20x01 - Archaeology at Althorp

[bunniefuu]

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

[ Detector beeping ]

-I'm in my late 50s now,
and this is a story

that I learned probably 50 years
ago from my grandfather.

For me, this has always been
on my family to-do list,

you know, to justify
my grandfather's legend,

which was handed down to him
by previous generations,

that, somewhere in the park,
is the lost village.

♪♪

I think somewhere like this
is a time capsule,

and who knows what's underneath.

Nobody knows, actually,
because we've never had

an archeological dig here
of any type at all.

♪♪

My grandfather said --
you know, the park's big here.

It's 500 acres.

But he always said,
"This is the bit."

If there is this lost village,
it has to be,

I think,
in this part of the park.

You know, you look at
this landscape.

It's so unspoiled.

Nothing's disturbed this land
for hundreds of years.

And that's what gives me hope
that, if we find something,

it should be intact.

I think this is where we'll
strike gold if we strike it.

♪♪

"Secrets of the Dead"
was made possible in part by

contributions to your PBS
station from viewers like you.

♪♪

-Sheltered
from the modern world,

Britain's great estates
hold some of its most important

historical secrets...

...few more so than Althorp,

private home to the Spencer
family for more than 500 years.

Their estate stretches across
13,000 acres

of Northamptonshire countryside.

-My family started off
as sheep farmers,

and they did pretty well
in the Midlands,

and eventually they rented
the land around here

for their grazing in the 1400s.

And they liked it so much
that they bought the property

and built a house here in 1508.

We were essentially
just very nouveau riche.

We were sheep farmers
who had done well.

-At Althorp's heart

is a 500-acre walled park

and the Spencer family home.

♪♪

When his grandfather
was in charge,

Charles would play on
the grounds with his sisters,

including Diana, who would later
become Princess of Wales.

♪♪

For three decades,

Charles has held the title
of 9th Earl Spencer.

-When you take over
a place like this,

you know you're not the owner.

You're just looking after it.

And that is brought home to you
by the paintings on the wall,

all of these people who I feel

are sort of judging
in a polite way.

I'm just realizing every time
I see them

that I am
just a link in the chain.

-Within these walls,
Charles has written several

best-selling books
about British history.

His latest took him
900 years into the past.

Now he wants to dig up
Althorp's grounds

to find a lost
medieval settlement.

All he has to go on, though,

is one reference
in an ancient document,

written almost 1,000 years ago.

It states there was
a village here once.

A family legend, passed down
by Charles' grandfather,

places the village
on a small hill,

a few hundred yards
west of the house.

-The secrets
that this land holds

have never been shared
with anyone.

You know, they died
with the last people

who inhabited this area.

I'd love to learn about
the people who lived here

long before my family
were lucky enough to make

some money from sheep farming
and buy this part of England.

I feel I would have paid
my grandfather back

for passing on the story.

♪♪

-For the first time
in 500 years,

the park's gates are being
opened to an archeological dig.

♪♪

Leading the search
for Althorp's lost village

is Dr. Cat Jarman.

Cat has been looking through
ancient documents

for any mentions of Althorp
that predate 1508...

...the year the Spencers
bought the estate.

♪♪

-The first ever record
of Althorp is one

that I'm sure one you know
quite a lot about already,

and that's in the Domesday Book.

So this is the record
that the Normans make,

which is essentially a bit of
a sort of tax-collection record

around the country,
and that lists who owns land

at the time
of the Norman Conquest.

If you look through it,
we can find Althorp.

Here we go.
-Oh, yes, "Olletorp."

-That's the first record
of Althorp, in 1066.

It records that there are
10 households at the time.

♪♪

So it's not a big village,
but it's a reasonable size.

-And probably a farming village,

because that's what
they all were.

-Precisely.

We've got two landowners
at the time.

One of them is an owner
called Gytha.

This is the name of a woman.
And you actually --

-Oh, wow.
-Yeah, so you actually only

really have a handful
of female landowners.

They're very rare at the time.

-So how would she have been
allowed to own land?

-It seems to be she was a widow
at the time,

so she got it
through her husband.

He was called Ralph the Timid.

-How awful to be known
to history as Ralph the Timid.

-[ Laughs ] Yes.

-It's not Alfred the Great,
is it?

-No, that's right.

He was also the grandson
of Ethelred the Unready,

so the whole family is --

-A family gene of failure.
-Yeah. Absolutely.

-Gytha disappears
from the records after 1066.

But in another document,
Cat's found evidence

that a later owner
of the humble village

may have built
a substantial house at Althorp.

-So this is a charter
that records

transfer of ownership
of the manor of Althorp

happening 1267 or 1268.

And so that means that
there was a manor here

already in the sort of
13th century.

-But a manor means
a manor house, does it?

