The monks' manor

Time Team travelled to Brimham, in the Yorkshire Dales, to meet Chris and Barbara Bradley on their farm and solve a challenging archaeological jigsaw puzzle.

There is evidence of at least 1,000 years of farming on the land that now makes up Chris and Barbara's farm. The walls of the farm outbuildings are partially built with religious-looking masonry – some with Latin inscriptions – and the cows have uncovered what look like stone walls in the fields. Where did all this stone come from and what once stood where the farm is today?

Until Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, the land used to be owned by Fountains Abbey, and some of the inscriptions found in Chris's cowsheds look similar to the carvings on the nearby abbey, just six miles away. So this was the starting point for a three-day investigation in which Tony Robinson, Mick Aston and the team unearthed a story of how Chris and Barbara's farm was once part of a rich, thriving religious order – contributing to one of the most powerful medieval monasteries in Britain.

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