Time Team (1994–2014): Season 13, Episode 8 - Queenborough, Kent - full transcript
This unprepossessing mound on the
Isle of Sheppey may not look much
but underneath here
are the remains of the last great
royal palace of the medieval period.
Queenborough Castle
was built by King Edward III
for his beloved Queen Philippa
and by all accounts it was a very
impressive and important building
although strangely, very few images
of it remain and those that are
seem to contradict each other.
Some give it round
outer walls for instance,
others give it square ones.
So what was it like
and what was it for?.
Was it essentially defensive,
or could it have been a retreat
from the plague which was currently
sweeping through Europe.
As usual, we've got just three days
to come up with some answers.
The castle was built at Queenborough
on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent
in 1361.
It's located at the end of the
creek running from the River Swale.
Queenborough itself was the last
royal new town of the Middle Ages
and was built by Edward
at the same time as his castle.
Oliver, we've got all these
conflicting reports of what
the castle looked like,
which one do you favour?
We've got a couple, we've got this
interesting elevation,
which is by Wenceslas Holler, 1640.
< I think we can rely on him,
he's a good artist.
I think so, it looks
pretty believable to me,
but I think really interestingly
we have this plan a couple of hundred
years after the castle was builti
Around here we seem to have a
perfectly circular moat,
inside that, a circular curtain wall,
within that, another range of masonry
structures very much like a rotunda.
Over here I think you can just about
pick out a gatehouse and on the
other side, an inner gatehouse.
But we don't actually know what the
scale of that is
or indeed what the
orientation of it is.
I love this little round thing
in the middle - what's that?
Seems to be the castle well,
if you look behind us,
we think it's over here.
Cor! Presumably we're gonna have
to wait for ages while
John does his geophys.
Mm... yeah.
What does mm... yeah mean?
Well, you'd think such a big
target would be quite easy.
The site isn't easy for us,
there's lots of clay,
there's lots of modern disturbance
on top of that clay,
it's gonna take us a while.
So are we stuffed?
No because I think
topographically, we can start.
Because it's a dome-like structure,
it drops away on each side,
we can just go
with the topography, we can go from
more or less the middle where the
well is straight down the slope.
Tear along the dotted line, this'll
be.
Not very straight, Phil.
There's nothing wrong with the
spray can, it's the tape that
en't straight.
The medieval well lies under
this concrete cap and gives us
the centre point of the plan.
We're going to try and work out
the scale of this unique castle
by placing trench one across
one section of what should be
the rotunda which is the part of
the castle housing all the important
rooms; bedchambers, formal rooms,
chapel, kitchens and dining rooms.
Is this it? That's whitey-yellow.
Let's have a look, Phil.
I think that's probably a tile.
It might be medieval
tile, of course.
You can see the clay inclusions
in it and the edge of it, look.
While trench one gets going and
geophys start working their way
around the mound, I'm interested
to find out why Edward chose this
location for his castle.
The context is a war with France, the
most famous the Hundred Years War,
the longest of the lot,
very much Edward III's great project.
If the reason for the castle
was the Hundred Years War,
surely it wouldn't be stuck
inland here,
it would be out here on the coast.
Well, when the castle and town are
planned, it's all part
of one functioning unit.
The castle's here because you need
room to lay the town out
around the harbour which
is like the pivot of its commercial
interest so the castle is both
protecting the natural harbour and
allowing the town to be built around
it so it can attract all
that income.
But isn't this a 19th century map?
Can you really construe what was
going on in medieval
times from that?
I think you can, because with a
single high street from the castle,
wide at one end, which is
where you have the markets,
divided off either side into long,
thin plots - this is a very typical
medieval street plan, it's kind of
fossilised in patterns of the past.
Whoa, there's a pipe.
In trench one, Phil's finding
it slow work
as he picks his way through unmarked
utilities.
It en't much of a pipe.
He's all full up with muck so I
don't think he's very important.
Do you wanna drop
down in front of it?
The people of Queenborough are keen
to get involved and one of the many
spectators has brought us one
of her heirlooms to look at.
So what we've got here is this
beautiful replica of the castle keep,
you said. Could you explain a little
bit more about how you came to have
this absolutely...
I mean, it's stunning.
Well my grandfather brought it
from a house sale in Queenborough
about 150 years ago.
The man that lived there was a
cabinet maker and he made several
items, this being one of them,
apparently
the wood was from the castle itself.
I played with this as a little girl,
it was my doll's house.
And now your granddaughter's
playing with as well.
And now your granddaughter's
And my granddaughters play with it.
And do you play with
the queens in the castle?
Yes, she sleeps right in there
and when she gets up, she goes
down here and has her breakfast.
Ah, fantastic.
And she goes on holiday sometimes.
Some of the castle wood may
have survived in this model.
But we don't know how much of the
structure was left after Cromwell's
parliamentary commissioners tore the
castle down and sold it off in 1650.
But by lunchtime Phil's
beginning to get some answers.
I think what you're looking at
is literally the robbed-out wall.
Look along there, you see
where the brown stuff steps down?
I reckon that's the
outside edge of a wall trench
and I think we've got another one
in the section on this side.
And look at the stone that's in it.
We've got that, which is a nicely
moulded piece of stone.
And this looks like that
yellowy-white Yorkshire stone.
Ah, how about that then?
That's even better - I bet
that's the magnesium limestone.
I bet that's it.
And there's the green sand as well.
Which is from Reigate, isn't it?
That's right.
That's all the building materials
that are recorded, isn't it?
Have we any idea which wall
of the castle this is though?
Well, I'm presuming its
part of the rotunda.
I think it's the inner wall, because
I think it's coming round here,
and I think the outside
wall is probably gonna come down,
oh, I dunno,
probably somewhere round here.
So what do we do now?
I've got a little job for you.
Oh, beware of men
with little jobs, Tony.
You know we reckon this
was the well in the middle?
Well Stewart has measured out on the
plan and he thinks this rotunda,
this big tower on the top,
is 40 metres across.
this big tower on the top,
Right, yeah.
So if you take the end of this
and run out 20 metres...
Hang on a sec...and I'll stop you,
that'll be the radius of the tower.
A bit more.
That's it, take that rope
round and keep the tape taut.
Raksha,
can you move Henry's whatsit for me?
Mind the bench, Tone.
That's it, great.
Well, done. I bet you're
knackered now, aren't ya?
So what did that prove?
What it proves if you look at it,
that
lot bigger then I thought it was.
So what are we gonna do about it?.
We've got to go and
talk to Stewart now
We've got to go and
talk to Stewart now
cos we're gonna dig another hole.
Wanna lie down first?
< Stew, that's a heck of a
big building on the top there,
from your measurements.
A big royal castle, isn't it?
Are you sure your
calculation's right?
I think so because the evidence
we've got from the mapping gives
us a set of concentric circles
which are here in the landscape, so
we've got the inner part there then
just there where the tape dips down,
we've got an earthwork going round
in a curve round there which was
actually measured and put on a map.
And then outside that, beyond the
paper cup, it dips and rises up again
which is what the map showed as
a moat so all the evidence says,
which is what the map showed as
yes, that's the right measurement.
Look, that dotted line is the
line you've just run around.
The red is the high resistance,
stone rubble for the inside of the
castle, then we've got courtyard,
the outer wall
and then the ditch beyond.
Stewart and I were thinking,
a long trench along that line.
That's where we've put
the tape on the ground
so we'll be inside the castle.
Hang on, come look at this.
Are you saying that we do a trench
which starts here and goes...
I'm not doing any more running.
Go onI
You've got it in one.
Trench two should give us the scale
of the castle by stretching
from the rotunda wall to the curtain
wall and to the moat beyond.
Oh, look at that,
that is pure ash, isn't it?
Back in trench one,
Phil's working on the rotunda wall
he found earlier.
That looks better, don't it?
< Definitely.
Oh, there's that big stone too.
Now, what the devil...?
We got stone down here that
might just be in situ.
I think we've got part of the wall.
That's not just one random
stone down there, is it?
No, no, no, no, no - listen to me.
Look, there's one stone that comes
along there and then there's this
whacking great piece here.
There's another stone there,
Bridg - I reckon we've got...
King Edward's castle.
Oh, it goes on down
underneath there.
We'll see if that does curve round.
What part of the castle
does this make it then?
Only that it
might be the curving bit.
If our plan's accurate, the castle's
full of curving bits so Phil's could
be any of these three shapes.
The angle of it suggests one of the
towers, but that would make this
an outside wall which
would surely mean the rotunda was
too small to fit all the rooms in.
The 2D plan of the castle's
difficult to visualise and as
a 3D architectural model, it's
beginning to look pretty peculiar.
It's lovely and I don't want to
be cruel, but what's the point?
A model like this is
an excellent device for letting us
really visualise what is a castle
with a unique concentric design.
We have a wonderful description
contemporary with these plans,
particularly the one by the
parliamentary commissioners
who describe the castle
as being "circular, built with
"stona, with six towers and certinia
out officers there unto belongina
"within which circumference of
the aforesaid castle is one little
"round court paved with stone in the
middle of whereof is one great well"
which gives you precisely what we've
got in the plan and the drawing.
It is a funny looking thing.
It's an odd looking castle,
no two ways about it.
However I think it's also important
to remember that it's a castle that
would have been a very impressive
icon of Edward's authority.
