barge landing here
and Henry VIII or Elizabeth
disembarking with a fanfare,
surrounded by courtiers.
This now mundane
stretch of the river
was once the most exclusive
in London.
It's not just structures
like piers and jetties
that can be found here
on the Thames foreshore.
There's archaeology
literally everywhere you look.
There's pottery, bones,
shell, fragments of clay pipe.
It's probably one
of the richest veins
of archaeology
anywhere in Britain.
There are other people
looking for clues
here on the foreshore...
The mudlarks.
They have a special license
that allows them to dig
for the historical objects
that litter the Thames beaches.
Over the years, they've made
some remarkable discoveries.
You might think they'd be using
metal detectors,
but, in fact, they work by hand,
because the sheer quantity
of metal here
makes detectors useless.
We've got
an Elizabethan fastener there,
and you can imagine
on your jacket,
this would actually fasten
like that.
Oh, like hooks and eyes?
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a fastener.
- So that's Elizabethan.
- It's Elizabethan.
And then on top of that, these
are in abundance down here.
These are Tudor pins.
A woman of distinction would
have had a thousand pins on her.
I think Elizabeth I
had 2,000 pins on her.
Doing what?
Well, for hair, for clothing.
An Elizabethan ruff
had 150 pins-plus on it.
And these are Tudor lace ties,
so exactly the same
as you get on your shoelaces.
Oh, yeah.
Like on jackets,
on shirts and stuff,
where you'd have crisscrosses
of, like, leather thongs
and stuff,
these would be on the end
so they could be treaded.
Well, the tide has come in now
and covered up all
of that archaeology
on the Thames foreshore.
It's disappeared very much
like Greenwich Palace itself
has disappeared
from public consciousness.
But we know now
not just from history,
but archaeology, too,
that this was the spiritual home
of the Tudors.
The raising of the Mary Rose
in 1982
was one of those rare events
that's etched into
the national consciousness.
But the recovery of the hull,
along with thousands of
artifacts and hundreds of bones,
was just the beginning
of a 30-year project
that's still going on today.
Well, if you'd like
to come in here, Alice,
this is going into our holiest
of holies, our holy grail.
Christopher Dobbs
has been closely involved
in planning
the new Mary Rose Museum,
which for the first time
will display the objects
and the hull together.
Baskets and barrels and chests
and fantastic bowls and plates,
but this one, this
absolutely superb bowl here,
I think that this is probably
a mess bowl.
And to actually
serve individually
into plates or bowls
to 500 down in the ovens
would have been
just too difficult.
So they almost certainly
transferred the food
from one whole mess
into a bowl like this.
And that then led us
to possibly identify this.
I mean, it might look like
a very minor object,
but it could well be a mess tag,
so you'd almost have
like a luggage label,
because they may have cooked
actually in cloth bags
in the cauldron,
because that would mean
you could keep all the food
for 8 or 10 people together.
And you could tie like
a luggage label onto this,
and that's what they were used
in later wrecks.
It does look as though
something's been tied onto that.
Yes, it was definitely a tag
of some sort.
Yeah.
It's almost overwhelming
being surrounded by
the worldly goods of 500 men,
all interred
in one catastrophic moment.
There's everything from dice
to musical instruments.
Look at that one.
That's absolutely perfect.
And even the combs they used
to get rid of their lice.
I mean, look at that.
I can't believe that's
a Tudor dagger handle,
knife handle.
It's just beautiful.
Even mundane objects
like grindstones
used to make flour on board
have a haunting quality to them.
Many people think that
the Mary Rose is something...
The project is something
that finished 20 years ago
or something, but it doesn't.
Daily we're finding out
new things and new stories
and being able to tell things
in new ways.
There's just a phenomenal
number of objects
recovered from the Mary Rose.
Look at these
beautiful longbows.
There are hundreds of them.
And, of course, we don't
just have the personal objects
that these people
carried around with them.
We do actually
have the skeletons
of the people themselves.
During the excavations,
the remains of 179 individuals
were carefully recovered.
As an anatomist,
these bones provide me
with a unique insight
into the lives of these men.
I can see
some interesting things.
I'm meeting Dr. Alex Hildred,
who's a curator
at the Mary Rose Trust,
to uncover the stories
of these men.
There were particular
places which must relate
to blocking access routes
to getting off the ship,
where you've got
20 or 30 individuals
and far more bones
than you can actually put
into those individuals.