-Yeah, we think that actually
does mean a house,

because the same reference

keeps coming up
in some later charters as well.

-How extraordinary.

Well, I never knew any reference
to a manor here

before we built a house here
in 1508.

I don't think anyone knew about
this manor house.

I mean, I certainly didn't
before all this,

and I never heard about it from
my grandfather or my father,

so I think this is
new information for my family.

-The medieval manor
and the village

both disappear
from the historical records

before Charles' ancestors
arrive.

♪♪

The only way to learn more about
who lived on the land

where the Spencer estate
now sits

is to locate, and dig up,
the settlement.

But among archeologists,
villages of this period

are notoriously difficult
to find.

-We refer to the period
more or less from 450 to 1066

as the Anglo-Saxon period.

It is really difficult to find

the archeological remains
of early medieval settlements.

And that's essentially because
especially Anglo-Saxon England

was very much a wooden world.

All the buildings were made
of perishable materials --

wood, thatch,
that sort of thing.

So, really, almost nothing
remains after 1,000 years.

The village of Althorp
is recorded

as having had
only 10 households,

so we're not talking about
a huge settlement.

We tend to think now of villages

as being quite clustered along
a street or around a green.

But you don't get that
in the 9th, 10th,

or even the earlier
11th centuries.

A village would have looked
quite different then.

Each household was within
its own enclosure or farmstead,

because everyone really,
essentially, was a farmer.

To find an Anglo-Saxon
settlement,

you need a certain amount
of luck. [ Chuckles ]

Sometimes they're found
by accident.

People weren't expecting
to find them.

But you also have to use
a range of tools and clues,

and those clues could be
in the landscape.

They could be found by
walking across a plowed field

and identifying Anglo-Saxon
pottery or other finds.

So it's a little bit like
the needle

in the proverbial haystack.

-The good news for Cat is that
the estate's past inhabitants

have left clues
across the landscape.

-Believe it or not,
this area here was a lake.

I'd loved to have seen it
back as a lake,

but I don't think
it's what Lord Spencer thinks.

-Althorp's conservation officer,
Adey Greeno,

knows the lay of this land.

He wants to show Cat
how it's been shaped

by a medieval plowing technique
called ridge and furrow.

-I've never quite seen
such extensive ridges

-It's been preserved well
in the park here.

-Yeah.

I feel like you can just imagine

an ox pulling a plow
up and down

and creating
these great, big ruts.

We can properly feel them when
you're going over, can't you?

-Yeah, you wouldn't drive
too quickly over it.

-No, although that might be
quite fun, but...

-Evidence of medieval plowing

is often destroyed
by modern agriculture.

Althorp's well-preserved
ridge and furrow

is within a stone's throw
of the hill

where legend places
the lost village.

For Cat, that's a good sign.

-What's so exciting about it
is that this was enclosed

as a park about 500 years ago,
which means that it's been

more or less untouched
by modern farming.

That's really, really
quite rare.

But also, we are the first
archeologists to come in here

to investigate.

That means that if there really
is a medieval village here,

it could actually be
essentially frozen in time

and just there for us to find.

♪♪

I've got to make some decisions.

I've got a couple of weeks,
and I've got a team.

I've got to work out
where on earth on this hill

to put in my first trench.

[ Equipment beeping ]

There's a lot of stuff going on
in the landscape,

and it's really exciting
to see that,

because so much of this
is clearly not natural.

We've got lots of lumps here.

We've got some
really nice ridges,

things that we just know

aren't part of the natural
landscape of Althorp.

-Nice lumps and bumps here.
-Yeah.

-Oh, that's -- oh, is that good!

Ooh! Is that lovely!

-I think that's quite
convincing, isn't it?

-That's something there.
That's real.

-Joined by veteran
archeologist Mark Horton,

the team surveys undulations
in the landscape

from the ground...

...and from the air.

-I was using kites
back in the 1980s,

and you had to wait
for the wind to blow,

The whole thing was
incredibly dangerous.

I've still got a cupboard
full of banana-shaped cameras

where the kites crashed
into the ground.

[ Drone buzzing ]

It's like sort of
plowing a field.

It's going backwards and
forwards at regular intervals,

and as it's doing that it's
taking multiple photographs.

We can then stitch all that
together

to create one highly accurate
image of the whole site.

-All these blobs are basically

where there's something
interesting.

-Yes, and what does that
tell you?

Just that there's something
metallic down there?

-It can be metallic,
but it could anything

that's just
essentially disturbed

the magnetic field of the soil,
is going to give a reading.

-I see.
-So it means that there's

some activity
has happened there.

I really like the look of
this one up here,

so that's just over here
in that field.

There's definitely something
going on there,

and that, to me, is a really
promising place to start.

-Fantastic.