We know that a man called Henry
Yavell, a superstar of his time,
was employed in the works and a
number of other very, very high
status masons, so really, only the
best were used here at Queenborough.
On the mound, Phil's hunting
for more of his rotunda wall.
Look at that.
Ain't that a praise be the Lord?
What are you giggling about?
Oh, look - the most
amazing, amazing find.
He's just chucked a bit of clay
away from that side
and he's got the other side of the
wall.
Show me.
Show me.
Look, let me take you back to here.
We've got the wall coming down here
and it comes along there
and then when it gets to there,
it turns back on itself.
So it looks like the actual
front of the wall is built
as a series of lobes, but what we're
really getting excited about -
look, we've got the back edge.
And it's about two metres wide?
Absolutely cracking.
It's a zonking great wall, isn't it?
I never thought
we were gonna get that.
In addition to attempting to
understand this important castle,
we're going to try to work
out the layout of the town
that Edward built alongside it.
We're starting in the high street...
It's a great period piece.
..where Stewart and Jonathan
are hunting for the remains
of the medieval town in the cellars
of the oldest houses,
dating to the 18th century.
Doesn't do to be too tall down
here, does it?
Oh, limbo champion.
There's a variety of different
sort of stonework and stuff.
Oh, I like this, Graham.
This is stone
and soft mortar.
Look there, see, it's powdery stuff.
Yes, it is.
But you've got bricks there as well,
but
those are Tudor dimensions, those.
Let's have a look - they
should be about two inches.
That's all right, maybe a
little under two inches.
And then these,
look at that, these are more like
three-inch depth, these are big.
Well, all this stuff here is going
to be your 18th century house,
but it's built on
what looks like to me like
two other phases of construction and
right the way down the bottom there,
we're back into the
Middle Ages and your cellar
could be the last vestige
of Edward III's building.
So by the end of day one,
we've found the first signs
of the medieval town of Queenborough
and back at the castle, we've got
part of the rotunda in trench one
and trench two has expanded
most of the way down the mound.
As you can see, we've started
digging this trench in earnest now,
but there's a big problem -
this is a scheduled site so we've
got to respect and scrutinise every
little feature that we come across.
Near the surface, most of
these features are likely to be
later rubbish tips, stuff like that,
and we know, cos we've seen it in
that trench over there,
that two metres down is the castle.
So there's this real tension between
how much we
examine the surface stuff
and the fact that we've only got
three days to find out what we can
about the whole castle. But there
is this feature here, isn't there?
Indeed. I think we've just got
a vague indication that we could
be on top of a masonry spread.
If you look over here
with the eye of faith,
if you squint just a little bit,
you could be on top of a wall line,
the outer curtain wall of the castle.
This is one cagey archaeologist,
but we know we've got the inside
of the castle over there maybe, just
maybe, we've got the outside here.
We'll know tomorrow.
Beginning of day two here
on the Isle of Sheppey
where we're excavating the
last royal palace in England.
Yesterday, the temperature got up to
over 32 degrees,
so as you can imagine,
digging was rather inhibited.
But the temperature's dropped a
bit today so we're putting most
of our resources into this long
trench where we're hoping to find
the outside wall of the castle.
Round about here somewhere?
Yeah,
you see those two concrete blocks?
They're modern but they might
actually mark the site of this
sort of edge coming round.
Then beyond that,
should be the moat of the castle.
Round about here?
Yeah.
Round about here?
The moat seems to be full of
masonry, which looks like
it's part of Edward III's castle,
but we won't know which bit
until we've pulled it all out.
Over in Trench 1, Phil and Bridg
are trying to make sense
of the wall they found yesterday.
I think it's pretty straight.
Is it...
I know! Think.
Engage brain, Phil.
Now then, going on it being
sort of in that neck of the woods,
we've got maybe that curving wall's
gonna be that, and then this
one going off is gonna be that.
gonna be that, and then this
Could be a corridor.
If Phil's right,
he's found this part of the
inner wall of the rotunda.
Now to find the outer wall.
In Trench 2, we've removed some
of the masonry dumped in the moat.
There's another one of these blocks
coming down now, look, Jonathan.
They're all the same.
They've all got the same curve.
I'm just looking at the stone,
you see where it's split away,
it looks green. I think
it's Reigate stone, Surrey stone.
And it's in the records, isn't
it, for the 1360s building?
That's the crucial thing.
That's the crucial thing.
But what do you think it is?
A lot of it's got this curve on it.
Look at this one here.
It's all the same.
It's from one feature, I think.
I was thinking...
maybe a stair vice, you know,
a turreted staircase.
The other possibility, I mean,
is that it's something like the well.
We know there was a well on the
top and we know it's been altered.
Cos that could be an overflow,
couldn't it, for water or...?
It looks like a water
channel though.
What worries me though, you look at
what's coming out with this stuff,
you've got plastic bottle...
Is that antifreeze?
Yeah, I mean it suggests this has
all been dumped fairly recently.
The materials to construct the
castle in the 1360s would have
been brought up the creek leading
from the river Swale which runs
round the west side of the island.
You've got to remember in the 14th
century, all this was an island.
It was completely
surrounded by water.
The Isle of Sheppey itself
was known from Anglo-Saxon times
as the Isle of Sheep.
Edward III built the economy of his
new town of Queenborough
on the wool trade.
'From the river you can begin
to appreciate the strategy of
'placing the castle in this
location.'
Stew, if the French
had attacked here,
Stew, if the French
where would they have come from?
They'd have come from the open
water which is out there,
and sailed in the
direction we're moving in now.
The Isle of Sheppey is almost
like one of the first land falls
if you're wanting to invade this
part of southern England.
So if you were coming down here
and you wanted a safe anchorage,
somewhere to base your fleet
or to land, you need
somewhere sheltered to do that.
And round the corner, where the
Swale goes round, is a safe place
and that's where
the castle was placed.
I mean, can you see where the
church tower is standing?
That's not a very high church tower.
So you can imagine, there's a
big castle standing behind it,
dominating the landscape, and if you
were a Frenchmen sailing up here,
would you want to try and land
there with that big castle?
I don't think I would.
Presumably they realised
how strategic it was when
they were building it there?
We've looked at Edward III's
foundation charters and we know from
that
the king was acutely aware of
the maritime importance of the site.
The charter talks about
a deep and broad arm of the sea
where ships can be put in at.
So, they're certainly
aware of the significance.
Back on dry land Raksha is exposing
the curtain wall and the moat.
And other features in Trench 2
are providing us
with some interesting finds.
This is fantastic for the site
because it's medieval pottery.
Its shell tempered ware and it dates
from 1200 right through to 1500.
We've actually got two different
types of pot coming in here.
This one here which is a rim sherd,
but it would have been
a large or relatively large bowl.
We've also got this one which
is more of a dish shaped object.
< This is stuff you'd
have in your house then?
Yeah. Everybody would have used it
for cooking,
for using on the table.
It's not high status.
< And what about all these shells?
It looks like they only ate oysters.
Yeah, they
ate oysters by the bucket load.
They lived by the sea.
It's all they ate.
Some sources say
they got so fed up with eating them,
they didn't wanna see them any more.
So this is pretty typical of
this 14th/15th century?
It's very typical. Perfect for the
period we're meant to be working in.
At the same time as Edward III was
building this innovative castle in
Queen Philippa's name, the accounts
state he commissioned the church,
said to be the only surviving
medieval building in the town.
If Edward III's building for
Philippa a new church here for
her honour, I mean, he could've done
better then build what looks like a
barn with vertical crazy paving.
I've rarely seen a royal building
frankly this bad.
The windows are the wrong shape,
the door is the wrong shape,
it just doesn't feel
14th century to me.
And there's one school of thought
by Hasted, the county historian,
who reckons that it was all
rebuilt in the 17th century.
So it looks like none of Edward's
building work survives intact.
There is something here of the 17th
century that might interest you.
It's this little beauty.
Oh, a magnificent font.
Isn't it? A font, 1610.
And it shows the postern gate
of the castle.
Which was still standing when
this font was made by that date.
It's beautiful.
It's very rare to find an
impression of a castle's back gate.
We still need to sort the
orientation of this castle out.
And if we can work
out which way it faced,
we should be able to locate it.
I think we've got some
pretty strong clues myself.
The first clues we've got is from
the history
of the King's work itself.
Where it describes the outer gate
and postern to the west and east.
I.e. outer gate to west
and postern to east.
That also ties with
the map evidence we've got when the
site was standing as earth works,
which had a gap here,
which was probably the postern.
But this, the main gateway and
the outer area here, would be
firmly under the school car park
where we've got the dining bus and
catering and everything.
Right. What about you, Oliver?
The clue
is this place over here - Minster.
Basically over that way.
So that's a view
from the west then.
So the records indicate that
the castle faced the west.
John's got a suggestion for a trench
that would help us confirm it.
What we want is something
to investigate this rotation.
Look, this is where the
eastern gate is. And look.
Oh, yes, it looks
like a bit of wall, doesn't it?
How about
if we do a trench on that line?
That's logical, isn't it?
And try and tie that down.
So Trench 3 will attempt to
try and locate the corridor
which would confirm that
the castle faced the west.
Let's hold on for a couple of
seconds, Ian,
I'm just gonna have
a quick look here.