People fighting
to get off the sinking ship.
Especially as there was netting
across the only really open bits
of the ship,
had anti-boarding netting.
I think it would have
been horrendous
trying to get off the ship.
The gun ports were so tightly
fitted to their guns
that you wouldn't have been able
to get through those easily.
Did anybody manage to get off?
About 35 survivors, but then
people didn't swim naturally.
It was quite rare
to be a swimmer.
So 35 survivors.
35 out of how many?
415 listed.
The men on board
were there to fight.
And many of them would have
wielded longbows,
which were amongst
the most feared weapons
in the medieval world.
One skeleton in particular
provides a direct link
to these devastating bows.
This chap was found
pretty much by himself
in the hold of the ship
in the bow,
but just literally above him
was a wrist guard
with the arms of England on it.
So it's interesting to suggest
with one of tallest individuals,
who's very robust, that he
may well have been an archer,
and that's what's been
suggested in the past.
He's incredibly well-built.
Now, some of that's
going to be genetic,
but some of it might be
what he's actually doing
with his body, as well.
But this skeleton has got this
rather interesting condition
at the shoulder where the tip of
his shoulder has failed to fuse.
I mean, what we're looking at
is the end of the scapula,
which starts off as a separate
little bone like this
but should fuse
during development,
but here in an adult skeleton,
it has stayed separate.
And there's been a suggestion
that this is to do
with heavy use of the shoulder.
Well, archers... Well, anybody,
any male in England at the time
would have to shoot a bow
at least once a week
from the age of about 7.
So if somebody was good,
needless to say, they probably
would have been encouraged
to do it more than once a week.
Knowing that archery
was widespread,
I suspected other skeletons
might reveal
a different telltale sign
of the damage archery
might cause.
So this here is evidence
for what we call
rotator cuff disease,
so this frilly bone here
with the little holes in it,
the pitting in it,
which looks like osteoarthritis.
Now, it's not osteoarthritis
because it's not happening
on the joint surface,
but it's happening
where the muscles insert
that stabilize the shoulder.
And this is associated
with stress
and strain on those tendons.
We get rotator cuff disease
happening in young people
when they are cricketers
or baseball pitchers.
- Or archers, maybe.
- Maybe, maybe.
It is such a privilege to look
at the bones from the Mary Rose.
It's something that I've wanted
to be able to do
for a long time.
And I think coming here
and looking at the collection,
as well,
I'm completely
bowled over by it.
There are so many objects
and so well-preserved
from the wreck.
And they really do make sense
when you look at them
all together.
When you've got the ship
and all these objects within it
and the people themselves,
we've got this very complete
picture of the lives
of these mariners
in the Tudor period.
I'm in West Wales,
on my way to the site
of Strata Florida Abbey,
which in its heyday
in the medieval period
was among the most important
religious places
in the whole of Britain.
Strata Florida stood
in the shadow
of the wild and remote
Cambrian Mountains,
far from the bustling towns
and cities of Tudor Britain.
It was founded
by Cistercian monks
striving for a life
of hard work and solitude.
Not much of their great abbey
remains today.
All that can be seen
are the desolate ruins
of the abbey's once-grand
church and its famous archway.
But in a field nearby, a team
from the University of Wales
Trinity Saint David
have spent the last few summers
slowly uncovering the remains
of this Cistercian monastery.
What they've found lying hidden
in the landscape
is truly remarkable.
Leading the team
are Professor David Austin
and Dr. Jemma Bezant.
They've undertaken
a geophysical survey,
which has revealed evidence
of the buried abbey site.
So is that where we are
just there?
This is where we are here,
in this corner.
You've got the church...
The abbey church is over there.
But also, I mean, there's
an enormous building complex
just behind you
and another really large complex
over by the river there.
And huge
industrial activity down here.
See these
enormous signals there?
So what do you think this is?
Well, we think
it's iron workings,
'cause we've excavated
an iron forge over here,
so it's the whole
of this southern area.
At some point
is processing metal,
coming out of their mines,
and their mines are just up
on the hillslope over here.
It's amazing to think that
this agricultural landscape
- was so busy...
- Yeah.
...full of industry,
full of people.
Exactly, this would have been
a really busy place.
This summer, the team are hoping
to reveal the full scale
of the abbey
and also to find evidence
of the great events
it bore witness to.