For me, this is all about
trying to find the people

who lived here
in the distant past.

I've always found
when I write about history,

you know,
humans don't change much.

They loved and they lived
and they had disappointments

and they had tragedies
in their lives.

They had all sorts of things
going on, just like we do.

The most exciting thing for me
will be to connect

with lives from the past.

That's what I hope we find --

remnants of real people.

♪♪

-For the next two weeks,

the archeologists will be
living and working on this hill.

♪♪

But they're not alone.

Joining the camp
for part of the dig

is a team
of historical re-enactors.

-[ Blows horn ]

♪♪

Their goal is to re-create life
in the early medieval period

as accurately as possible.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

As experts
in traditional crafts,

they're on hand to help
interpret any artifacts

Cat's team might unearth

and to then make copies
of the original items.

♪♪

-Quite something, isn't that?
-Yes. Yeah.

-That would go through
an awful lot, wouldn't it?

-It did, yeah. I think this is
the sort of thing

that would pierce through chain
mail as well.

-By re-creating it,
it gives you a real sense

of what people saw
in their everyday lives,

as opposed to what
we've now been left with.

So, you know, it's really nice
to sort of look at the object

and imagine how their world
might have looked to them,

rather than the remains
that we have.

-[ Plays flute ]

-I've always quite liked
the Anglo-Saxon period

largely because it's a difficult
period to study.

There is good archeology there
and some historical sources,

but much less so than, say,
the Roman period.

So you find yourself
with just enough mystery

to keep it interesting.

It often gets called
the Dark Ages,

usually because of the lack
of evidence for certain things.

But, actually, many things were
bright, colorful.

Cloth was dyed in bright colors.

Items were made
out of polished metal.

There was glassware.

So it would have been would have
been a really spectacular place

to visit,
not the kind of dirty,

dingy place
that people often imagine.

[ Tools scraping ]

-A few feet away,

the archeologists
have made their first discovery.

-You see this patch here
of slightly lighter,

quite limestoney stuff?

-Yeah.
-It is making quite a nice line.

-It does, doesn't it?

I'm not gonna say the word
"wall," but...

-[ Laughs ] I know.

But it's looking very linear.

-Don't know what it is
at the moment,

but it looks very much
like a wall.

That is genuinely very exciting,

because we've got below
the topsoil

and possibly down to more

something that could be
medieval level.

So this is really promising.

-Could this be part of the
legendary Anglo-Saxon village?

Archeologists can often
date structures

by finding other objects
like pottery

in the same layer of earth.

-So it's only one
tiny, little piece of pottery,

but this is definitely early.
-Oh, fantastic.

-So it may well be early
medieval or possibly Roman.

-Wow! Well, that's interesting.
-Yeah.

-'Cause, of course,
the Anglo-Saxons

usually built on Roman ruins,
didn't they, as well?

-Yeah, quite often you get
that continuity,

so you get the same
sort of sites

that are used in Roman times

and then they continue
to be used

by the Anglo-Saxons as well.

-The Romans occupied Britain
for almost 400 years.

After they left,
the Anglo-Saxon period began...

...roughly 1,000 years

before the Spencers
made Althorp their home.

♪♪

A mile from Cat's dig site,

there's evidence of
a Roman building on the estate.

♪♪

These fields have been
regularly plowed,

which has brought numerous
artifacts to the surface.

Adey's been finding bits
and pieces here for decades.

-You've got something?

Oh, yeah, a nice piece
of pottery there.

Oh, got one.

This one's nice. Look.

-Oh, that's nice, isn't it?
-That's a really nice one.

Definitely Roman.
-So would that be part of a pot?

-Yeah, I think this looks like

it's a sort of quite shallow
plate, almost.

Can you see?
-Yes.

-You've got a nice base.
-Yes.

-Very Roman.
-Yes.

It's nice, isn't it?

Couple of more bits
of the pottery.

-There's loads of it.

The Romans sort of just
dropped things everywhere.

-Yes.
-So really not much

has happened in this field
in the past 2,000 years.

-No.

It's, a very special place,
isn't it?

-Wherever the Romans
established settlements,

the Anglo-Saxons often followed.

So to discover that Romans were
living at Althorp bodes well.

But unlike the Romans,

who built stone houses
filled with pottery,

the Anglo-Saxons
lived more spartanly.

-Anglo-Saxon settlements,
generally speaking,

produce a lot less stuff
than Roman settlements

or later medieval settlements.

There was less mass-produced
material culture.

People used less pottery,
less coinage.

The buildings were
almost entirely of timber

and other perishable materials.

There is just less archeology
from that period.

So they truly are
quite elusive things to find

for archeologists.

Really, you don't know
until you've excavated

whether or not, you know,
"X" marks the spot,

whether or not you've really
found the settlement proper.