That's going back on to
this stony rubble.
It might not be a solid wall if
it's just marking a roadway in or...
Yeah.
Meanwhile, Phil's extended
Trench 1 by 13 metres in his bid
to find the outer rotunda wall.
Phil!
How you getting on?
I've lost me castle, Mick.
That's very careless of you!
What's going on?
I know.
Well, you see, we're supposed
to have along this side somewhere
the front of the rotunda.
You look behind you, there's that
road iron.
It ought to come through here
somewhere and all we've got is clay.
Is this natural what you've got here,
this clay?
Well, it looks it but...
it's got chalk in it. You
shouldn't have chalk in the clay.
No, so it's
contaminated with something.
That's right.
Phil's gonna need to find the
elusive outer wall
if we're going to work out how
big the castle rotunda is.
The residents of
Queenborough are proving
incredibly keen to get involved.
So that main gate out
is under the car park.
Offering us the benefit of their
local knowledge and bringing
objects that they've found.
These are
quite interesting to some people
that are in to the military idea.
These are brilliant. You've got
musket balls, pistol balls,
and they date to
around the 17th century onwards.
So that's really nice but also you've
got some items dating
actually to the medieval period here.
In particular, this item which
is part of a large cooking pot
and this is the handle from it.
It would've dated to the
later medieval period.
That would be?
Around about when this
was still in occupation.
By tea-time on day two
Raksha has uncovered
a good chunk of the curtain wall
which surrounded the entire castle.
This is
basically the extent of it here.
Yeah.
We still have some of the stones
packed in the bottom
but the rest of it is just gone.
This doesn't look as big
as I expected, Oliver.
It looks absolutely massive.
It looks as if the front portion of
the wall has actually gone,
so the wall would've been a
lot wider but it's still a pretty
decent medieval wall.
It may only be half its original
size but at least we now know where
the curtain wall is.
Though we still need both walls
of the rotunda to work out
the scale of the castle.
And Phil's throwing
everything at it.
There's no sign of
this outer wall, Phil.
Strange, init?.
Well if it's in a metre of
where I'm surveying, we'd see it.
You'd have thought it ought
to have been there though.
I mean,
that's there.
John, just disconnect
and go away, will ya!
During Edward's reign,
Queenborough and its castle
enjoyed a brief period of wealth.
But after that it became more famous
for a series of disreputable mayors
and eccentric happenings.
Queenborough is the kind of place
that's awash with bizarre stories.
My favourite is about
a chap called John Taylor
who was a Thames ferryman who
called himself the water poet.
In the year 1614 he made this
extraordinary journey from London
all the way to Queenborough
in a boat made of paper.
And to help us recreate that magical
moment,
I've got a pair of nutters here.
This is Abs and this is Tim. Tim,
why did he do this bizarre journey?
He was always things like this. >
He walked barefoot to Edinburgh
to borrow ?1 from Ben Johnson,
the playwright, for a pint of beer.
I think the paper boat was probably
his most successful mission.
How are we gonna make
this paper boat?
We've taken some hemp
paper which is what Taylor used.
I've got an example here
of this sample
I've done with a bit of brown paper.
We're going to stick it together,
lacquer the surface of it.
We're going to stick it together,
What do we lacquer it with?
We've used a traditional kind of
lacquer he'd have had at the time.
Here is a tiny model we made earlier.
Oh, you're kidding.
No, I'm not.
We really are gonna make that.
You can give us a hand.
If you'd care to just
hold that corner there.
We're gonna fold that end over,
get it up level with the other side.
And if we can just lift that up for a
moment,
you begin to get yourself a boat
shape.
It is boat shaped.
I have to say, it's pretty floppy.
We're hopefully gonna
have some rolled up tubes,
like sort of extended toilet rolls,
to sort of pull it together.
Wait until you see the oars.
For the oars are made...
Yeah, that's right,
Taylor used oars made out of...
Here we have...
a piece of dried cod.
Taylor's oars were
big dried stockfish.
We've gone as close as
we possibly can to them.
They're what are hopefully
gonna propel us through the water.
Cor, it doesn't half stink!
It does, doesn't it?
Hasn't British
television gone downhill!
Ah, right.
Back to relative sanity, and Kerry's
trying to fit together again
the curved stones that
we found in the moat.
And they seem pretty
convincing as part of
the medieval well which would have
stood in the centre of the castle.
Most of the masonry
was sold off
after the castle was demolished in
1650,
which could explain
why there's no sign of the outer
wall of the rotunda in Trench 1.
But we're having more success
with the inner wall.
Phil, what have you got there, mate?
We've got the turn of the wall.
Oh wow, let's have a look.
Look, that's what we had before.
Yeah.
With that edge coming that way.
And now look,
we've got another
one coming this way.
I'm just wondering where
that fits into the plan?
I wanna strip all that lot out.
< Yeah.
To find out whether that wall
actually continues on through
or whether it stops and
literally just turns.
If the wall does turn, it could
be the entrance to the rotunda.
This was linked to the postern gate
by the corridor which Matt's
been looking for in Trench 3.
It looks like we've got the
beginning of a wall here.
It's not as substantial as
the other ones,
but we've got all the stones here,
mortar.
Looks like it's been
layered up with clay in between.
And on this side of it, straight
down here, is this huge ditch.
Is that what you'd expect to see
with the geophysics you've got?
We could be on to it.
The wall goes with the high
resistance there in red.
And that's through on that line,
just as we expected. The thing is,
there should be a second wall
probably five metres that way.
If we can confirm that, then we've
got the line leading right into the
centre of the castle.
All the bits of the castle jigsaw
are beginning to come together.
We're starting to get
an idea of its size.
We even think we know
which way it faced.
But tomorrow we're gonna dig
here which is this.
Which if we're right,
would've been the big
central facade of the castle.
The place that would've confronted
King Edward and Queen Philippa
when they swept in to it.
But as I say, that's if we're right.
We're into our final day at
Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey,
where we're investigating the castle
Edward III built for Queen Philippa.
One of the great things about
this dig has been this lot, who've
not only been watching what we've
been doing for the last three day,
but they've been talking to us
and bringing stuff in.
And one of the things that
a local historian brought us
has turned out to be golden -
it's this picture of the castle,
which is unlike anything else
that we've seen so far, isn't it?
If that's what the inner courtyard
looked like, it was very grand.
If that's what the inner courtyard
looked like, it was very grand.
So where is that on our drawing?
I think it's actually this little
turret sticking out
into this inner courtyard,
and it would be the first thing you
see as you came up this entrance.
The antiquarian reconstruction's
based on designs of the castle
that the artist found in Paris,
and although we don't know the exact
nature of them, they seem to fit
in with the rest of the evidence.
So trench four will try to locate
what we can see in the drawings.
Meanwhile, in trench three,
we're attempting to confirm
the orientation of the castle
by locating the corridor into the
rotunda.
Matt's found one wall
and is expanding trench three
to find the other.
Everyone has been saying for the
last couple of days how unique
this castle is,
but I don't really get the sense of
what that uniqueness is.
Most royal castles are multi-phase
buildings - they're rebuilt
over many, many generations,
their plans are added to.
Queenborough, on the other hand, it
seems to be a single-phase castle -
it's planned in one fell swoop,
so Edward III seems to be employing
his masons to impose what's almost
an ideal castle onto the landscape.
Is this a rather bizarre one-off,
or did it actually
influence British architecture?
We've got an interesting plan in
front of us - this is Deal Castle,
which is down in Kent.
It's a couple of hundred years later,
it's a castle built by Henry VIII.
If you put the two plans
next to each other,
there's a couple of features that
they have broadly in common.
It's basically this idea that they
have very, very symmetrical designs -
there's a line of symmetry here at
Queenborough, it's down the middle,
likewise at Deal, and also the fact
that they repeat circular form.
So this is 200 years later
but there's a level of similarity
there.
Meanwhile, Matt's found some
foundations where he was expecting
to find the other corridor wall.
But they look very different
from the wall he found yesterday.
The two corridors are crucial to
understanding the use of the castle.
They would have forced any visitors
or marauders to take a circuitous
route around the outer walls of the
rotunda, either exposed to fire,
or forced to admire the full
grandeur of the castle,
before entering the inner sanctum.
Meanwhile, Stewart and Jonathan
have been trying to work out the
layout of Edward's Queenborough.
Let's see the
measurements.
They've identified a property on the
high street, which looks like
it's retained its medieval
dimensions.
That's about 11.5 feet.
Now they're looking for evidence
of similar footprints
in other buildings.
Look at that! That's lovely.
These are perfectly good
medieval walls to me.
This is the width, so this is the
measurement we really want,
isn't it?
So that is 11 feet.
That's very similar
to what we measured at number 60,
isn't it, on the surface?
Isn't it? Almost identical.
Isn't it? Almost identical.
Really, really nice.
So the width of the cellar
under this Georgian house
suggests three timber-fronted shops
would have stood in its footprint
when the royal town was
laid out in the 1360s.
And I think what we've got is
a town which has got two different
maritime characters, in a way -
you've got the bit round the creek
here, which is the wharfage
where all the loading and unloading
would be going on for the town,
the kind of commercial backside,
if you could call it that.
But at this end, where
the high street heads,
you've got a fairly formal approach
into the new borough, heading
straight down towards the castle.