I hadn't realized how
important Strata Florida was,
but the whole of this valley
would have been home
to a massive monastic community,
and we're just starting
to get a real feeling
for the extent of that
from the excavations here.
The excavations have uncovered
the foundations
of a huge stone building,
which the team believe
is the great gatehouse
guarding the entrance
to the abbey.
Gradually the dig has begun
to reveal its original layout.
You can just make out the plan
of the building
from the remaining walls.
The gatehouse
would have dominated
this flat valley floor.
And the road the gatehouse
guarded would have stretched
to the abbey church
in the distance.
You really get a sense
of how visiting dignitaries
would have felt,
confronted by this
imposing structure.
The gatehouse dig has yielded
some evocative finds
which hint at the piety
of the monks
who once called this place home.
We've got a nice find
from inside the gatehouse.
This piece of Bath stone
that probably would have
lined the archway,
and you can see here,
if you look very carefully,
- an incised cross.
- Yeah, yeah.
And it's almost like
a good-luck talisman.
We think people
would have just touched that
as they passed
through the gateway
on their way
into the abbey church.
Other finds remind us of the
great wealth the monks enjoyed,
which they lavished
on their grand buildings.
Are these floor tiles here?
These are floor tiles here, yes.
You can see this nice
one shaped like a griffin
or a dragon, if you like.
You can see the wings
and the head.
And we know it was
an impressive building.
It was a large building,
so maybe it had
this large impressive floor.
You tend to think of Cistercian
monks seeing out solitude,
finding some remote corner
of the Welsh countryside.
Now, it certainly is that today,
but it wouldn't have been like
that in the medieval period.
And those monks were incredibly
wealthy landowners,
controlling all the agricultural
land around here,
as well as the lead mines.
And the wealth they accumulated
would be their downfall.
After divorcing his first wife,
Catherine of Aragon,
Henry had set himself
on a collision course
with the Catholic Church.
The Pope excommunicated
the king,
and Henry responded
by declaring himself the head
of his own church.
The break with Rome was final.
After Henry's schism with Rome
in 1534,
the time had come
to finally crush the abbeys,
which Henry's ministers
had described
as bastions of corruption
and papal power.
And rather conveniently,
the king could seize the
monasteries' wealth for himself.
Here at Strata Florida
and across the country,
the crown seized
the monks' wealth and land.
The king then sold off
the monasteries' assets quickly
to free up much needed revenue.
The greatest beneficiaries
of this process
were the middling gentry,
who now had the lands
to create new estates.
Evidence for this lies
just beside the abbey ruins.
So what have we got here?
Well, this if part of the
arrangement of the gentry house,
which lies behind us here.
It's now a farmhouse.
But it was a gentry house,
probably originally built
around 1600.
When you say a gentry house,
who were these gentry?
Who would have been living
in that house?
It would have been
a member of the Steadman family.
They come with
the Earls of Essex
here in the early part
of the 16th century,
and the Earls of Essex
acquire the lands of the abbey
cheap off the crown,
and then the aristocrats
sell on to the local gentries,
and so this money filters
down through the system.
And indeed a lot of the houses
in the surrounding area
used the abbey as a quarry
and took stone from here.
So it's not surprising
that, in fact,
the abbey is in such a ruin
and there's not much
of it surviving.
It is surviving,
but it's not there, it's here.
It's a quarry. It's an asset.
We're in the early stages
of capitalism.
You don't leave assets
lying around the landscape
doing nothing.
You strip them.
Due to the actions of Henry VIII
the landscape and belief system
of Britain had changed forever.
Strata Florida represents
this change in microcosm.
A new Protestant church
was built right next to the
ruins of the Catholic abbey.
It's a sweet little church.
It's a bit of a contrast
to what the abbey church
would have been like.
Yeah, abbey church,
massive, hugely ornate,
full of sculpture,
full of vivid paint.
And you come in here,
and this plainness
and the simplicity
is a wonderful counterfoil
to all that glory
and magnificence
that lay in that church
on the other side of the wall.
It's very much a secular power,
and that's one of the great
marks of Protestantism.
There is an organized church,
but it's a state church,
and the head of that church now
is a secular authority,
is a secular king.
That's what Henry VIII delivers.
We can only guess
at what the monks
who once lived and worked here
must have made
of the dissolution.
Their lives were torn apart and
their world turned upside down.
The ruined monasteries
that lie scattered across
the British landscape
provide a lasting reminder
of the dissolution.