♪♪

-Because Anglo-Saxon settlements
are so hard to locate,

archeologists rely on finding
tiny domestic items

to help identify them.

Some of the most common
artifacts from the period

are fragments of combs
made from bone and antler.

Adam reconstructs what
they would have looked like,

using items found
at archeological digs

as his guide.

-This particular comb
I'm making here

was actually found only a few
miles away in Northampton.

And it's a rather simple
little one,

but it also came within a case,

and that would help protect the
teeth when it wasn't being used.

I absolutely love making combs.

When they're all finished,
they're sort of white

and they're shiny
and they're really attractive

and they've got these decorative
patterns cut into them.

So, you know, as well
as combing your hair,

they look absolutely fantastic

and they're a way
of showing off,

for me as a re-enactor as well
as people in the past.

♪♪

-So far, though,
the archeologists have found

no trace of people
from the medieval past.

-It turns out that whoever
was here was very, very tidy.

[ Laughter ]

I am losing hope a little bit.

It's almost interesting
that there's nothing at all.

-I mean, they must be here
somewhere, right?

They can't -- They must have had
some stuff that we can find.

-Although these sites
don't have a lot of material

and they are difficult --
notoriously difficult to find,

we're really not getting
much at all.

I really desperately wanted to
have something to show Charles

to confidently say
"We are on the right track.

This is, hopefully,
your village."

At the moment, I don't know
if I really have

very much to show him.

♪♪

-But Charles has something
he wants to show

the archeologists

in the labyrinth of cellars
underneath his house.

-How do you ever work out
where you are?

-Well, I get lost.

I mean, it is a bit
of a rabbit warren.

♪♪

I remember the first time
going down to the cellars,

I found it absolutely
terrifying.

It has a sort of horror-film
feel to it.

But at the same time,

they're so historic,
those spaces.

Some of them I haven't
even been into, I don't think.

This is the one --

Hang on. I got the wrong one.
-Wrong one.

[ Laughter ]

-It all looks very unfamiliar.

[ Laughter ]

-Charles brings Mark
to a part of the cellars

he thinks could be
older than the rest.

After Cat found written evidence
that there may once have been

a medieval manor house
at Althorp,

Charles has been wondering

if it could be
underneath his own home.

-It always intrigued me,
actually,

why my family
built a house here.

It's not on an obvious point,

because normally
they're on hills

so you got a good view,
whereas we're slightly in a dip.

And so it's fascinating to me
to think

that possibly
a medieval manor house

was here before this building
was ever conceived.

I'll be fascinated to know
if we chose to build

on somebody else's foundations.

Well, there's some vaulted
arches down here

which seem to be very old
with these old baths,

but the vaulted ceilings --
beautifully made.

-But
I don't think it's early.

-Right.

-Ah!

But what's going on here?

Look at this poor wall
that's really battered.

Can I move this screen?

-One, two, three.
-Three. Ugh!

-Slightly heavier than it looks.
-Ah!

-And where are we gonna put it?

-We don't want to --
Can we put it against the bath?

-Well, it's gonna break.
[ Both laugh ]

I've got it, I've got it.
-You've got it there?

-Yeah.
-So look.

This is an earlier foundation.
-Oh, my goodness.

Yes, that's slightly different,
isn't it?

-Yes.

So this wall must be part
of an earlier building.

-Yes, pre-1508, you reckon?

-Pre-150-- could be earlier.
I mean, you know,

unfortunately, we archeologists
can't date stone.

-No.
-[ Laughs ] Could be 1508,

or it could be late medieval.
-Yeah. How fantastic.

Well, it does look considerably
older than the bit above it,

doesn't it?

-Could this remnant
of ancient wall

be part of
the lost medieval manor?

It's not the only mystery
in these cellars.

Mark is finding evidence
that generations of Spencers

have patched up
their famous house

in unexpected ways.

-What is that,
Victorian or something?

-Well, early 19th century,
I think.

-This is original, isn't it?

-Yeah, but look --
it's been built up.

-Oh, yeah.

-The whole thing is
a wonderful hodgepodge.

-Yes, there's all sorts
down here.

-And I think
you could almost sneeze,

and the house would fall down.

-Oh, don't tell my insurers.
-No.

[ Both laugh ]

-It's an ever-consuming process,

trying to understand
a house like this,

because there's always
something new to find out

and that, in my 30 years
of running this place,

is the one lesson I know --

there's always a surprise
round the corner.

[ Whimsical tune plays ]

♪♪

-On the hill, the team has begun
digging in a second spot.

Here, their survey has revealed
potential human activity

across a large area.

But so far, they've only found
building material

from the last
few hundred years.

-So, it's not quite
a medieval village.

-Mm-hmm.

-We're getting this, so,

we have --
-Is that slate, or...?