Back at the castle,
trench one is causing chaos.
The more Phil exposes of the
inside rotunda wall,
the more it looks like an outside
wall.
And that doesn't make sense
with any of the other trenches.
Let's say we take
those two bits of wall down there...
Yeah.
..and we line those up over
our two bits of wall there.
Then Phil's stuff is in a void then,
in an open space -
it's not actually on the wall at all.
What Phil's got there is a piece of
curving wall below the ladder,
and then another
curving wall coming off it,
underneath the bucket and the spade.
If you look at that on the plan,
the only thing that fits with that
is the junction of one of these
walls,
with the main wall of the castle.
That looks all right.
But if you put that over the
top of that,
then none of the rest of it makes
sense.
You can't get it all to square up.
So presumably that either
means we're misinterpreting
the archaeology or the plan's wrong?
I'm not sure we're misinterpreting
the archaeology, because we've looked
down this trench for any other sign
of any other wall to go with that,
and it isn't there.
You've got another
conundrum here as well, because
if that interpretation's right,
and that's the curve of that,
and the well is in the right
position,
and that's the corner of the
wall there and the well there,
that distance is only 12 metres.
So you've got to fit all that
tower, all these rooms, gatehouse,
courtyard and well, into 12 metres.
It won't work, you see.
No, it'll be like a sandcastle,
skyscraper.
Lots of tiny people.
The problem is this damn thing!
We've been using this for two
or three days now, relying on it,
and there's clearly
something wrong with it.
So throughout the whole two and half
days, this has been our one piece
of certainty and sanity, and now it
looks like this is completely wrong.
Should be about four metres wide and
curving through on this line...
If the only thing we can
rely on is the archaeology...
I'm confident it's curving. Whether
it's castle or not is up to you.
..we have to keep digging.
So trench five is located
over another part of the rotunda,
which might help us work out
whether the plan is the wrong size
or the wrong shape.
Looks like a wall.
Smug now, are you?
Further round the rotunda,
Bridge has been looking for the
grandest part of the castle.
Behind me we've got
loads of white material here.
It's made up of mortar
and it's made up of stone,
and just rammed together.
We've got three options of
what that could be -
either it's intact medieval
archaeology...
Bit of castle?
Bit of castle?
Associated with the castle.
Number two, could be demolition
associated with the castle,
dating to about 1650.
So where people have taken the good
stone out
and then chucked back all
the rubbish and offcuts and mortar?
Yeah, and then used the
stone somewhere else,
or number three it could be
associated with the construction
of the initial pump house that
was on the top of the mound here.
of the initial pump house that
was on the top of the mound here.
That's Victorian.
That would be Victorian.
That would be Victorian.
So you've got 600 years to play
with?
Yeah, and the only defining feature
in this trench is this cut
that runs down here.
We've got what looks like
natural on this side, and then we've
got the white material on that side.
Brigid's hoping that Jonathan
will be able to date the mortar
to either the construction
or demolition of the castle.
Both are contenders - either
1650s trash, or it's medieval...
cheapo wall-filling rubbish.
The medieval builders had a kind of
cornflake-box approach to having
two good firm outer walls,
and you stuff the middle
with ill-fitting rubbish
that all settles.
During the building of the castle.
Yeah.
Either way it looks like she's onto
the castle, and the shape seems
to fit the inner rotunda wall,
which should help us with the plan.
We're almost ready to recreate
the final stretch of John Taylor's
eccentric paper boat journey
from London to Queenborough, where
the town welcoming committee awaits.
Our boat builders have transformed
several layers of hemp paper
into a seaworthy vessel
complete with oars of dried cod.
All we need
is for the lacquer to dry.
It's taken us two days
of really solid work
to mess this up this badly.
I mean, look at it!
You're cheating.
You've got these things!
That's fair - he had buoyancy aids,
he had bull's bladders blown up,
so we've got four of them -
not bull's bladders.
Actually, the original Taylor had
them blown up by women of ill repute,
because he believed that
they were born to be hanged
and could therefore never drowned be,
so therefore logically
he reasoned their air must float.
He was a genius(!)
Ready?
So we're looking to lift and pop
her in the water - carefully does it.
Look at that!
I'm in.
We have a man in the boat.
Hang on, I've got a fish
up my backside. Hold on a minute.
We're listing. We're listing,
we must let go of that oar.
We're in.
OK, we're out in the boat.
We have buoyancy.
Any problems?
Several. One oar turns out
to be heavier than the other,
which we hadn't really accounted for.
Are you actually using the buoyancy,
or is it just dangling there?
Just dangling.
The whores
could have stayed at home.
They could
frankly have taken the night off.
The only problem is
we're now drifting past the pier.
Anyone for Sheerness?
So while Tim attempts
a watery U-turn...
Next stop SheernessI
..Matt's had a change of
direction in trench three,
where he's completely revised
his interpretation of
the corridor walls.
I'll start at this end of the
trench. We've dug down a little.
We've got this huge cut coming
straight in down there.
If you follow it back it comes up
again
in a straight line there,
and across here.
< Right.
I thought this was a wall,
but I'm not so convinced now,
because on the other side of it,
actually coming in here,
we've got another big cut that
comes in
across there and down there.
And my current theory is this -
this is no longer the wall,
this is the path in-between,
straight up to the middle of the
mound.
Right, right.
Right, right.
So you had a wall
coming across this way,
and a wall coming across this way.
Both the walls, though,
have been robbed away.
The direction and size of this
corridor means that we can now say
with confidence the castle faced the
west, looking down the high street.
And we're hoping Raksha's wall
will help us with the rotunda.
Well, if you look here,
there's a nice line curving there,
and there's
another one curving that way,
so it's all going round that way.
Beautiful. So we can say this
is the castle - >
it's the only big circular
structure.
The wall curves towards Phil's
trench, but sadly doesn't help
us identify whether it's
the inner or outer wall.
So with just an hour to go, Phil
decides to expand trench one towards
a geophysical anomaly, which could
just be the outside of the rotunda.
That compacted surface and all the
stone work is what we're seeing
in the resistance - that's,
to me, not the outer wall.
No, I quite agree with you, John, but
what I'm saying is let's nail this.
Come on, Ian, let's get on with it.
My money's on that's the outside.
My money's on that's the outside.
I don't care - you're probably right.
See now we're...
Hitting a curve.
There is an edge - there is an
edge in the...what is it there?
The question is the edge of what?
With all the confusion,
Raysan's hard work on the model has
been a waste of time, so he's begun
to work on a computer-generated
version of Queen Philippa's castle.
It brings out really
nicely the way the castle...
It looks like a great wedding cake
doesn't it? We know it's packed
with scores and scores -
50 or more separate rooms.
We know there's a hall, various
chambers,
a kitchen, guard rooms, stores -
absolutely packed with rooms.
Let's not forget we're talking about
a major citadel palace.
Details such as 407 doors and
windows towards its closing stages,
some of these must have
been the highest quality.
It's no accident that it perhaps
does look like a beautiful chateau,
with those beautiful pointed
turrets, because she was very much
a French noble woman, and must have
felt very much at home here.
Having located what could be the
remains of the missing outer wall...
..Phil's auguring the middle of his
trench
for signs of the
interior of the rotunda.
Good Lord alive!
I mean, that is a big hole
that's been open for a long time.
It's filled up with water.
The question is, why is there a
big hole where there should be
a big structure?
Of all the trenches we've dug over
the last three days, this is the one
that's given us the most problems.
And we still don't know
what's in it, do we?
I hate to be contradictory,
but I think we do actually.
I think what we might have is a very
large robber trench going
all the way round the top, robbing
out the outer line of the rotunda.
What makes you think that?
On the mapping we've had this
feature, which is a wide ditch
round the top of the hill,
which would come through here
at 12 metres wide in places.
I think that's what we can see here
in the cut,
and over the far side in
the cut, and what we've got here
is a huge great robber trench
digging all that out.
And we actually have a bigger
castle than you've been thinking.
And we actually have a bigger
castle than you've been thinking.
Yeah, but Phil's trench shows
a circular feature, doesn't it?
Now these are the only
circular features on the plan.
That's the only thing that
makes sense, doesn't it?
That's the only thing that
makes sense, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does.
And the width of this makes it
24 metres to centre it on the well.
Henry VIII fixed up
this castle in 1536, and then
built Pendennis and St Moors,
and round the coast Deal and Walmer,
and they're between 20 and 30
metres.
This is 24 - so why shouldn't
this have been a model for Henry
where that, Phil's
trench, is the outer wall?
where that, Phil's
trench, is the outer wall?
I'm just going with the
archaeology as I see it.
If you go with the archaeology,
you'll have to end up...
And the argument continues
right until the last moment,
when almost three metres
below the surface...
That looks like mortar.
That is mortar!
..Phil finds a final clue.
Well, maybe there's a
structure here after all.
Stewart was right -
the hole in Phil's trench
was a massive robber trench from the
demolition of the castle, but traces
of the cellars under the rotunda
were picked up by the auguring.
Phil's inner wall
was the junction of the inner wall
with the gatehouse, and 40 rooms
would easily have fitted
inside the massive structure of the
rotunda.
At last we're able to visualise how
this unique and beautiful building
would have looked to King Edward
and Queen Philippa as they admired
their new castle in the 1360s.
