What they found

The chapel and the cesspit
Time Team came to Islip, the birthplace of Edward the Confessor, in search of a possible Saxon royal palace and a 13th-century chapel built in Edward's honour. The chapel was to prove elusive, and the team came to the conclusion that there was unlikely to have been a Saxon palace there at all. They did, however, uncover a grand moated medieval manor house in a field on the edge of the village.

Most of the time and effort of the diggers over the three days went into the search for the chapel. They had a detailed drawing to go on, together with an indication of its size and a rough location ('to the north of the church'). They also had a number of possible targets identified from old maps. The only thing that was missing was any sign of the chapel itself.

The chapel would have been an impressive structure in its day, but it wasn't maintained and was eventually used as a barn. According to an 1843 report, the building 'continued to be used as a barn or outhouse until about 1780 when being found dangerous it was taken down and the present barn constructed out of its material'.

Various trenches were dug to explore likely locations for the chapel. These included the local timber yard, the car park of the Red Lion pub, the garden of the promisingly-named 'Confessor's Gate' – and that of the house next door. For a while, the Team thought they had located the chapel there, but the stone walls that were uncovered turned out to belong to a 17th-century cesspit, complete with well-preserved human faeces.

'Ethelred's palace'
By the third day, then, with all efforts to trace the chapel having drawn a blank, attention turned to a field on the edge of the village. The site was initially identified by a reference to the 'supposed site of Ethelred's palace' on an 1876 map. The field contained 'lumps and bumps' clearly visible on the surface, but Stewart and Mick felt they were typical of a moated medieval site and that the reference to Ethelred's palace was an example of how local supposition can often be wrong. Their assessment was supported by the fact that John Flete's History of Westminster Abbey, written in 1443, referred to William de Curtlyngton building a manor house in Islip at some point during his time as Abbott of Westminster between 1315 and 1333.

A geophysics survey of the site produced clear results showing the former moat, perimeter wall and buildings. A trench dug across the site found the base of the wall still in place. Phil was able positively to identify the remains as medieval because, as he explained, 'All the pottery above it is medieval – there’s nothing earlier and nothing later, so it's sealed by medieval pottery. And, more importantly, there's a superb assemblage of roof tile.'

Big posh house
Paul Blinkhorn, Time Team's finds specialist, described the finds as 'a stunning collection of medieval glazed roof tiles', with 'incredible posh ridge tiles, the sort of thing you would only have got on a really big posh house in the medieval period'.

These included fine red glazed tiles and coxcomb ridge tiles, so named because of their similarity in appearance to a jester's hat, or coxcomb.

There was also a fragment of medieval glass uncovered that particularly interested Tony. Paul Blinkhorn and regular Time Team digger Brigid Gallagher identified it as quite likely being the base of a urinal – a glass vessel used by physicians of the day to collect a patient's urine, which could then be held up to the light for inspection and diagnosis of possible ailments.

Moated manor
In its heyday, the moated manor at Islip would have been a rather grand collection of separate stone buildings set around a great hall. With its newly channelled water supply, fishponds and extensive grounds it would have been a manor house fit for royalty to visit. It didn't, however, have any connection with Edward the Confessor or Ethelred's palace. As John Flete wrote in his History of Westminster Abbey, Abbott William de Curtlyngton 'built the manor of Islip from the foundations'. In other words, it was built from scratch and not on the site of any pre-existing structure.

It might not have been quite what the modern-day inhabitants of Islip had hoped for when they invited Time Team to their village as they marked the millennium of Edward the Confessor's birth. But it added greatly to their understanding of the history of where they live nonetheless.

Find out about medieval moated sites.

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