-That's slate, so that's --
-Yeah.

-that's like roof slate.

And we're also getting a lot
of this, so, sort of plaster.

Really quite nice plaster.
-That's recent, isn't it?

-Yes.
-Yeah, yeah.

-It's very recent and there's
an awful lot of it.

-Does this look like a sort of
dumping ground, then, for stuff?

-Basically, we pretty much have
an entire house here.

We've got floor, we got walls,
we got roof tiles.

-Yeah.

I just can't believe
they'd dump stuff

in somewhere so beautiful,
that's the thing.

-So I'm just hoping that --

that it is on top
of something else,

that it isn't
all the entire landscape

is just [ Laughing ] modern...
-God, yeah,

that would be very upsetting.
-...building rubble.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

♪♪

-But Mark's detective work
suggests

there could be a lot
more rubble to come.

-This whole place
looks timeless,

but actually isn't
as old as it seems.

Because, over the centuries,

the Spencers transformed
their buildings

and their landscape to just
keep up with the fashions.

-This painting shows the house
round 1700.

What we see now
is completely different.

Stone dressings and brick

and these
gorgeous,
early sash windows.

Actually, looking a lot nicer
than the present house.

This process of transforming
the house

and the landscape
creates
stuff
--

building material, rubble.

And I just wonder

whether all those humps
and bumps up on the hill

that the family
have always believed

to be the site
of original medieval village

are actually dumps
of their own rubbish.

♪♪

And that kind of makes me
a bit worried

[ Laughing ]
that maybe we're
actually digging

in completely the wrong place.

♪♪

[ Thunder rumbles ]

[ Tender tune plays ]

♪♪

-After more than a week
of digging,

it's not looking good.

♪♪

So far, the only Anglo-Saxons
at Althorp are the reenactors.

And, with no archaeological
signs from the period,

they're moving on.

Cat's team has
painstakingly removed

a line of compacted rubble,

which initially looked
like part of a wall.

But what lies beneath does
not
belong to the lost village

and dates to a much
more recent era.

-Oh, no.
[ Laughs ]

-Yeah, it's pretty bad news
from this trench.

-[ Laughs ]

-Yeah.

-Okay.
-Yeah.

-Yeah, I think we can't really,
um --

we can't really pretend
that's anything else...

-Yeah.
-...than a pipe.

-Lovely PVC black plastic.

[ Laughter ]

-Okay, well --

[ Laughter ]

I think we can stop now.
-Yeah.

[ Owl hooting ]

[ Creature croaks ]

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

♪♪

-The archaeologists
are
not
giving up.

Away from areas where
they found rubble

and modern plumbing,

their geophysical survey
has revealed

magnetic disturbances
under the soil

which form mysterious shapes...

...including a long,
well-defined strip,

which Cat wants to investigate.

♪♪

-It looks really nice
and straight, it's really clear.

It's running right up this hill,

so, it could be some kind
of a road or a pathway.

Roads are actually really,
really interesting to find.

If people lose stuff
or they drop coins

and things fall
off their clothes,

something that tells us
something

about exactly who traveled
up and down that road.

♪♪

-But, as they slice downwards,

there are few signs
of past travelers.

-So, they've been digging here
for a few days

and, as you can see, there's
not -- there's not a lot.

-No, no, nothing at all or --

Have you found anything?

-We had this button come up...

-Oh, yes?
-...with some possible

gold gilt on it,
or something to that effect.

A button lost
off someone's coat jacket.

-Yeah, someone riding by.

-This could be one
of your grandparents

or great-grandparents
lost a button.

-Yes. Very good,
Well, it's a start.

Let's find the rest of the coat.
-Yeah.

[ Laughter ]

-I'm not convinced that
this is going to be the road

that I was hoping it would be.
-No.

-At the moment, my feeling is
it looks quite natural,

just a geological feature
because --

-But it's very obvious,
very linear,

as a geological feature.

-Yeah, but they do happen.

-I have high hopes that this
might turn into something.

-Have you?
-We'll see.

-[ Laughs ] You'll buy me
a drink if it does!

-Okay, I will. I promise.

♪♪

-As they continue investigating
the puzzling feature...

♪♪

...Cat decides
to begin excavating

a second unusual shape...

♪♪

...which takes the form
of two circles,

one inside the other.

-Wait.
So it's 9 meters there,

so it's actually 20 meters
across if it's a circle.

-Well, a bit less, yeah.

-That makes it...

-Huge.
-Really huge.

-Yeah.
-I don't know what it would be,

though, if this is
a medieval village,

because you don't really
get circular features like that

and buildings aren't circular.

And that over there...

-This should be the middle.
-...is in the middle.

-Here.
-Yeah, so that's sort of

the size of the circle
that we're looking at.

It's like a henge!