Subtitles by
Red Bee Media Ltd
Isle of Sheppey may not look much
but underneath here
are the remains of the last great
royal palace of the medieval period.
Queenborough Castle
was built by King Edward III
for his beloved Queen Philippa
and by all accounts it was a very
impressive and important building
although strangely, very few images
of it remain and those that are
seem to contradict each other.
Some give it round
outer walls for instance,
others give it square ones.
So what was it like
and what was it for?.
Was it essentially defensive,
or could it have been a retreat
from the plague which was currently
sweeping through Europe.
As usual, we've got just three days
to come up with some answers.
The castle was built at Queenborough
on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent
in 1361.
It's located at the end of the
creek running from the River Swale.
Queenborough itself was the last
royal new town of the Middle Ages
and was built by Edward
at the same time as his castle.
Oliver, we've got all these
conflicting reports of what
the castle looked like,
which one do you favour?
We've got a couple, we've got this
interesting elevation,
which is by Wenceslas Holler, 1640.
< I think we can rely on him,
he's a good artist.
I think so, it looks
pretty believable to me,
but I think really interestingly
we have this plan a couple of hundred
years after the castle was builti
Around here we seem to have a
perfectly circular moat,
inside that, a circular curtain wall,
within that, another range of masonry
structures very much like a rotunda.
Over here I think you can just about
pick out a gatehouse and on the
other side, an inner gatehouse.
But we don't actually know what the
scale of that is
or indeed what the
orientation of it is.
I love this little round thing
in the middle - what's that?
Seems to be the castle well,
if you look behind us,
we think it's over here.
Cor! Presumably we're gonna have
to wait for ages while
John does his geophys.
Mm... yeah.
What does mm... yeah mean?
Well, you'd think such a big
target would be quite easy.
The site isn't easy for us,
there's lots of clay,
there's lots of modern disturbance
on top of that clay,
it's gonna take us a while.
So are we stuffed?
No because I think
topographically, we can start.
Because it's a dome-like structure,
it drops away on each side,
we can just go
with the topography, we can go from
more or less the middle where the
well is straight down the slope.
Tear along the dotted line, this'll
be.
Not very straight, Phil.
There's nothing wrong with the
spray can, it's the tape that
en't straight.
The medieval well lies under
this concrete cap and gives us
the centre point of the plan.
We're going to try and work out
the scale of this unique castle
by placing trench one across
one section of what should be
the rotunda which is the part of
the castle housing all the important
rooms; bedchambers, formal rooms,
chapel, kitchens and dining rooms.
Is this it? That's whitey-yellow.
Let's have a look, Phil.
I think that's probably a tile.
It might be medieval
tile, of course.
You can see the clay inclusions
in it and the edge of it, look.
While trench one gets going and
geophys start working their way
around the mound, I'm interested
to find out why Edward chose this
location for his castle.
The context is a war with France, the
most famous the Hundred Years War,
the longest of the lot,
very much Edward III's great project.
If the reason for the castle
was the Hundred Years War,
surely it wouldn't be stuck
inland here,
it would be out here on the coast.
Well, when the castle and town are
planned, it's all part
of one functioning unit.
The castle's here because you need
room to lay the town out
around the harbour which
is like the pivot of its commercial
interest so the castle is both
protecting the natural harbour and
allowing the town to be built around
it so it can attract all
that income.
But isn't this a 19th century map?
Can you really construe what was
going on in medieval
times from that?
I think you can, because with a
single high street from the castle,
wide at one end, which is
where you have the markets,
divided off either side into long,
thin plots - this is a very typical
medieval street plan, it's kind of
fossilised in patterns of the past.
Whoa, there's a pipe.
In trench one, Phil's finding
it slow work
as he picks his way through unmarked
utilities.
It en't much of a pipe.
He's all full up with muck so I
don't think he's very important.
Do you wanna drop
down in front of it?
The people of Queenborough are keen
to get involved and one of the many
spectators has brought us one
of her heirlooms to look at.
So what we've got here is this
beautiful replica of the castle keep,
you said. Could you explain a little
bit more about how you came to have
this absolutely...
I mean, it's stunning.
Well my grandfather brought it
from a house sale in Queenborough
about 150 years ago.
The man that lived there was a
cabinet maker and he made several
items, this being one of them,
apparently
the wood was from the castle itself.
I played with this as a little girl,
it was my doll's house.
And now your granddaughter's
playing with as well.
And now your granddaughter's
And my granddaughters play with it.
And do you play with
the queens in the castle?
Yes, she sleeps right in there
and when she gets up, she goes
down here and has her breakfast.
Ah, fantastic.
And she goes on holiday sometimes.
Some of the castle wood may
have survived in this model.
But we don't know how much of the
structure was left after Cromwell's
parliamentary commissioners tore the
castle down and sold it off in 1650.
But by lunchtime Phil's
beginning to get some answers.
I think what you're looking at
is literally the robbed-out wall.
Look along there, you see
where the brown stuff steps down?
I reckon that's the
outside edge of a wall trench
and I think we've got another one
in the section on this side.
And look at the stone that's in it.
We've got that, which is a nicely
moulded piece of stone.
And this looks like that
yellowy-white Yorkshire stone.
Ah, how about that then?
That's even better - I bet
that's the magnesium limestone.
I bet that's it.
And there's the green sand as well.
Which is from Reigate, isn't it?
That's right.
That's all the building materials
that are recorded, isn't it?
Have we any idea which wall
of the castle this is though?
Well, I'm presuming its
part of the rotunda.
I think it's the inner wall, because
I think it's coming round here,
and I think the outside
wall is probably gonna come down,
oh, I dunno,
probably somewhere round here.
So what do we do now?
I've got a little job for you.
Oh, beware of men
with little jobs, Tony.
You know we reckon this
was the well in the middle?
Well Stewart has measured out on the
plan and he thinks this rotunda,
this big tower on the top,
is 40 metres across.
this big tower on the top,
Right, yeah.
So if you take the end of this
and run out 20 metres...
Hang on a sec...and I'll stop you,
that'll be the radius of the tower.
A bit more.
That's it, take that rope
round and keep the tape taut.
Raksha,
can you move Henry's whatsit for me?
Mind the bench, Tone.
That's it, great.
Well, done. I bet you're
knackered now, aren't ya?
So what did that prove?
What it proves if you look at it,
that
lot bigger then I thought it was.
So what are we gonna do about it?.
We've got to go and
talk to Stewart now
We've got to go and
talk to Stewart now
cos we're gonna dig another hole.
Wanna lie down first?
< Stew, that's a heck of a
big building on the top there,
from your measurements.
A big royal castle, isn't it?
Are you sure your
calculation's right?
I think so because the evidence
we've got from the mapping gives
us a set of concentric circles
which are here in the landscape, so
we've got the inner part there then
just there where the tape dips down,
we've got an earthwork going round
in a curve round there which was
actually measured and put on a map.
And then outside that, beyond the
paper cup, it dips and rises up again
which is what the map showed as
a moat so all the evidence says,
which is what the map showed as
yes, that's the right measurement.
Look, that dotted line is the
line you've just run around.
The red is the high resistance,
stone rubble for the inside of the
castle, then we've got courtyard,
the outer wall
and then the ditch beyond.
Stewart and I were thinking,
a long trench along that line.
That's where we've put
the tape on the ground
so we'll be inside the castle.
Hang on, come look at this.
Are you saying that we do a trench
which starts here and goes...
I'm not doing any more running.
Go onI
You've got it in one.
Trench two should give us the scale
of the castle by stretching
from the rotunda wall to the curtain
wall and to the moat beyond.
Oh, look at that,
that is pure ash, isn't it?
Back in trench one,
Phil's working on the rotunda wall
he found earlier.
That looks better, don't it?
< Definitely.
Oh, there's that big stone too.
Now, what the devil...?
We got stone down here that
might just be in situ.
I think we've got part of the wall.
That's not just one random
stone down there, is it?
No, no, no, no, no - listen to me.
Look, there's one stone that comes
along there and then there's this
whacking great piece here.
There's another stone there,
Bridg - I reckon we've got...
King Edward's castle.
Oh, it goes on down
underneath there.
We'll see if that does curve round.
What part of the castle
does this make it then?
Only that it
might be the curving bit.
If our plan's accurate, the castle's
full of curving bits so Phil's could
be any of these three shapes.
The angle of it suggests one of the
towers, but that would make this
an outside wall which
would surely mean the rotunda was
too small to fit all the rooms in.
The 2D plan of the castle's
difficult to visualise and as
a 3D architectural model, it's
beginning to look pretty peculiar.
It's lovely and I don't want to
be cruel, but what's the point?
A model like this is
an excellent device for letting us
really visualise what is a castle
with a unique concentric design.
We have a wonderful description
contemporary with these plans,
particularly the one by the
parliamentary commissioners
who describe the castle
as being "circular, built with
"stona, with six towers and certinia
out officers there unto belongina
"within which circumference of
the aforesaid castle is one little
"round court paved with stone in the
middle of whereof is one great well"
which gives you precisely what we've
got in the plan and the drawing.
It is a funny looking thing.
It's an odd looking castle,
no two ways about it.
However I think it's also important
to remember that it's a castle that
would have been a very impressive
icon of Edward's authority.
