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For years Time Team fan Frances Davies, of Skipsea, Humberside, has been collecting finds from the field outside her back door. They include Neolithic flint implements, Saxon remains and even the odd piece of Roman pot. But the best – and the most numerous – are medieval pottery finds dating from the time of the Norman Conquest.
Indeed, so many finds turned up when Frances went fieldwalking after the local farmer ploughed her field more deeply than usual that she called in the Time Team geophysics crew to carry out a private survey. Together with the finds, what their survey revealed was enough to persuade Time Team to carry out a full three-day investigation. This turned up not just an individual farmstead or settlement on the land, but what appears to have been an entire village, built around the time of the Norman Conquest and connected with nearby Skipsea Castle, which was built soon after the Conquest and was once the seat of power of the Norman overlord of the whole area.
Time Trail
The period following the Norman Conquest in 1066 was one of great change – and immense suffering – in England. After defeating King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror made good his victory by almost everywhere replacing the Saxon nobility with his own followers. Saxon estates were confiscated and land redistributed as a reward to those who supported William and fought on his side against Harold.
Opposition was savagely crushed, particularly after the revolt of 1069. Led by the kingdom of Northumbria, this soon spread across the whole of northern England. William's response was as brutal as it was decisive. Not only were the rebels defeated in battle, but entire villages were razed and crops and seedcorn destroyed. The whole landscape was devastated as William moved northwards. Thousands starved during the winter of 1069-70, leaving behind a depopulated countryside. The 'Harrying of the North', as it became known, was so severe that 'there was no village inhabited between York and Durham', according to Simeon of Durham, writing in the early 12th century.
The Domesday Book of 1086 records that seven families were still living in Skipsea parish at that time, so the area was not entirely depopulated during the Harrying of the North. It is probable that the settlement uncovered by Time Team grew up in connection with Skipsea Castle, one of the many Norman castles built in the aftermath of the Conquest to consolidate William's power and control the local population. Skipsea Castle was built around 1086 and consisted of a 15-metre high motte (or central stronghold) surrounded by a lake and marshland. It was connected to its bailey (or enclosed area) by a timber causeway across the marsh.
The settlement continued in use through the medieval era. The sequence of pottery finds made on the site indicates that it probably declined as the town of Skipsea grew. At any rate, the evidence of ridge and furrow ploughing overlying the settlement archaeology on a large part of the site demonstrates that it was abandoned during the medieval period. This was possibly as a result of the sea encroaching on agricultural land and forcing the relocation of existing farmsteads. At a time when this stretch of coast is eroding at the rate of two metres a year, Time Team's investigation has at least ensured that this example of Britain's many deserted medieval villages is lost no longer.
Now try our Time Trial quiz to see how much you know about Britain's lost villages.
Watched the programme, browsed the web pages? Now try our quick quiz to see how you get on.
How many of the feudal townships in Yorkshire were listed as wholly or partially 'waste' in the Domesday Book of 1086?
A quarter
A third
A half
What caused a particularly large number of villages to become deserted during the 14th century?
Coastal erosion
War
Plague
What resulted in more villages being abandoned in Britain than any other single cause?
Plague
War
Sheep farming
Which century saw more villages becoming deserted than any other?
1st century
15th century
20th century
In the Domesday Book, a settlement called 'Hildreschelf' is recorded in Yorkshire. Why was it demolished?
To make way for Castle Howard
As punishment for opposing William the Conqueror
Because of coastal flooding
Which abandoned settlement, investigated by Time Team during the 2004 series, was once one of the richest and most powerful cities in Scotland?
Stirling
Edinburgh
Roxburgh
Answers here.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
The discovery of prehistoric and medieval finds in a field that had recently been ploughed more deeply than in the past led to the landowner hiring GSP Prospection, who carry out all Time Team's geophysics work, to conduct a private survey. This showed a range of rectilinear and curvilinear features – enough to interest Time Team, working with the county archaeologist, David Evans, in what might lie beneath the surface of this stretch of relatively high land near Skipsea, Humberside.