-I'd love to find a henge!
That would be so cool!

-Althorp Henge!
-[ Laughs ]

-Just beneath the topsoil,
the area inside the circles

begins to yield fragments
of manmade artifacts...

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-What have you got?

-Ooh, ooh!
-They're modern, but --

-No, they're not.
No, they're not!

No, they're not!

-What's this, then? Ooh!

-Ooh! No, they're not.

-What is that?
-They're not modern at all.

That's stoneware.

-Is it?
-Yeah.

Oh, it's nice. It's beautiful.

Date?
-17th century.

-Is it?!
-Yup.

-That's really nice.
-1680, 1720-ish.

-Is it really?
-Yeah, yeah.

-Excellent. That's the best
of what we've had so far.

-Isn't that lovely?

-And it's literally
just in the topsoil.

-Yes. Isn't that lovely?

-So, actually now
we are getting closer

towards the beginning of the
Spencers' time on the estate.

-Reign. That's right. Yup.

-Excellent.
-That's really a nice find.

-A few inches further down,
signs of human settlement

begin to emerge in the shape
of tiny pieces of charcoal.

-There's more.
-Yeah, there's one there

and there's a bigger one there.
-That one's really big isn't it?

That's really good.
Charcoal is always

going to be evidence
of human activity.

-Yeah.

-Finally!

-Like, that was quite difficult
for me to break.

-So, there are some
really big lumps coming out.

-So hopefully that's showing
some human occupation.

-Are you sure
this definitely charcoal?

-Yeah. It's this one
I'm not sure about.

-That's not charcoal.
-I just snapped that. Yeah.

-You know, that might
actually be pottery.

-Oh...
[ Laughter ]

-That's the other half.
[ Laughs ]

Oh, dear!

-The inside of it looks
very pottery-like to me.

And if it is, then this
is something quite early.

It's possible
it could be Iron Age.

♪♪

-I think what we're seeing
is really that Althorp

could well be
a really very old landscape.

♪♪

At the moment, I'm really
leaning towards thinking

that this might be
an Iron Age roundhouse.

♪♪

It's got the right shape,
it's got the right size,

and it's got the right type
of finds coming out of it.

♪♪

-Could the archaeologists
have entered the Iron Age,

a period of British history
that lasted 800 years?

People were beginning to live
in settled communities

made up of distinctive,
circular buildings.

♪♪

-So, what I'm really hoping for,

if you can help me find,
is a roundhouse.

-Cool. Excellent.
-We've got a few days left...

and see if we can dig up
something quite spectacular.

-Come on!
-Yay!

[ Laughter ]

♪♪

-It's not the lost village
they've been searching for,

but this hint of far older
archaeological evidence

brings everyone to the trenches.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-So, hopefully,
if this is part of a house,

we could be starting to
come down to a floor surface.

-I see.

It's lovely to have
the roundhouse,

if we do, in the park here,
because it goes so far back

and it puts everything
in context.

You know, I sometimes think,
"Oh, we've been here 500 years."

Well, when you see
something like this,

it's not very long, is it?

-No. Absolutely.
-No.

-So it's interesting 'cause your
eyes play tricks, don't they?

You think, "Oh, I've just
found something remarkable,"

and then it disappears
in the next scrape, doesn't it?

-Yeah. Exactly. [ Laughs ]

-It gets quite exciting,

and then you suddenly realize
it's nothing.

-Yeah.

What's that?
-Don't know.

-Could well be a piece
of pottery actually.

That's a piece of pottery.

-Hooray.
My first piece of pottery.

-Yay! Well done.

-I don't want to be competitive,
but...

I haven't seen you
get one recently, Lily.

[ Laughter ]

-Yeah, you're doing pretty well.

[ Laughs ]

-They're finding plenty of
fragments of Iron Age pottery...

♪♪

...but locating physical remains
of a building

from the period
is much more difficult.

♪♪

No Iron Age roundhouses
still stand in Britain.

♪♪

But there is a place
where Cat can experience

what they might have been like.

♪♪

At Butser in Hampshire,

these roundhouses
have been reconstructed

according to archaeological
footprints found in the soil.

♪♪

-So, this is a big building.
It's one of the biggest

that have been found
in the Iron Age.

It's about 15 meters,
or 50 feet, across.

And it's around
about 9, 9.5 meters high,

which is about 30 feet.

-That's really quite impressive,
isn't it?

-It is.
-I'm just trying to think of

how I would see this
in the ground.

And, actually, there's not
very much that isn't organic.

So, you've got the wood
and the thatch

and, yeah,
just the timbers, really,

but there's actually not --

There's no metal,
is there, at all?

-No, I don't believe
there's ever been a single nail

found in the British Iron Age.

So all of this house is --
As you say,

it's put together
with organic materials.