We know that a man called Henry
Yavell, a superstar of his time,
was employed in the works and a
number of other very, very high
status masons, so really, only the
best were used here at Queenborough.
On the mound, Phil's hunting
for more of his rotunda wall.
Look at that.
Ain't that a praise be the Lord?
What are you giggling about?
Oh, look - the most
amazing, amazing find.
He's just chucked a bit of clay
away from that side
and he's got the other side of the
wall.
Show me.
Show me.
Look, let me take you back to here.
We've got the wall coming down here
and it comes along there
and then when it gets to there,
it turns back on itself.
So it looks like the actual
front of the wall is built
as a series of lobes, but what we're
really getting excited about -
look, we've got the back edge.
And it's about two metres wide?
Absolutely cracking.
It's a zonking great wall, isn't it?
I never thought
we were gonna get that.
In addition to attempting to
understand this important castle,
we're going to try to work
out the layout of the town
that Edward built alongside it.
We're starting in the high street...
It's a great period piece.
..where Stewart and Jonathan
are hunting for the remains
of the medieval town in the cellars
of the oldest houses,
dating to the 18th century.
Doesn't do to be too tall down
here, does it?
Oh, limbo champion.
There's a variety of different
sort of stonework and stuff.
Oh, I like this, Graham.
This is stone
and soft mortar.
Look there, see, it's powdery stuff.
Yes, it is.
But you've got bricks there as well,
but
those are Tudor dimensions, those.
Let's have a look - they
should be about two inches.
That's all right, maybe a
little under two inches.
And then these,
look at that, these are more like
three-inch depth, these are big.
Well, all this stuff here is going
to be your 18th century house,
but it's built on
what looks like to me like
two other phases of construction and
right the way down the bottom there,
we're back into the
Middle Ages and your cellar
could be the last vestige
of Edward III's building.
So by the end of day one,
we've found the first signs
of the medieval town of Queenborough
and back at the castle, we've got
part of the rotunda in trench one
and trench two has expanded
most of the way down the mound.
As you can see, we've started
digging this trench in earnest now,
but there's a big problem -
this is a scheduled site so we've
got to respect and scrutinise every
little feature that we come across.
Near the surface, most of
these features are likely to be
later rubbish tips, stuff like that,
and we know, cos we've seen it in
that trench over there,
that two metres down is the castle.
So there's this real tension between
how much we
examine the surface stuff
and the fact that we've only got
three days to find out what we can
about the whole castle. But there
is this feature here, isn't there?
Indeed. I think we've just got
a vague indication that we could
be on top of a masonry spread.
If you look over here
with the eye of faith,
if you squint just a little bit,
you could be on top of a wall line,
the outer curtain wall of the castle.
This is one cagey archaeologist,
but we know we've got the inside
of the castle over there maybe, just
maybe, we've got the outside here.
We'll know tomorrow.
Beginning of day two here
on the Isle of Sheppey
where we're excavating the
last royal palace in England.
Yesterday, the temperature got up to
over 32 degrees,
so as you can imagine,
digging was rather inhibited.
But the temperature's dropped a
bit today so we're putting most
of our resources into this long
trench where we're hoping to find
the outside wall of the castle.
Round about here somewhere?
Yeah,
you see those two concrete blocks?
They're modern but they might
actually mark the site of this
sort of edge coming round.
Then beyond that,
should be the moat of the castle.
Round about here?
Yeah.
Round about here?
The moat seems to be full of
masonry, which looks like
it's part of Edward III's castle,
but we won't know which bit
until we've pulled it all out.
Over in Trench 1, Phil and Bridg
are trying to make sense
of the wall they found yesterday.
I think it's pretty straight.
Is it...
I know! Think.
Engage brain, Phil.
Now then, going on it being
sort of in that neck of the woods,
we've got maybe that curving wall's
gonna be that, and then this
one going off is gonna be that.
gonna be that, and then this
Could be a corridor.
If Phil's right,
he's found this part of the
inner wall of the rotunda.
Now to find the outer wall.
In Trench 2, we've removed some
of the masonry dumped in the moat.
There's another one of these blocks
coming down now, look, Jonathan.
They're all the same.
They've all got the same curve.
I'm just looking at the stone,
you see where it's split away,
it looks green. I think
it's Reigate stone, Surrey stone.
And it's in the records, isn't
it, for the 1360s building?
That's the crucial thing.
That's the crucial thing.
But what do you think it is?
A lot of it's got this curve on it.
Look at this one here.
It's all the same.
It's from one feature, I think.
I was thinking...
maybe a stair vice, you know,
a turreted staircase.
The other possibility, I mean,
is that it's something like the well.
We know there was a well on the
top and we know it's been altered.
Cos that could be an overflow,
couldn't it, for water or...?
It looks like a water
channel though.
What worries me though, you look at
what's coming out with this stuff,
you've got plastic bottle...
Is that antifreeze?
Yeah, I mean it suggests this has
all been dumped fairly recently.
The materials to construct the
castle in the 1360s would have
been brought up the creek leading
from the river Swale which runs
round the west side of the island.
You've got to remember in the 14th
century, all this was an island.
It was completely
surrounded by water.
The Isle of Sheppey itself
was known from Anglo-Saxon times
as the Isle of Sheep.
Edward III built the economy of his
new town of Queenborough
on the wool trade.
'From the river you can begin
to appreciate the strategy of
'placing the castle in this
location.'
Stew, if the French
had attacked here,
Stew, if the French
where would they have come from?
They'd have come from the open
water which is out there,
and sailed in the
direction we're moving in now.
The Isle of Sheppey is almost
like one of the first land falls
if you're wanting to invade this
part of southern England.
So if you were coming down here
and you wanted a safe anchorage,
somewhere to base your fleet
or to land, you need
somewhere sheltered to do that.
And round the corner, where the
Swale goes round, is a safe place
and that's where
the castle was placed.
I mean, can you see where the
church tower is standing?
That's not a very high church tower.
So you can imagine, there's a
big castle standing behind it,
dominating the landscape, and if you
were a Frenchmen sailing up here,
would you want to try and land
there with that big castle?
I don't think I would.
Presumably they realised
how strategic it was when
they were building it there?
We've looked at Edward III's
foundation charters and we know from
that
the king was acutely aware of
the maritime importance of the site.
The charter talks about
a deep and broad arm of the sea
where ships can be put in at.
So, they're certainly
aware of the significance.
Back on dry land Raksha is exposing
the curtain wall and the moat.
And other features in Trench 2
are providing us
with some interesting finds.
This is fantastic for the site
because it's medieval pottery.
Its shell tempered ware and it dates
from 1200 right through to 1500.
We've actually got two different
types of pot coming in here.
This one here which is a rim sherd,
but it would have been
a large or relatively large bowl.
We've also got this one which
is more of a dish shaped object.
< This is stuff you'd
have in your house then?
Yeah. Everybody would have used it
for cooking,
for using on the table.
It's not high status.
< And what about all these shells?
It looks like they only ate oysters.
Yeah, they
ate oysters by the bucket load.
They lived by the sea.
It's all they ate.
Some sources say
they got so fed up with eating them,
they didn't wanna see them any more.
So this is pretty typical of
this 14th/15th century?
It's very typical. Perfect for the
period we're meant to be working in.
At the same time as Edward III was
building this innovative castle in
Queen Philippa's name, the accounts
state he commissioned the church,
said to be the only surviving
medieval building in the town.
If Edward III's building for
Philippa a new church here for
her honour, I mean, he could've done
better then build what looks like a
barn with vertical crazy paving.
I've rarely seen a royal building
frankly this bad.
The windows are the wrong shape,
the door is the wrong shape,
it just doesn't feel
14th century to me.
And there's one school of thought
by Hasted, the county historian,
who reckons that it was all
rebuilt in the 17th century.
So it looks like none of Edward's
building work survives intact.
There is something here of the 17th
century that might interest you.
It's this little beauty.
Oh, a magnificent font.
Isn't it? A font, 1610.
And it shows the postern gate
of the castle.
Which was still standing when
this font was made by that date.
It's beautiful.
It's very rare to find an
impression of a castle's back gate.
We still need to sort the
orientation of this castle out.
And if we can work
out which way it faced,
we should be able to locate it.
I think we've got some
pretty strong clues myself.
The first clues we've got is from
the history
of the King's work itself.
Where it describes the outer gate
and postern to the west and east.
I.e. outer gate to west
and postern to east.
That also ties with
the map evidence we've got when the
site was standing as earth works,
which had a gap here,
which was probably the postern.
But this, the main gateway and
the outer area here, would be
firmly under the school car park
where we've got the dining bus and
catering and everything.
Right. What about you, Oliver?
The clue
is this place over here - Minster.
Basically over that way.
So that's a view
from the west then.
So the records indicate that
the castle faced the west.
John's got a suggestion for a trench
that would help us confirm it.
What we want is something
to investigate this rotation.
Look, this is where the
eastern gate is. And look.
Oh, yes, it looks
like a bit of wall, doesn't it?
How about
if we do a trench on that line?
That's logical, isn't it?
And try and tie that down.
So Trench 3 will attempt to
try and locate the corridor
which would confirm that
the castle faced the west.
Let's hold on for a couple of
seconds, Ian,
I'm just gonna have
a quick look here.
That's going back on to
this stony rubble.