Further magnetometry surveys carried out when Time Team was on site revealed a great array of largely rectilinear features.
Trenches placed over some of these features uncovered a series of ditches and pits. One trench investigating a D-shaped enclosure revealed a ditch with a good sequence of deposits, suggesting that it was an important re-used enclosure. All the features were dated, by large amounts of pottery, to the 11th-13th centuries AD.
Excavation within the centre of a rectilinear enclosure uncovered a rectangular spread of occupation debris and stone rubble footings. Also dating to the 11th-13th centuries, this area was suggestive of a timber-framed building.
Environmental core samples taken to the south of these features, in low land, revealed pollen sequences in peat that are longer than those associated with the nearby Skipsea Mere, dating back to the Palaeolithic.
A trench placed over one geophysical anomaly revealed a large rectangular lead vessel. Smoke-blackened on the underside and discovered along with an iron fire-stand, it was interpreted as a medieval saltpan. A polished whetstone was also found.
Overall, it was clear that the site represented a previously undiscovered Norman settlement. The dating of this settlement was broadly contemporary with the construction of Skipsea Castle, about one kilometre to the north, and the development of the settlement that grew up around it. The pottery sequence found on the site suggested that the settlement had declined as the town of Skipsea grew.
Time Team film crews shoot more than 30 hours of film over the three days of a dig, all of which has to be condensed into the 45 minutes (by the time you've allowed for adverts) that make up a programme. Every dig has three separate camera crews, each made up of a camera operator, sound engineer and camera assistant. These roam the site independently capturing footage.
These crews of highly experienced film makers work long hours, often having to fight the elements (as at Skipsea, where it was blowing a gale for much of the dig) to get the shots that make Time Team an award-winning programme, consistently highly rated for its technical ability by the television industry.
'The idea of recording a scene is to get over to the viewer a sense of what is happening in one go,' says number one cameraman, Mike Todd. 'Essentially we shoot the scene a couple or more times to get in all the details. For example, we might record a conversation between Tony and an archaeologist with both of them on screen. Then we'd record the conversation again focusing on each of them as individuals. And then we'd film some of the archaeology that they were talking about.
'Finally, we film the scene from a distance to get what's called a wide shot, which gets the scene into context within the site. We probably film each item three or four times. When it's all edited together in the cutting room it looks like one big smooth scene.'
The film crews have worked very closely with the archaeologists for years and the whole package of doing an excavation at the same time as making a film now works very smoothly. Obviously when some delicate finds are lifted from the ground the process cannot be repeated, so that's when multiple cameras will all film the same thing from different angles.
'The key is in trying to get as much material together as possible to help the director tell their story,' says Mike. 'Time Team is not a set-up show, so a lot of stuff that happens is spontaneous. Obviously we need people to stand in certain places for the right light and stuff like that, but once they start talking we just let them run with it, which is what makes it natural. The constraints of working within the three days of digging also add extra levels to the show. If it's bad weather we still shoot and they still dig. It's just another part of the story to be told.'
Hear Mike Todd talking about being a cameraman.
For this programme Time Team organised two reconstruction cameos: one involving pottery and the other a flint axe.
The pottery reconstruction.
Frances, who owns the site at Skipsea, had found many pieces of pottery while out fieldwalking. But one in particular had been of special interest to her because it contained a thumb imprint of the person who made it and she and her friends had not been able to work out what it came from.
Time Team's experts identified it as the handle from a skillet, and John Hudson, the clay potter called in for the cameo on this programme, was asked to make a replica of the original and glaze it in the same way. In fact, John was able to show that the handle of the original skillet had been put on upside down, and so included that feature in the replica.
John was also on hand to make replicas of many of the other pots that were found on the site, demonstrating clearly what kind of pottery the different fragments had come from. He ended up producing a beautiful timeline of pots, covering the duration of the occupation of the site.
John Hudson, clay potter.
Remit.
To make and fire on site copies of pottery based on sherds found at Skipsea.
