Court of the Kentish king

For this programme, Tony and the Team descended on the orchards of Kent to search for the site of the lost Anglo-Saxon palace of Eastry – and investigated not one but two likely contenders.

One site seemed to have it all: lots of Saxon brooches discovered by metal detectorists, a prominent position on a hilltop, and what looks like the remains of three defensive ditches on aerial photographs.

But a mile away the owner of Eastry Court, one of the oldest houses in England, believes that his gardens hold the remains of the palace.

It was up to the archaeologists to try to find out what's really going on. But their quest turned out to be anything but straightforward and the definitive evidence for anything like a palace was to prove difficult to pin down.

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