It might not be a solid wall if
it's just marking a roadway in or...
Yeah.
Meanwhile, Phil's extended
Trench 1 by 13 metres in his bid
to find the outer rotunda wall.
Phil!
How you getting on?
I've lost me castle, Mick.
That's very careless of you!
What's going on?
I know.
Well, you see, we're supposed
to have along this side somewhere
the front of the rotunda.
You look behind you, there's that
road iron.
It ought to come through here
somewhere and all we've got is clay.
Is this natural what you've got here,
this clay?
Well, it looks it but...
it's got chalk in it. You
shouldn't have chalk in the clay.
No, so it's
contaminated with something.
That's right.
Phil's gonna need to find the
elusive outer wall
if we're going to work out how
big the castle rotunda is.
The residents of
Queenborough are proving
incredibly keen to get involved.
So that main gate out
is under the car park.
Offering us the benefit of their
local knowledge and bringing
objects that they've found.
These are
quite interesting to some people
that are in to the military idea.
These are brilliant. You've got
musket balls, pistol balls,
and they date to
around the 17th century onwards.
So that's really nice but also you've
got some items dating
actually to the medieval period here.
In particular, this item which
is part of a large cooking pot
and this is the handle from it.
It would've dated to the
later medieval period.
That would be?
Around about when this
was still in occupation.
By tea-time on day two
Raksha has uncovered
a good chunk of the curtain wall
which surrounded the entire castle.
This is
basically the extent of it here.
Yeah.
We still have some of the stones
packed in the bottom
but the rest of it is just gone.
This doesn't look as big
as I expected, Oliver.
It looks absolutely massive.
It looks as if the front portion of
the wall has actually gone,
so the wall would've been a
lot wider but it's still a pretty
decent medieval wall.
It may only be half its original
size but at least we now know where
the curtain wall is.
Though we still need both walls
of the rotunda to work out
the scale of the castle.
And Phil's throwing
everything at it.
There's no sign of
this outer wall, Phil.
Strange, init?.
Well if it's in a metre of
where I'm surveying, we'd see it.
You'd have thought it ought
to have been there though.
I mean,
that's there.
John, just disconnect
and go away, will ya!
During Edward's reign,
Queenborough and its castle
enjoyed a brief period of wealth.
But after that it became more famous
for a series of disreputable mayors
and eccentric happenings.
Queenborough is the kind of place
that's awash with bizarre stories.
My favourite is about
a chap called John Taylor
who was a Thames ferryman who
called himself the water poet.
In the year 1614 he made this
extraordinary journey from London
all the way to Queenborough
in a boat made of paper.
And to help us recreate that magical
moment,
I've got a pair of nutters here.
This is Abs and this is Tim. Tim,
why did he do this bizarre journey?
He was always things like this. >
He walked barefoot to Edinburgh
to borrow ?1 from Ben Johnson,
the playwright, for a pint of beer.
I think the paper boat was probably
his most successful mission.
How are we gonna make
this paper boat?
We've taken some hemp
paper which is what Taylor used.
I've got an example here
of this sample
I've done with a bit of brown paper.
We're going to stick it together,
lacquer the surface of it.
We're going to stick it together,
What do we lacquer it with?
We've used a traditional kind of
lacquer he'd have had at the time.
Here is a tiny model we made earlier.
Oh, you're kidding.
No, I'm not.
We really are gonna make that.
You can give us a hand.
If you'd care to just
hold that corner there.
We're gonna fold that end over,
get it up level with the other side.
And if we can just lift that up for a
moment,
you begin to get yourself a boat
shape.
It is boat shaped.
I have to say, it's pretty floppy.
We're hopefully gonna
have some rolled up tubes,
like sort of extended toilet rolls,
to sort of pull it together.
Wait until you see the oars.
For the oars are made...
Yeah, that's right,
Taylor used oars made out of...
Here we have...
a piece of dried cod.
Taylor's oars were
big dried stockfish.
We've gone as close as
we possibly can to them.
They're what are hopefully
gonna propel us through the water.
Cor, it doesn't half stink!
It does, doesn't it?
Hasn't British
television gone downhill!
Ah, right.
Back to relative sanity, and Kerry's
trying to fit together again
the curved stones that
we found in the moat.
And they seem pretty
convincing as part of
the medieval well which would have
stood in the centre of the castle.
Most of the masonry
was sold off
after the castle was demolished in
1650,
which could explain
why there's no sign of the outer
wall of the rotunda in Trench 1.
But we're having more success
with the inner wall.
Phil, what have you got there, mate?
We've got the turn of the wall.
Oh wow, let's have a look.
Look, that's what we had before.
Yeah.
With that edge coming that way.
And now look,
we've got another
one coming this way.
I'm just wondering where
that fits into the plan?
I wanna strip all that lot out.
< Yeah.
To find out whether that wall
actually continues on through
or whether it stops and
literally just turns.
If the wall does turn, it could
be the entrance to the rotunda.
This was linked to the postern gate
by the corridor which Matt's
been looking for in Trench 3.
It looks like we've got the
beginning of a wall here.
It's not as substantial as
the other ones,
but we've got all the stones here,
mortar.
Looks like it's been
layered up with clay in between.
And on this side of it, straight
down here, is this huge ditch.
Is that what you'd expect to see
with the geophysics you've got?
We could be on to it.
The wall goes with the high
resistance there in red.
And that's through on that line,
just as we expected. The thing is,
there should be a second wall
probably five metres that way.
If we can confirm that, then we've
got the line leading right into the
centre of the castle.
All the bits of the castle jigsaw
are beginning to come together.
We're starting to get
an idea of its size.
We even think we know
which way it faced.
But tomorrow we're gonna dig
here which is this.
Which if we're right,
would've been the big
central facade of the castle.
The place that would've confronted
King Edward and Queen Philippa
when they swept in to it.
But as I say, that's if we're right.
We're into our final day at
Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey,
where we're investigating the castle
Edward III built for Queen Philippa.
One of the great things about
this dig has been this lot, who've
not only been watching what we've
been doing for the last three day,
but they've been talking to us
and bringing stuff in.
And one of the things that
a local historian brought us
has turned out to be golden -
it's this picture of the castle,
which is unlike anything else
that we've seen so far, isn't it?
If that's what the inner courtyard
looked like, it was very grand.
If that's what the inner courtyard
looked like, it was very grand.
So where is that on our drawing?
I think it's actually this little
turret sticking out
into this inner courtyard,
and it would be the first thing you
see as you came up this entrance.
The antiquarian reconstruction's
based on designs of the castle
that the artist found in Paris,
and although we don't know the exact
nature of them, they seem to fit
in with the rest of the evidence.
So trench four will try to locate
what we can see in the drawings.
Meanwhile, in trench three,
we're attempting to confirm
the orientation of the castle
by locating the corridor into the
rotunda.
Matt's found one wall
and is expanding trench three
to find the other.
Everyone has been saying for the
last couple of days how unique
this castle is,
but I don't really get the sense of
what that uniqueness is.
Most royal castles are multi-phase
buildings - they're rebuilt
over many, many generations,
their plans are added to.
Queenborough, on the other hand, it
seems to be a single-phase castle -
it's planned in one fell swoop,
so Edward III seems to be employing
his masons to impose what's almost
an ideal castle onto the landscape.
Is this a rather bizarre one-off,
or did it actually
influence British architecture?
We've got an interesting plan in
front of us - this is Deal Castle,
which is down in Kent.
It's a couple of hundred years later,
it's a castle built by Henry VIII.
If you put the two plans
next to each other,
there's a couple of features that
they have broadly in common.
It's basically this idea that they
have very, very symmetrical designs -
there's a line of symmetry here at
Queenborough, it's down the middle,
likewise at Deal, and also the fact
that they repeat circular form.
So this is 200 years later
but there's a level of similarity
there.
Meanwhile, Matt's found some
foundations where he was expecting
to find the other corridor wall.
But they look very different
from the wall he found yesterday.
The two corridors are crucial to
understanding the use of the castle.
They would have forced any visitors
or marauders to take a circuitous
route around the outer walls of the
rotunda, either exposed to fire,
or forced to admire the full
grandeur of the castle,
before entering the inner sanctum.
Meanwhile, Stewart and Jonathan
have been trying to work out the
layout of Edward's Queenborough.
Let's see the
measurements.
They've identified a property on the
high street, which looks like
it's retained its medieval
dimensions.
That's about 11.5 feet.
Now they're looking for evidence
of similar footprints
in other buildings.
Look at that! That's lovely.
These are perfectly good
medieval walls to me.
This is the width, so this is the
measurement we really want,
isn't it?
So that is 11 feet.
That's very similar
to what we measured at number 60,
isn't it, on the surface?
Isn't it? Almost identical.
Isn't it? Almost identical.
Really, really nice.
So the width of the cellar
under this Georgian house
suggests three timber-fronted shops
would have stood in its footprint
when the royal town was
laid out in the 1360s.
And I think what we've got is
a town which has got two different
maritime characters, in a way -
you've got the bit round the creek
here, which is the wharfage
where all the loading and unloading
would be going on for the town,
the kind of commercial backside,
if you could call it that.
But at this end, where
the high street heads,
you've got a fairly formal approach
into the new borough, heading
straight down towards the castle.
Back at the castle,
trench one is causing chaos.