The project.
A large group of sherds, found by fieldwalking, was laid out on site in a timeline. They dated mostly from the medieval period, with one sherd from the Roman period. A choice was made from the assemblage of mainly local wares from the 11th-15th centuries.
The pieces chosen were:
Two 'pimply ware' cooking pots, 11th century
Two Beverley jugs, 12th century
Two Humber-ware jugs/mugs, 15th century
Two Wakefield cups, 16th century
One locally produced frying pan/skillet, 16th-17th century
The above were all fired. Also produced but not fired were:
One Toksey cooking pot, 11th century
One Beverley cooking pot, 12th century
The wheel, clay and glaze.
The wheel was a copy of a momentum kick wheel illustrated in Piccolpasso's Tre Libre Dell'arte Del Vasio. The clays were West Yorkshire coal-measures clay and a mixed body of white-firing clay. The latter was used for the pimply-ware cooking pots and was grogged (tempered) with sand and grit. The glaze mixture was a suspension-type using clay and galena (lead sulphide) and simply poured or splashed onto the pots.
The kiln.
The kiln was a simple cubic construction using fire bricks as a base and local bricks found on site. The placing-area measured approximately one cubic foot, the floor being a commercially produced piece of kiln shelf resting on fire bricks. The whole structure was open-topped, being sealed with old roofing tiles. The vent was left small to create a 'reducing atmosphere' in order to turn the glaze green. Firing was effected by two 50mm propane gas blow torches through two fire mouths at opposing corners of the structure. It took four and a quarter hours to reach a temperature of just over 1100°C. On opening the kiln, all the pots were fired and intact.
John Hudson's website is at www.hudsonclaypotter.com
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
The flint axe reconstruction.
As well as John Hudson's pottery, Time Team also produced a reproduction flint axe for this programme. Making this proved to be extremely time-consuming, demonstrating the amount of work that must have gone into making stone tools during the prehistoric era.
Members of the Skipsea History Group volunteered their time and energies to polishing a flint axe knapped by Phil. Their work was timed and between them, working in shifts, they clocked up an impressive 22 hours of polishing!
The volunteers' time was taken up grinding off the rough edges against a block of local sandstone, trying to get it as close as possible to the smoothness of the original found on the site. Phil was very impressed by their efforts and the results of their work, which clearly showed just how much work would have gone into producing an object like that one.
The Lost Villages of England by Maurice Beresford (Sutton Publishing, 1998) £14.99
Still the 'classic' on deserted villages in England, by one of the leading figures in the post-second world war research into DMVs (deserted medieval villages).
The Making of the English Landscape by William Hoskins (Penguin, 1991) £10.99
Another 'classic', by the second professor who led the postwar research into DMVs.
Deserted Villages by T Rowley and J Wood (Shire, 1995) paperback £4.99
Explains why sites have been deserted, what a site might look like today and procedures for recording them. Also lists some good examples of sites to visit.
Villages in the Landscape by Trevor Rowley (Orion, 1994) paperback £6.99
Examines the role of villages in England from prehistory to the present day. Includes tips for finding out more about past villages and helpful guidelines for practical fieldwork.
Everyday Life in Medieval England by Christopher Dyer (Hambledon, 1994) hardback £35
The villages may have become deserted and buried, but this book brings their inhabitants back to life. Topics range from freshwater fishing to rural violence, and the author examines deep social processes as well as everyday living.
How many of the feudal townships in Yorkshire were listed as wholly or partially 'waste' in the Domesday Book of 1086?
A third
What caused a particularly large number of villages to become deserted during the 14th century?
Plague
What resulted in more villages being abandoned in Britain than any other single cause?
Sheep farming
Which century saw more villages becoming deserted than any other?
15th century
In the Domesday Book, a settlement called 'Hildreschelf' is recorded in Yorkshire. Why was it demolished?
To make way for Castle Howard
Which abandoned settlement, investigated by Time Team during the 2004 series, was once one of the richest and most powerful cities in Scotland?
Roxburgh