It marked the beginning of a new
chapter in British history.
Not only did ordinary people
find themselves living
in a Protestant country,
they also witnessed
an unprecedented redistribution
of wealth and land
that would have
far-reaching consequences
for our island nation.
It was during the Tudor Age
that we began to look beyond
our own shores to the New World.
After Columbus
discovered America in 1492,
waves of daring
merchant adventurers
set out on voyages of discovery
to find new lands
and boundless wealth.
And those voyages are
all the more remarkable
when you consider that those men
were traveling to the very edges
of the known world.
The remains of one
of these merchant ships
is now being preserved at
a saltwater lake in Portsmouth.
Today, a team of divers
is going to inspect it
for signs of decay.
Well, this is what we've
got to do today, guys.
Gustav Milne has played a key
role in researching this ship.
Time waits for no man.
What are you waiting for?
The ship was originally
discovered in a channel
in the Thames Estuary
during dredging
and then moved here
for safekeeping.
If the ship was simply brought
to the surface,
it would soon begin to rot away.
By studying
the remaining timbers,
it's been estimated it was
a sizable merchant vessel
of up to 300 tons
and 80 feet in length.
Perhaps surprisingly
for a merchant vessel,
they discovered four cannon
at the wreck site.
You can just make out one
of the surviving gun ports.
These ships carried merchant
adventurers across the globe
and needed protection
in uncharted waters.
Despite all we know
about this wreck,
its precise identity
remains a mystery.
However, a vital clue was found
on one of the recovered cannons.
A team from the Royal Armouries,
led by Phil McGrath,
discovered an intriguing link
with the most powerful
financier of the Tudor Age,
Sir Thomas Gresham.
The first thing that struck us
was, on the surface,
quite clearly we have
the "T" and the "G"
for "Thomas Gresham,"
and then above that,
we have the family crest
in the form of a grasshopper.
Gresham's legacy
can still be seen
in London's financial heart.
The dissolution
of the monasteries
released a huge amount
of capital
into the British economy,
and that money eventually
filtered down
to entrepreneurs
like Sir Thomas Gresham.
It was men like Gresham
who would help create
the City of London
that we know today.
He founded the Royal Exchange,
which was the forerunner
of today's Stock Exchange.
Sir Thomas Gresham
worked directly
for the Tudor kings and queens
and even helped save Britain
from bankruptcy
by manipulating the foreign
exchange markets.
So the Gresham ship provides us
with a tangible link
back to the beginnings
of modern capitalism.
In the labs
of University College London,
they're working to discover
more about the ship's role
and her crew.
Many of the artifacts
recovered are metallic,
and during a reaction
with salt water,
some of these objects
have become encased
by what archaeologists
call concretions.
By removing these concretions,
the team hope to reveal the
secrets of the Gresham ship.
Processing this work
is dirty, messy, heavy work.
We're using large tools,
not delicate scalpels,
and we're creating
a lot of mess.
A huge variety of objects
have emerged from within
the concretions.
Now, this, I think,
is the most exciting find
that we discovered
from the concretions,
and what we have here,
we have an additional cannon,
which is represented
by this powder chamber.
That is fantastic.
That really is a find and
a half, worth all that bashing.
We thought we had four cannons.
We have an additional
powder chamber now,
which suggest that there was
another cannon on board.
Their research has shown
just how heavily armed
this ship was,
and it's also revealed the cargo
which needed such
formidable protection.
They've discovered
numerous metal ingots,
some of which are solid lead.
These would have been
very valuable
and vital for industry
and warfare.
This is the first time
I've seen these ingots,
and these are,
one, extremely heavy.
Just get a load of that.
- No I can't. Sorry.
- I can't lift that.
We've got three of a cargo
of potentially 2,000
of these ingots.
Imagine 2,000 of those
in a ship.
That is a robust vessel.
But some of
the most moving objects
are those that tell us
about the ship's crew.
The small metal finds associated
with the concretions
I think have been
particularly exciting.
We have a couple of spoons,
silver spoons, tableware,
possibly from
the captain's table.
They're fairly
high-status objects.
So what do you make of this?
Wow, is this a candleholder?
The other possibility
is a salt holder.
The intriguing finds
which the team at UCL
carefully smashed
out of those concretions
provide us with a snapshot
into bustling Tudor London.
You can just imagine
the Gresham ship
sailing up the Thames laden down
with iron, tin, and lead.
