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On the mouth of the Thames, within easy reach of the Channel, lie the remains of Queenborough Castle. With a royal name, and an equally regal history, this unprepossessing site hides some intriguing mysteries – buried, along with the building's remains, over centuries.
For this programme, Time Team travelled to the Isle of Sheppey, in Kent, to investigate the remains of the last royal castle to be built in the medieval period, in an effort to unlock some of its long-held secrets. The castle construction was ordered by Edward III during a lull in the Hundred Years War, but opinion is divided as to whether this was a defensive castle, designed to protect the Thames estuary, or a royal bolthole for the king to escape the plague.
Excavations by the archaeologists on a mound in the centre of the town ought to help the Team deduce the castle's true purpose. Except Queenborough's unique circular design causes much scratching of heads as the experts try to figure out exactly which parts of the fortification they've uncovered.
Meanwhile, the historic town, built at the same time as the castle to a classic medieval design, also comes under scrutiny. This includes an account of a unique journey along the Thames by paper boat – leading the team to conduct a bizarre experiment involving a boat made of paper propelled by oars made of cod.
Watched the programme, browsed the web pages? Now try our quick quiz to see how you get on.
Who did Edward III, who built Queenborough castle, name the castle and town after?
His queen, Philippa
His sheep
His mistress
During a lull in which war did Edward have Queenborough castle built?
War of the Roses
English civil war
Hundred Years War
How many children did Edward, a notorious womaniser, have with his wife?
None
One
Thirteen
For how many years did Edward rule after his father was deposed in January 1327?
One
Forty
Fifty
Who decided to demolish Queenborough castle because it was of 'no practical use'?
Charles I
The Parliamentarians
The Levellers
Which country's raiders took Queenborough in 1667?
Sweden
The Netherlands
France
Answers here.
Unlike on some Time Team digs, there was never any danger of missing the target on this one. Although nothing remains of it above ground today, Queenborough Castle was a vast construction in its day, said to have had 40 rooms within the massive structure of its rotunda and surrounded by a circular moat and curtain wall.
Queenborough was the last royal new town of the Middle Ages – a planned settlement that was laid out at the same time as the castle, which was built in 1361. The original street plan is still clearly visible on maps and on the ground today.
Located at the end of the creek running from the river Swale, the castle held a strategic position near the entrance to the Thames. It was built by Edward III during the Hundred Years War with France to guard the passage to London Ð or perhaps, as some historians have suggested, to provide the king and his queen, Philippa (after whom Edward named the town), with a bolthole to which they could flee in the event of plague. The castle fell into disrepair in the following centuries, and was demolished after the Parliamentarians decided it was too expensive to refurbish after the English Civil War.
The Team was aided in its attempt to locate and provide a detailed picture of the castle by several old illustrations, including one drawn in the 1640s, and a detailed plan. Unfortunately, the pictures didnÕt agree with each other; and the plan, on which great reliance had been placed, turned out not to be entirely accurate. Nor was there any indication of its orientation or scale. The fact that virtually all of the stone from the castle had been Ôrobbed outÕ and that the soil conditions were not conducive to good geophysics survey results also added to the difficulty.
All of this meant that it took a great deal of head-scratching before the pieces of the castle jigsaw being unearthed in the trenches could be pieced together. In Phil's trench, in particular, there were several occasions when the castle seemed to have disappeared altogether, not showing up in the excavation or in geophysics. In the end, Phil had to resort to the use of an auger to work out that there were the remains of the castle cellars underneath where he was digging.
Finally, the excavations allowed the Team to produce a well-informed reconstruction of what the castle would have looked like, its orientation and its vast scale. The rotunda at its heart, it was confirmed, must have been something like 40 metres in radius – certainly big enough for the 40 rooms and 407 windows it was said to contain.
For this programme, Time Team reconstructed a paper boat. This was in an attempt to re-enact one of Queenborough's more bizarre happenings when, back in 1614, an eccentric Thames ferryman named John Taylor, who called himself the Ôwater poetÕ, made an extraordinary journey from London to Queenborough in a paper boat. Taylor's 40-mile journey stood as the world-record distance travelled in a paper boat until Tim FitzHigham broke it for Comic Relief in 2003. Tim and his associate, Stephen Wisdom, were called upon by Time Team to try to reconstruct a boat such as John Taylor's. Tim FitzHigham gives an account of the experience.
You've had some previous experience in rowing a paper boat, haven't you?