The more Phil exposes of the
inside rotunda wall,
the more it looks like an outside
wall.
And that doesn't make sense
with any of the other trenches.
Let's say we take
those two bits of wall down there...
Yeah.
..and we line those up over
our two bits of wall there.
Then Phil's stuff is in a void then,
in an open space -
it's not actually on the wall at all.
What Phil's got there is a piece of
curving wall below the ladder,
and then another
curving wall coming off it,
underneath the bucket and the spade.
If you look at that on the plan,
the only thing that fits with that
is the junction of one of these
walls,
with the main wall of the castle.
That looks all right.
But if you put that over the
top of that,
then none of the rest of it makes
sense.
You can't get it all to square up.
So presumably that either
means we're misinterpreting
the archaeology or the plan's wrong?
I'm not sure we're misinterpreting
the archaeology, because we've looked
down this trench for any other sign
of any other wall to go with that,
and it isn't there.
You've got another
conundrum here as well, because
if that interpretation's right,
and that's the curve of that,
and the well is in the right
position,
and that's the corner of the
wall there and the well there,
that distance is only 12 metres.
So you've got to fit all that
tower, all these rooms, gatehouse,
courtyard and well, into 12 metres.
It won't work, you see.
No, it'll be like a sandcastle,
skyscraper.
Lots of tiny people.
The problem is this damn thing!
We've been using this for two
or three days now, relying on it,
and there's clearly
something wrong with it.
So throughout the whole two and half
days, this has been our one piece
of certainty and sanity, and now it
looks like this is completely wrong.
Should be about four metres wide and
curving through on this line...
If the only thing we can
rely on is the archaeology...
I'm confident it's curving. Whether
it's castle or not is up to you.
..we have to keep digging.
So trench five is located
over another part of the rotunda,
which might help us work out
whether the plan is the wrong size
or the wrong shape.
Looks like a wall.
Smug now, are you?
Further round the rotunda,
Bridge has been looking for the
grandest part of the castle.
Behind me we've got
loads of white material here.
It's made up of mortar
and it's made up of stone,
and just rammed together.
We've got three options of
what that could be -
either it's intact medieval
archaeology...
Bit of castle?
Bit of castle?
Associated with the castle.
Number two, could be demolition
associated with the castle,
dating to about 1650.
So where people have taken the good
stone out
and then chucked back all
the rubbish and offcuts and mortar?
Yeah, and then used the
stone somewhere else,
or number three it could be
associated with the construction
of the initial pump house that
was on the top of the mound here.
of the initial pump house that
was on the top of the mound here.
That's Victorian.
That would be Victorian.
That would be Victorian.
So you've got 600 years to play
with?
Yeah, and the only defining feature
in this trench is this cut
that runs down here.
We've got what looks like
natural on this side, and then we've
got the white material on that side.
Brigid's hoping that Jonathan
will be able to date the mortar
to either the construction
or demolition of the castle.
Both are contenders - either
1650s trash, or it's medieval...
cheapo wall-filling rubbish.
The medieval builders had a kind of
cornflake-box approach to having
two good firm outer walls,
and you stuff the middle
with ill-fitting rubbish
that all settles.
During the building of the castle.
Yeah.
Either way it looks like she's onto
the castle, and the shape seems
to fit the inner rotunda wall,
which should help us with the plan.
We're almost ready to recreate
the final stretch of John Taylor's
eccentric paper boat journey
from London to Queenborough, where
the town welcoming committee awaits.
Our boat builders have transformed
several layers of hemp paper
into a seaworthy vessel
complete with oars of dried cod.
All we need
is for the lacquer to dry.
It's taken us two days
of really solid work
to mess this up this badly.
I mean, look at it!
You're cheating.
You've got these things!
That's fair - he had buoyancy aids,
he had bull's bladders blown up,
so we've got four of them -
not bull's bladders.
Actually, the original Taylor had
them blown up by women of ill repute,
because he believed that
they were born to be hanged
and could therefore never drowned be,
so therefore logically
he reasoned their air must float.
He was a genius(!)
Ready?
So we're looking to lift and pop
her in the water - carefully does it.
Look at that!
I'm in.
We have a man in the boat.
Hang on, I've got a fish
up my backside. Hold on a minute.
We're listing. We're listing,
we must let go of that oar.
We're in.
OK, we're out in the boat.
We have buoyancy.
Any problems?
Several. One oar turns out
to be heavier than the other,
which we hadn't really accounted for.
Are you actually using the buoyancy,
or is it just dangling there?
Just dangling.
The whores
could have stayed at home.
They could
frankly have taken the night off.
The only problem is
we're now drifting past the pier.
Anyone for Sheerness?
So while Tim attempts
a watery U-turn...
Next stop SheernessI
..Matt's had a change of
direction in trench three,
where he's completely revised
his interpretation of
the corridor walls.
I'll start at this end of the
trench. We've dug down a little.
We've got this huge cut coming
straight in down there.
If you follow it back it comes up
again
in a straight line there,
and across here.
< Right.
I thought this was a wall,
but I'm not so convinced now,
because on the other side of it,
actually coming in here,
we've got another big cut that
comes in
across there and down there.
And my current theory is this -
this is no longer the wall,
this is the path in-between,
straight up to the middle of the
mound.
Right, right.
Right, right.
So you had a wall
coming across this way,
and a wall coming across this way.
Both the walls, though,
have been robbed away.
The direction and size of this
corridor means that we can now say
with confidence the castle faced the
west, looking down the high street.
And we're hoping Raksha's wall
will help us with the rotunda.
Well, if you look here,
there's a nice line curving there,
and there's
another one curving that way,
so it's all going round that way.
Beautiful. So we can say this
is the castle - >
it's the only big circular
structure.
The wall curves towards Phil's
trench, but sadly doesn't help
us identify whether it's
the inner or outer wall.
So with just an hour to go, Phil
decides to expand trench one towards
a geophysical anomaly, which could
just be the outside of the rotunda.
That compacted surface and all the
stone work is what we're seeing
in the resistance - that's,
to me, not the outer wall.
No, I quite agree with you, John, but
what I'm saying is let's nail this.
Come on, Ian, let's get on with it.
My money's on that's the outside.
My money's on that's the outside.
I don't care - you're probably right.
See now we're...
Hitting a curve.
There is an edge - there is an
edge in the...what is it there?
The question is the edge of what?
With all the confusion,
Raysan's hard work on the model has
been a waste of time, so he's begun
to work on a computer-generated
version of Queen Philippa's castle.
It brings out really
nicely the way the castle...
It looks like a great wedding cake
doesn't it? We know it's packed
with scores and scores -
50 or more separate rooms.
We know there's a hall, various
chambers,
a kitchen, guard rooms, stores -
absolutely packed with rooms.
Let's not forget we're talking about
a major citadel palace.
Details such as 407 doors and
windows towards its closing stages,
some of these must have
been the highest quality.
It's no accident that it perhaps
does look like a beautiful chateau,
with those beautiful pointed
turrets, because she was very much
a French noble woman, and must have
felt very much at home here.
Having located what could be the
remains of the missing outer wall...
..Phil's auguring the middle of his
trench
for signs of the
interior of the rotunda.
Good Lord alive!
I mean, that is a big hole
that's been open for a long time.
It's filled up with water.
The question is, why is there a
big hole where there should be
a big structure?
Of all the trenches we've dug over
the last three days, this is the one
that's given us the most problems.
And we still don't know
what's in it, do we?
I hate to be contradictory,
but I think we do actually.
I think what we might have is a very
large robber trench going
all the way round the top, robbing
out the outer line of the rotunda.
What makes you think that?
On the mapping we've had this
feature, which is a wide ditch
round the top of the hill,
which would come through here
at 12 metres wide in places.
I think that's what we can see here
in the cut,
and over the far side in
the cut, and what we've got here
is a huge great robber trench
digging all that out.
And we actually have a bigger
castle than you've been thinking.
And we actually have a bigger
castle than you've been thinking.
Yeah, but Phil's trench shows
a circular feature, doesn't it?
Now these are the only
circular features on the plan.
That's the only thing that
makes sense, doesn't it?
That's the only thing that
makes sense, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does.
And the width of this makes it
24 metres to centre it on the well.
Henry VIII fixed up
this castle in 1536, and then
built Pendennis and St Moors,
and round the coast Deal and Walmer,
and they're between 20 and 30
metres.
This is 24 - so why shouldn't
this have been a model for Henry
where that, Phil's
trench, is the outer wall?
where that, Phil's
trench, is the outer wall?
I'm just going with the
archaeology as I see it.
If you go with the archaeology,
you'll have to end up...
And the argument continues
right until the last moment,
when almost three metres
below the surface...
That looks like mortar.
That is mortar!
..Phil finds a final clue.
Well, maybe there's a
structure here after all.
Stewart was right -
the hole in Phil's trench
was a massive robber trench from the
demolition of the castle, but traces
of the cellars under the rotunda
were picked up by the auguring.
Phil's inner wall
was the junction of the inner wall
with the gatehouse, and 40 rooms
would easily have fitted
inside the massive structure of the
rotunda.
At last we're able to visualise how
this unique and beautiful building
would have looked to King Edward
and Queen Philippa as they admired
their new castle in the 1360s.
Subtitles by
Red Bee Media Ltd