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The monastery and the mansion
For this programme, the second in the 2005 series, Time Team visited the village of Nether Poppleton, near York. The local residents were itching to know more about the place where they live. Mysterious earthworks cover a field around their church and the locals have bought the land to protect it from development. But what do these earthworks represent?
Most of the houses in Nether Poppleton date from the 18th century or later, and yet the village seems to follow a standard planned medieval layout common throughout Yorkshire. There is also a reference in the Domesday Book to the village as the land of St Everilda. Did this Anglo-Saxon saint have her nunnery here?
Using the enthusiasm of the village residents to the full, on the first day Time Team recruited 50 of them to dig test pits in their own gardens, while Phil Harding and his team tackled the site around the church. In the light of the reference to St Everilda, the Team – and Mick Aston in particular – was especially interested in whether the Norman church was built on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon building.
Was the village originally Saxon, Norman or medieval? With Time Team's help, the people of Poppleton were on a mission to find out for themselves.
Time Trail
The sort of dig carried out at Nether Poppleton is what Time Team likes doing best. Not only did Mick Aston get to go in search of his favourite archaeological subject – a monastery – but the whole project involved the local community from start to finish.
Although it can be very hard work, the Team members enjoy nothing better than working with local people to find out about the place in which they live. Mick describes the interaction with locals as 'the most important thing about Time Team'.
At the dig in Raunds, Northamptonshire, for the 2003 series, for example, where Time Team excavated a Saxon cemetery under a garden fishpond, he said, 'The reason I got involved with this whole business in the first place was because I wanted to get more people interested.'
Series producer Tim Taylor describes this sort of 'back-garden archaeology' as 'what Time Team's all about'. It's what led to the Time Team Big Dig in 2003, when thousands of people around the country dug one-metre-square test pits in their gardens in the biggest archaeological participation project the country has ever seen. The Nether Poppleton programme saw the same principles put into practice on a smaller, more localised level.
For anyone interested in what's involved in digging a test pit and what finds to look out for, Phil's guide to digging and the Time Team Big Dig website's Guide to finds will be of interest. If you decide to dig one in your own garden, don't forget to call in archaeological experts if you find anything of interest!
The focus of the dig at Nether Poppleton was the search for any evidence of a Saxon church or monastic settlement predating the existing Norman church. Surprisingly, given Mick Aston's special interest in the subject, Time Team has carried out only a handful of digs at monastic sites. These include:
Syon House, west London, for the 2004 series, where the Team went in search of a Brigittine abbey that was once one of the richest in the land; and
Chicksands, Bedfordshire, for the 2002 series, now a disused RAF bomber base but once home to a monastery occupied by the Gilbertines, an order best known for its unusual practice of having both monks and nuns on the same site.
The first monasteries in the British Isles were in Ireland, from where they were spreading to Scotland, Wales and England even before the arrival of St Patrick around 433 AD. Later Irish monks followed his example in spreading the monastic life, including St Colomba at Iona (563 AD) and St Aidan at Lindisfarne (635 AD) in Northumbria. Among the lasting accomplishments of these Celtic monasteries were beautiful illuminated manuscripts, bibles and prayer books, such as the famous Lindisfarne Gospels.
When St Augustine came to England to spread the Christian message in 597 AD, he established a Benedictine monastery at Canterbury. The Anglo-Saxon monasteries established after his arrival became famous throughout Europe as centres of knowledge and learning. The best-known of them include Glastonbury and Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.
Monastic life reached its peak in the medieval era. At its height, there were more than 500 different monasteries in Britain, with the biggest – such as Fountains or Rievaulx abbeys – accommodating up to 1,000 monks at a time. The Black Death of 1348, however, hit many monasteries hard and large numbers never recovered. So they were already in relative decline by the time Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church over the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce. Their immense lands and wealth were confiscated and distributed to Henry's supporters after he dissolved the monasteries in the 1530s.
For further information, see Monasteries: a short history.
Test your knowledge with our quick quiz. You'll find all the answers by digging around in this week's pages and following our Time Trail for the Chenies programme.
Poppleton Time Trial
Where are the earliest known monasteries?
Egypt
Thailand
Palestine
Who founded the first Anglo-Saxon monasteries?
St Patrick
St Colomba
St Augustine
In 529 AD, St Benedict founded what became the first monastery in the Benedictine Order. Where was it?
Lindisfarne
Iona
Monte Cassino
When did monasteries reach their peak of importance in Britain?
The 8th century
The early 14th century
The 16th century
Which of the following was NOT true of Gilbertine monasteries?
