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[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
Graphical version
First shown 27 December 2002
Everyone thinks of the Battle of Hastings and 1066 when they think of the Normans and the medieval era. Time Team has investigated dozens of medieval sites over the years, providing a unique opportunity to assess whether the Norman invasion was a cataclysm or a continuation of what was already happening in these islands.
Featuring Dr Rob Liddiard, of the University of East Anglia, the programme considers the significance of previous digs and what they have added to our knowledge of the period. With subjects ranging from a leper hospital to castles, knights, monasteries and religion, the magnificent Castle Rising in Norfolk is the backdrop to a review of sites such as:
Bridgenorth, in Shropshire, where a 70-feet-tall Norman tower and some other stonework is all that's left of a great castle built 900 years ago and around which grew up the town of Bridgnorth in Shropshire.
Chicksands, in Bedfordshire, now a military base but once home to a 13th-century Gilbertine monastery.
Alderton, in Lincolnshire, where local man Derek Batton called in Time Team to investigate the site of a castle he had bought recently.
The site of the St Mary Magdalene leper hospital at Winchester, which was home to the leper-outcasts of the city 900 years ago.
Thetford, in Norfolk, where a short-lived Norman cathedral and a large Dominican priory once stood on the site of what is now Thetford Grammar School.