Very simple joints
lashed with rope.

You'll probably see
some little post holes,

so there'll just be stones
in the ground.

That'll tell you
where the upright stakes

that have helped to support
the walls, where they go.

This is a big one,

but 6 to 8 meters
is really the typical size.

That's the most common size you
find in Iron Age roundhouses.

-Well, that's good news
because the shape

that I've got
is about that size,

so that's good news to me
definitely.

-It does sound like
a roundhouse.

What you're finding is this
sort of -- this poor ghost

of what I think was
a much richer culture.

The Iron Age didn't just vanish.
It's stayed with us.

Welsh language, Irish language,
Scots language --

a lot of that
is almost certainly based

on the language that was spoken,

or the languages
that were spoken,

in the Iron Age in Britain.

So it's a rich culture

that's actually very important
to Britain and Ireland.

♪♪

-I could definitely imagine
one or several of these

right up there on the top
of the hill in Althorp.

They would just blend
into the landscape.

I quite like the idea
of that really.

One, two, three.

♪♪

Yeah, so, this is
about 7 meters or so,

which is just perfect.

If you imagine
all of that rotting away,

then there's just nothing left
in the ground to find,

apart from the shadow of it.

♪♪

-And, over the next few days,

a shadow begins to emerge
at Althorp.

♪♪

-Looking at it from here,
maybe this is wishful thinking,

but we've actually got a series
of darker round patches.

Do they look sort of post-holey?

♪♪

-So, have we found
our roundhouse?

[ Laughter ]

-I don't know
if I'm wishing too hard.

I feel a bit sick,
it's so exciting!

[ Laughter ]

[ Tools scraping ]

[ Indistinct conversations ]

♪♪

-Can you see the dark patch?
-Yeah!

-So, I mean,
it's the right size.

Right size, right shape.

We've got the right type
of pottery.

It's doing exactly
what I would expect it to do.

And it's curving down.
-Yes.

-And that's perfect because --
-How does it fit in?

-It fits in absolutely
beautifully with the geophysics.

This is where we are.
-Just in that bit there?

-Just in the edge there.

And it clearly continues...

-Back to about here...

-Definitely to about here.
-Yeah.

-It's clearly some kind of
a wall or a ditch or something.

And then you've got
a roundhouse in the middle.

-Absolutely classic.
Late Iron Age.

-Yeah, it's perfect.
It's perfect.

-You know, roundhouse
in a stock enclosure.

-I can't see anything else
it could be.

♪♪

-I love history,
and to think of this landscape

that I considered I knew so well

having a completely
different pre-life,

that -- that's fantastic.

♪♪

Until the age of 11,
Althorp was just somewhere

I came to occasionally
with my family

because my grandfather
lived here.

And it was an austere
and rather oppressive place.

♪♪

It was only later
that I realized

that this was a repository,
I guess, where history was.

But, also,
such a beautiful setting.

The parkland is what
it's all about to me.

Every time I drive into the park
through the gates,

I feel as though I'm going back
into a different century.

♪♪

I take my role here as one
as a custodian, really.

And what else am I looking after
without knowing it?

What's under this soil

that we've looked after
for centuries?

♪♪

-The Iron Age roundhouse
could be up to 3,000 years old.

♪♪

But Althorp hasn't finished
giving up its ancient secrets.

♪♪

Just a few steps away,

in the spot where they thought
there might be a buried road,

the archaeologists are finding
signs of massive earthworks.

♪♪

-So, we've definitely got a
ditch-like feature, haven't we?

-Yeah, that's increasingly
what it looks like.

It looks this has been
cut through,

and this material in here
has filled it up.

So quite a major bit
of engineering.

-Absolutely.
It's going to be a big thing.

I mean, this is really exciting!

Massive great big feature,
tying in with the geophysics,

going exactly
where we want it to go.

-Yeah. Perfect. It's really --

-I know. It's the key.

-The key to what, though?
-Ah!

[ Laughs ]

In that cubic meterage of soil,

there will be a find
that will give us a date for it.

♪♪

-If this
isan ancient ditch,

they need to find manmade
artifacts to understand

who dug it, when, and why.

♪♪

-Peta, do you think
we're at the bottom there?

-That would be really nice
if it was the bottom.

If this isn't a deep-enough
ditch, I don't know what is.

♪♪

-They search
the bottom layer of earth

for artifacts they can date...

♪♪

...and attempt to trace
how far the ditch

once stretched
across the landscape.

♪♪

-Look at that!
-Oh, goodness.

-There it is.
-It's the same feature then.

-It's good, isn't it?
-And look how it's curving!

-It cannot possibly be natural,
because it goes up the hill.

It's perfect!

-This is a massive
great big ditch,

marching across the landscape.