The first one was founded in England
They included both men and women
They were specially favoured by Henry VIII
In which decade did the 'dissolution of the monasteries' take place?
The 1530s
The 1430s
The 1630s
Answers here.
Archaeological finds often reveal just a handful of clues about what went on at a particular site in the past, with even the best-preserved or spectacular artefacts sometimes providing at best only a partial picture. However, some of the most prominent features of the activity of our ancestors can be seen in the way they interacted with the landscape. Agriculture, boundary markings, monuments and burials can all leave traces as crop marks or earthwork features.
Our predecessors altered the landscape further when they created settlements. Even when there is nothing left of the original settlements, the plans of towns and villages, and their interconnecting roads, can reveal how an area has developed over time. The investigation of such things is the domain of the landscape archaeologist.
Stewart Ainsworth
Time Team's landscape archaeologist, Stewart Ainsworth, has a full time job as an English Heritage inspector in their Landscape Investigation Team. English Heritage has just over 20 landscape specialists in this unit, which has to cover the whole of the country. With his highly tuned observational skills, Stewart can notice subtle changes in the landscape and analyse how features may have appeared. He started in the second series of Time Team, which was screened back in 1995, and he's still picking the answers to Tony Robinson's archaeological questions out of the ground today – without ever having dug a trowel's worth of dirt.
How's it done?
It takes a long time to recognise all of the different types of features on the ground and understand which archaeological periods they belong to. On Time Team Stewart usually spends his time studying maps from different periods, walking the landscape and getting an aerial perspective from a helicopter. He gradually builds up his theory of how an area developed and then presents it to the team. Nine times out of ten the geophysics results and trenches end up confirming Stewart's original bits of detective work – even if the initial impressions on the ground seem to conflict his theories. Then, like Sherlock Holmes, he appears at the end of the three days to explain it all with a slight air of 'I told you so'.
Can anybody do it?
If you've got a map you can have a go. 'You can understand an awful lot about the development of an area without even looking at the ground,' says Stewart. 'If you've got a map and know what to look for, it's amazing what you can find. Large-scale maps show you the route ways into a settlement; and the way they follow the landscape or change direction can indicate different uses of the landscape. When you get into the closer, more detailed maps you can see field and property boundaries and even trace how a settlement has grown over time.'
Boots are made for walking
If you can combine exploration on a map with walking on the ground you can really start having fun with some investigations. The odd sharp bend on a track on the map can lead you to a host of lumps and bumps on the ground that can indicate underlying archaeology – revealing the original cause of the road changing direction. Other features can become more obvious when you're out walking the landscape and understanding how the real world relates to the map. And of course sometimes not every feature on the ground is represented on even the best maps.
It's all about learning to read the land, according to Stewart. 'Walking the fields with a map and trying to understand the lumps and bumps is great,' he says. 'You just can't beat it!'
Monasteries in the Landscape by Mick Aston (Tempus, 2000) £14.99
Mick explains how and why monasticism developed in Britain and why monasteries were placed where they were. This book also takes a look outside the monastery at the agricultural, industrial and commercial activities of monks and friars.
Discovering Abbeys and Priories by Geoffrey Wright (Shire, 1998) paperback £5.99
The new edition of this user-friendly handbook clarifies the difference between abbeys and priories, traces the history of monasteries from Anglo-Saxon times to the dissolution, and describes the different monastic orders. Considerable reference is made to sites open to the public.
Abbeys and Priories by Glyn Coppack (Batsford/English Heritage, 1990) paperback £15.99
This well-illustrated introduction to the archaeology of monasteries explains the development of the variations on the familiar layout of church and cloisters; it discusses the monastic precincts and such fundamental topics as the drainage and sanitation.
Brick Building in Britain by R W Brunskill (Orion, 1997) paperback £16.99 ISBN: 0575065354
Tudor remains are often instantly recognisable by the brickwork. The Tudors reintroduced the use of bricks in building in Britain for the first time since the Romans. The manufacture of brick, its use in historic buildings and the changing styles of brick-based construction and decoration are all described in this well-illustrated book.
Where are the earliest known monasteries?
Egypt
Who founded the first Anglo-Saxon monasteries?
St Augustine
In 529 AD, St Benedict founded what became the first monastery in the Benedictine Order. Where was it?
Monte Cassino
When did monasteries reach their peak of importance in Britain?
The early 14th century
Which of the following was NOT true of Gilbertine monasteries?
They were specially favoured by Henry VIII
In which decade did the 'dissolution of the monasteries' take place?
The 1530s