These ships brought prosperity
to the city,
and they fueled whole new
sectors of the economy,
like entertainment,
which sprang up in a big way
to help Londoners spend
their hard-earned cash.
This is Stratford-upon-Avon,
the birthplace of a man
who would directly benefit
from London's new prosperity,
our most celebrated playwright,
William Shakespeare.
His plays and poems
are the most well-known
and widely studied works
of literature ever produced,
and his legacy is immense.
Our everyday language
is peppered with words
and phrases from his writing.
But despite all that fame
and influence,
the man himself
remains an enigma.
Only a few fragments of evidence
survive from his lifetime.
This summer,
the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
are hoping that archaeology
can shed some new light
on this remarkable man.
They're digging at the site
of his last home, New Place.
We're nearly at the first stage.
Richard Kemp was involved
in organizing the dig
and has brought me
to the city's Guild Chapel.
This medieval church would
have stood right next door
to Shakespeare's house
and today provides us
with a fantastic
bird's-eye view of the dig.
Now, Shakespeare's house
basically occupied this space.
So what would the house
have been like?
Well, according to the historic
sources that we've got,
we've got a C-shaped house
around an open courtyard.
But there's not much evidence
of this C-shaped house
at the moment.
No, there isn't because
the whole thing
was knocked down in 1702
by the construction
of a Georgian mansion.
The area at the back of the site
is exciting the archaeologists
because it's here
that the house's rubbish
would have been buried.
There's a real mix
or archaeology here,
and the team have found
14th-century pottery
right next to
18th-century rubbish.
An intriguing feature
has emerged,
a large mysterious pit.
Kevin Colls,
the lead archaeologist on site,
and Richard have conflicting
theories as to what this is.
I think it's a pit
that's obviously
been used to burn something,
and we're digging it out now to
see if we can find the bottom,
where hopefully there's charcoal
and lots and lots of burning
that we can find evidence for.
Richard has
a more intriguing theory.
He thinks it's a filled-in well.
If it is a well, it goes deeper,
and the stuff's waterlogged.
When it's waterlogged, you get
even more evidence preserved,
all the organics like socks.
I want to find
Shakespeare's sock.
I so want to find
Shakespeare's socks and shoes
and stuff that gets thrown away
and normally rots down.
Yeah, I suppose we're familiar
with the idea
that things survive
in peat bogs,
but equally well, things might
survive in the bottom of a well.
Exactly, exactly.
Now, maybe this is just a pit,
but if it is a well,
it will take the team a while
to get down
to the waterlogged levels,
where there could be
surviving Tudor rubbish.
Have you ever done
any archaeology before?
- No.
- Are you enjoying it?
Oh, I love it, I love it.
It's absolutely wonderful.
Just being here,
you really get a sense
of the excitement and passion
of everyone on site,
all hoping to find
something Shakespearean.
We don't do pot washing
all the time.
We do trowling, as well.
But you can say
"finds processing."
That always sounds better than
washing pots with toothbrushes.
Yes, yes, yes,
it certainly does.
It pretty much gets
no better than this, really.
You normally dig sites
which are Roman or Iron Age,
and you can't really
put yourself into the shoes
of the people who lived
and worked on that site.
But the archaeology
of this particular site
is just all about one man,
and it's his life and times,
and you can really begin to feel
you're linking to the person
as we're excavating
down through material
which he would have
walked on or threw away.
Yeah.
Kevin and the team
have already made
some fascinating discoveries.
We've got this
stone roof tile here
with the hole where the nail
would have been
to hold it in place.
And that begins
to build a picture
of what the building
may have looked like,
so you've got fantastic
yellow stone tiles on the top.
We're also finding more sort of
domestic household objects.
- Is that a plug?
- It is a plug.
It is indeed, a copper plug.
Then we move on
to more Tudor pottery now,
so you've got this green-glaze
Tudor cooking pot
with burning on the bottom.
So this was...
This pot was put over heat.
This was used,
yes, exactly, exactly.
You can see it's...
Yeah, you can see the edge
coming up there
almost like a skillet.
Exactly, like a frying pan,
and that's perfectly in line
with the sort of
16th-century date
that we're looking for, really.
Could have been used
by Shakespeare.
You could be holding something
that's been touched
by William Shakespeare, yeah.
Shakespeare only
lived here at New Place
for around 20 years.
Archaeologically speaking,
finding traces of him
is going to be like looking
for a needle in a haystack.
