The bodies in the shed

For this programme, the first in the 2006 series, Time Team visited Glendon Hall in Northamptonshire, where local resident Martin Hipwell had uncovered a skeleton while building his mother a new house. Not just one skeleton, in fact, but a number of them, which appeared in an apparently regular sequence as he dug the foundations for his mother's new home.

So what were they doing in outbuildings of a four-centuries-old English country house? And why did no one know they were there? As usual, Time Team had just three days to find out.

Friends in the south
Glendon Hall is a patchwork of different styles and phases of architecture dating back to the 17th century. Martin Hipwell's family live in the stable block, overlooking the Victorian workshop where he discovered the bodies. His family gave the burials the nickname 'our friends in the south'.

Time Team's experts for the programme included Jacqueline (Jackie) McKinley, an osteoarchaeologist from Wessex Archaeology, and historic buildings consultant Richard Morriss. New Time Team regular Helen Geake worked with them on historical research, together with the rest of the Team, old and new.

It became clear early on, as a result of the regular layout of the graves and their east-west alignment that this was a Christian cemetery, almost certainly attached to the medieval church of St Helen at Glendon. A garden folly in the grounds of Glendon Hall and some beautiful painted glass windows inside were believed to come from the old church. The windows predated stained glass decoration techniques, using just two colours, yellow and black and represented 'top notch quality' work by 'top of the range Flemish glaziers', according to Richard Morriss, who dated them to 1563. The date posed something of a puzzle because the religious iconography they contained would have been frowned upon in the Protestant England of Elizabeth I.

Exploring historical documents, Helen Geake found the first reference to the church dated from 1254, with others going through to 1812. It was always fairly small: 'consists of body and chancel', as one description from the 1720s put it, and after the disappearance of the village of Glendon in 1514, it became a private chapel for the owners of Glendon Hall. Along with many others during this period, the village was destroyed, and its 62 occupants evicted, in that year to make way for the new hall and sheep pasture (see Britain's lost villages). According to the 1517 'Domesday of Inclosure', one Robert Mallory held part of the manor and had 12 houses, of which he swept away nine for enclosure for sheep farming.

Finding any trace of either the church or the old village of Glendon proved difficult. A series of rectangular platforms lining the ancient 'holloway' (literally a 'hollow way' or sunken road) through the site seemed an obvious location for the former houses of Glendon's peasant farmers. But excavation found no evidence of domestic habitation, and it was concluded that these were more likely to have been the sites of cattle pens and barns. The site of the village itself, it was thought by the end of the three days digging, was probably located underneath the hall.

The church, likewise, proved elusive. The boundaries of the cemetery were identified with a high degree of confidence after more than 40 burials on at least five different levels were excavated (see Dem bones, dem bones). But physical evidence of the church was limited to a short stretch of possible 'robbed-out' wall (with all of its stones removed) and one possible foundation stone. The rest, it was decided, most probably lay underneath the outbuilding used by Time Team as its incident room. A 'spire' featuring in an early drawing of the hall was thought to have been a garden folly.

As with many sites when they come to be excavated, that at Glendon did not tell a single, simple story. As well as the burials and medieval pottery and other finds, including locally made Lyveden ware (see Lyveden New Bield), other discoveries made during Time Team's dig included evidence of both Saxon and Roman occupation. Indeed, the most beautiful find of the whole dig was contained in a Roman cremation burial, which analysis showed to be that of a mid-teenage girl. A well-preserved glass vessel was found alongside a pottery urn, inside which was found to be another vessel, finely made from glass no thicker than that in a light bulb.

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