♪♪

-As their dig draws to a close,

the archaeologists
have uncovered something

no one expected
to find at Althorp.

♪♪

-As you can see,
we've gone down quite far.

Mark is just digging this one.

-Oh, my God.
What's going on here?

-[ Laughs ]
-Looks like a crime scene.

-Yeah. [ Laughs ]

-It's got deeper
and deeper and deeper.

-And? What is it?
-Well...

[ Laughter ]

So, what we're finding in it...

...is lots of this.

-Oh, wow. Flint.
-Lots and lots of flint.

Now, this is basically raw
material for making stone tools.

-Oh, how extraordinary!
-And this is the rubbish.

-That they didn't -- didn't
make the cut, as it were.

-Yeah, it didn't make the cut.

-This is half of a scraper.

-Oh, wow!

-So, you can see that
really nice edge to it.

You can see where
the smaller little chips

have been taken off it.
-Yes. Yes.

-Enough to make it
into that shape.

And actually you can hold it.
It's got a little sort of...

-Oh, it's got -- Yes!

-Can you feel it?
-Yeah. [ Chuckles ]

-And then you'd use that
to scrape things,

to scrape, you know,
animal skins

or something like that.
-Yes.

So that gives us a rough period,
which is Neolithic.

-So give me -- What's
the time on that? Neolithic?

-Well, that's 6,000 years old.
-Oh, my goodness.

-So these are the first farmers.
-Yes.

-First farmers are coming
into this part of the world

4,000 BC.

♪♪

-In their search
for a lost medieval village,

the archaeologists hoped to find

a thousand years
of British history.

Now the ditch carries
Althorp's story

back to the New Stone Age...

which began 6,000 years ago.

♪♪

-It's incredible, isn't it?

So that is eleven times longer
than my family have lived here.

-Just

eleven times longer.

-[ Laughter ]
-How amazing.

And, so, how far
would you imagine

this goes in every direction?

-Well, in our geo-phys,
we've got 150 meters.

-Goodness.
-But I suspect --

If we did the geophysics

of the whole park...
-Yeah

-...we would find literally
kilometers of this ditch work.

You know, this could be
a massive Neolithic monument.

-You can see it continues
across the landscape,

and it goes
all the way around up.

So it kind of
curves around here.

So it does seem a bit like

it's enclosing
at the sort of top of the hill.

It's actually -- It's where
we chose for our campsite.

-Yes!
-[ Laughs ]

-You're not the first.
-No!

♪♪

So you can imagine
that, you know, people...

-Settlement.

-...several thousand years ago
chose the same spot.

♪♪

-If the prehistoric ditch
once encircled this hilltop,

it may have been dug
by Stone Age farmers

to contain their livestock.

♪♪

But Mark has another theory.

-This ditch of this size,

I mean, the best interpretation
is it's ritual,

some form of really elaborate
complex ritual site

here on top of this hill.

So, to put it in perspective,
this belongs to the Stone Age.

It's probably a thousand years
older than, say, Stonehenge.

But it's in the same idea.

It's a -- a ritual
communal monument

where people come and gather
at particular times of year

to celebrate festivals,
to exchange goods, and so forth.

These Neolithic settlements
are really quite rare.

There's about 90 of them known
in Britain.

If I'm right, that really is
an incredible discovery.

♪♪

-I can see people wanting
to be on this piece of land,

'cause it has
everything you need.

It's got beautiful fields,
you know, for agriculture.

It's got water.
It's got the views.

It's got some form of defense
by being up high. I get that.

So whether it's ritual
or agricultural,

it's still wonderful.

-It's probably a little bit
of everything, I think.

-Yes.
-I think these sites

are quite multifunctional.

-How incredible.
Well, I'm thrilled.

That is really quite something,
isn't it?

-Kind of exciting, really.
-Well, yes!

♪♪

-It's just such a privilege

to be able to spend a few weeks
in a place like this.

It has been a little bit
of a roller-coaster ride

of ups and downs,
especially at the beginning

when we realized that the place
that we were digging

were absolutely
not the medieval village,

but something
entirely different.

But it's just a landscape

that's extremely rich
in history.

And if what's on top
of that hill

really is what we think it is,

then that goes back
at least 5,000 years

of people living
in this landscape,

and that's something
really quite special,

to have been the ones
to discover.

-Cheers!
-Cheers!

[ Laughter ]

♪♪

-To think
that there were people here

5,000 or 6,000 years ago

enjoying the same setting
that I've known all my life,

it's really --
it's very humbling, actually.

I'm not remotely worried about
not
finding the Saxon village,

'cause that's the one thing
we know is here.

Somewhere in this property
there is a Saxon village.

And one day I'll find it
or somebody will find it.

But to find something
so much more interesting,

well, that's more than a bonus.

It's -- It's unbelievable.

♪♪