But nevertheless, it's so
exciting to be able dig here,
where we know he lived
and where we imagine we might
be able to get a closer glimpse
of the Bard himself.
This site was first dug
by the Victorians
in a time before archaeology
was a rigorous
modern discipline.
Rather intriguingly, they built
a number of puzzling walls
and sealed brick boxes
to preserve what they found.
You can feel the buzz
of anticipation
as the team prepare
to open one of these boxes.
Here we are basically
excavating the cellar area.
There's all these
almost brick boxes,
so we're just about to open
the last one of them
and see what we can find.
It's really exciting!
So it's like the opening
of Tutankhamen's tomb.
Almost. Almost.
I know how Howard Carter felt.
That's the side, I should think.
It's thrilling to think
that after 150 years
its contents will be revealed.
Ah.
Snails have got in there.
Snails.
Well, not exactly like
Tutankhamen's tomb,
but there is
something else in here.
That's interesting.
So, Kevin, what do you
think we've got here?
What I think we've got
here is 1702 cellar walls
of the property that replaced
Shakespeare's house
on this site.
Whether any of these bricks
are reused from Shakespeare's
house, we'll have to look at.
So these could be Tudor bricks,
but they've been reused?
Yes, basically
the thinness of these bricks
seem to suggest
that these are quite old,
so these might be 16th-century
bricks, Tudor bricks.
It definitely feels like
we're getting closer,
but Shakespeare seems to be
just out of reach
here at the dig.
Shakespeare didn't leave much
evidence behind for historians.
So the few documents
that survive
have proved vital
in piecing together
what little we do actually know
about his life.
I've come to the Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust archives
to see a key piece of evidence
that tells us both about
New Place and the man himself.
Dr. Paul Edmondson
is a leading authority
on Shakespeare's life and works.
This is known as
the New Place fine,
and it established
Shakespeare's legal entitlement
to the property,
which Shakespeare paid £60 for.
And because the purchase deed
was usually half the cost
of the overall property,
we suspect that therefore
Shakespeare paid £120
- for New Place.
- That must have been
a decent amount of money
back then.
Quite a lot in those days.
Just remember that
a schoolmaster at that time
earned £20 a year.
It just kind of gives you
the scale of the investment.
And a kind of juicy fact
about this particular purchase
is that the person who
lived there before Shakespeare
was murdered by his son
Fulke Underhill,
- who was executed at Warwick.
- Really?
Yeah, and the surviving son,
Hercules Underhill...
- Fantastic name.
- Isn't that fantastic?
...is the one who's involved
in this purchase deed.
It's the biggest privately
owned residence in Stratford.
Yeah, and, Paul, even
though this isn't a document
that Shakespeare wrote himself,
we can imagine that he would
have held it in his hand.
Oh, absolutely.
He saved money on it, too,
because you'll notice
that there's a space here
for a grand capital letter
which has never been filled in,
'cause it would have been more
money, which is good to know.
"Paid my 60 quid. That's enough.
Thanks very much."
Well, the team
haven't found anything
that can change our
understanding of Shakespeare
just yet.
But I do feel I've got
a sense of this man,
his wealth, and his thriftiness.
And there's another place
where clues about his life
can be found.
Like many young men of his time,
Shakespeare left his home
in the provinces
and came here to London
to seek his fortune.
The streets weren't exactly
paved with gold,
but nevertheless, it was here
in the thriving city
that he made his name.
We've already seen
Shakespeare's earliest theater
being excavated.
But discoveries at the Rose
and the Globe playhouses
in the late 1980s,
have helped build
a picture of the world
in which he lived and worked.
This very ordinary-looking
building
contains an extraordinary
archaeological collection.
It's the Museum of London's
archives,
and it's the largest stores
of its kind in Europe,
housing over 750,000
individual objects,
including those found at the
Rose and the Globe playhouses.
I'm here to see Julian Bowsher,
who has led the research
into these playhouses.
Julian, we meet again.
- Alice, how are you?
- Hello.
Good to see you again.
Through this labyrinthine area.
Here, finds from across London
are brought to be washed,
dried, and cataloged.
The same system was used
for the thousands of finds
from the Rose and Globe digs.
...come in here,
where it'll get dried out.
After 20 years' work,
Julian and his team
have just published
their findings.
The artifacts recovered
offer us fascinating clues
about life
in Shakespeare's theaters.
Well, the interesting thing,
really, about the playhouse
is that it's the beginning
of modern theater.
These are purpose-built venues,
and you had to go through a door
and pay money.
And this is what you paid.
You paid a penny to get in
to the main door
so you could stand
in the center.
Or you could pay another penny
to get into the galleries
around the edge
and a third one
to sit at the top,
where you get the best view.
So they all went into one
of these ceramic money boxes,
of which we've just got the lid.
So this would have been
a completely sealed pot?
Oh, yes, like piggy banks,
so you've got a little slot
in the side there
where the coin's going to go,
and at the end of the day,
they would have gone back
to the sort of management area,
if you like, which is where
they were smashed.
That's why we have the pieces.
And the whole lot,
all the money,
emptied into a box,
and that's the box office.
And is that where we get the
term "box office" from, then?
Absolutely. Yes, yes. Yes.
So a lot of the other evidence
we're looking for
is what people are consuming
inside the building.
We know about people who'd have
the kind of usherette's tray
of pints of beer, even,
bottled beer.
And here we've got one
of the most common comestibles
that they've got, hazelnuts,
found underneath the galleries
'round the edge.
So these hazelnuts
are the popcorn
and peanuts of the Tudor era?
It's the Tudor popcorn.
And, of course,
the other new comestible
that we find in the theaters
is the evil weed.
Tobacco, that'd only been
brought to Britain
about 30 years before
in the 1550s or so.
And these very typical
Tudor pipes.
They're all very tiny
because I think it's probably
related to the price of tobacco.
- Right.
- You can't fit much in there.
So this is the new fad?
It is,
and certainly quite popular.
As well as objects associated
with the audience,
some of the finds might relate
to the actors themselves.
This is a brush.
A very tiny, delicate brush
made of bone,
a nice little bone handle,
with just a fragment
of its bristles left.
The exciting thing about this
is it's just the sort of brush
that actors would use
for makeup,
and don't forget
that Shakespeare
was an actor, as well.
So we're looking at Shakespeare
and his fellows
probably rushing off
to do the final bit of makeup
before walking onto the stage.
Which is really rather nice.
Isn't that lovely?
But these stores
also contain evidence
of Elizabethan London's
darker side.
Outside the city walls,
prostitution, gambling,
and brutal blood sports
were commonplace.
Next to the playhouses
on Bankside,
there were animal-baiting pits.
So right alongside
the playhouses?
Yeah, next to the playhouses.
And they had bears,
horses that were being baited
by very powerful mastiff dogs
like this.
This was found in one
of the bearbaiting rings
next door to The Rose.
So do you think it would have
been a different class of person
that was going to the
bearbaiting and the theater?
I'm afraid not.
They regarded it all as part
of an afternoon's entertainment.
One of the interesting pieces
we've found is a bone.
It's a femur, the upper thigh
bone of a European brown bear.
In fact, we've found
teeth marks here
which our four osteologists
have identified
as precisely the sort
of teeth made by a mastiff.
And playhouses
and the bearbaiting arenas
were outside the city.
The city was becoming
under increasingly puritanical
jurisdiction,
and these sorts of activities
were slightly frowned upon
by the city fathers.
So they're very much situated
outside the city,
particularly in areas
like Bankside.
The plays, the blood sports,
the brothels, the drinking dens,
the gambling dens.
- The seamier side of Tudor life.
- Absolutely, yes.
The archaeology of Tudor London
gives us a real insight
into the city during this period
and allows us
to peer more closely
at all levels of society,
from kings and queens
down to the ordinary people.
It's like Shakespeare's plays
in that respect.
We get to peer inside
the royal palaces
and look at the rabble
who attended the bearbaiting
arenas and the playhouses.
The digs and dives I've visited
across Britain this year
have allowed me to reach out
and touch the men and women
who lived during
the Tudor Age...
...the wealthy monks,
who once thrived
in the now-desolate ruins
of Strata Florida
and suffered the full fury
of Henry VIII...
...the newly rich merchants
and financiers
who sent ships and crews
to trade at the edges
of the known world...
...and the men who fought
and died for their king,
as the Mary Rose went
to the bottom of the sea...
...and, most thrillingly of all,
Shakespeare himself.
It does send a bit of a shiver
down the spine, doesn't it?
But as always,
archaeology has unearthed
just as many questions
as answers,
and so the digging
for Tudor Britain continues.