A bit. The paper boat record set by John Taylor was the world's oldest surviving maritime record.ÊIt had stood at the 40-mile distance that Taylor rowed until in 2003 I decided to try to break it to raise some money for Comic Relief. I found Taylor's story in the footnote of a very dusty history book in a very dusty corner of a library and then forgot all about it for four years, till Comic Relief phoned up.
My trip down the river was amazing. Like Taylor's boat, mine just about held together to help me make it the staggering distance of 160 miles.ÊWhat's left of my paper boat is now in the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, Cornwall.Ê
What was the aim of the programme cameo?
My original paper boat was made of sheets of A4 and A3 recycled paper, put together by me and a very experienced boat maker called Mega Kayaks.ÊIt was made in much the same way that you used to make papier mache balloon heads when you were five.
Taylor's boat, on the other hand, was made of hempseed paper, varnished with the same varnish people would have used on wooden boats in the 17th century.ÊThe aim of the cameo was to see if a hempseed boat would hold up in the water, as the only source we have that Taylor's story is true is Taylor himself Ð and he could have just made it up.Ê
Mind you, if it hadn't worked and we'd proved he didn't make the paper boat journey, that would have meant I'd spent months of my life on a river not breaking the world's oldest maritime record but a figment of a deranged 17th-century poet's imagination! This would have been a blow to me, so I'm quite pleased it worked.
What materials were used?
We used giant sheets of hempseed paper, lots of hempseed string and varnish –
lots of varnish.ÊHempseed is one of the things they used to make paper in the 17th century. When Taylor rowed his paper boat he was trying, in his own special way, to prove that British hempseed paper was the best in the world – today he would be the head of marketing somewhere.Ê
We also followed Taylor's example and made the oars out of two giant dried fish – he was a genius! – strapped to two canes.ÊTaylor turned his time in his paper boat into a poem called 'In Praise of Hempseed, or the voyage of Mr Roger Bird and the writer hearof in a boat made of Browne-Paper'. Despite its catchy title, it is sadly not on tour around the UK at the moment.
How did your team make the boat?
We folded the paper as you would fold an envelope and then stitched it around the sides.ÊIn fact, we basically made a giant envelope like you would post a letter in and then made big loo rolls out of the remaining hempseed paper to keep the envelope open at the top so that I didn't get stuck in it and sink.ÊIt's not the best design for a boat but as Taylor left us no drawings, and the time on Time Team is really short, we did not have much choice but to try this and hope it worked.
What was the hardest part of the task?
By far the hardest moments were the first seconds the boat hit the water. If you're a boat maker or know about boats it's easy making something that will theoretically float but whether it will actually float is a different thing. That first second when I was on the water was very exciting/scary. Would it sink without trace and me with it or would it make it back to the shore?ÊTrusting something that's essentially made of paper and loo roll not to sink was by far the hardest part of the task for me.
Did you learn anything by doing the reconstruction?
I learned that the key to everything is rowlocks. If you have a firm place to pull the oars through the water then you will always be fine, no matter what you make the boat out of.ÊYou can make the boat out of cheese if you like but as long as the point of contact between the oars and the boat is firm, you're fine.ÊIf the point that connects the oar to the boat is flimsy Ð if it is made of hempseed, for example Ð then you've got trouble.Ê
What we actually discovered, after we'd finished filming, was that the boat we made worked much, much better as a kayak or canoe rather than as a rowing boat.ÊThis is how I broke the record in 2003, by taking the strain off the hull of the boat and using a freestanding paddle. This is also probably how Taylor ended up propelling his boat as it disintegrated around him.ÊWe know that by the end of his third day on the river he was actually swimming and punting the now soggy circle of paper along with his nose. But according to him, he set off rowing and that's what we wanted to try to test.
If you did it again would you have done it differently?
Nope. It really did work and that's the amazing thing, You've got to take your sou'wester off to all the team involved. I think I'd have liked a bit more time for the varnish to dry, as if we'd had longer we could have put more coats of varnish on and that might just have made it a bit stronger – especially the fish oars, which got very soggy.
Are there any other reconstructions you would like to try?
Lots and lots. As a small boy I was obsessed with Thor Heyerdahl, the man who took a papyrus raft across the sea from Morocco to Barbados and a balsa wood raft from Peru to Polynesia. This was very much the kind of archaeology I loved – epic, water based and with little chance of success.ÊSo, in a small way, getting to do the paper boat reconstruction was archaeological heaven to me.
It's great when archaeology feeds practical work and vice versa. In all the other sciences, people in goggles get a hypothesis and test it, and so often in archaeology this testing bit of the science is left out.ÊIt's clearly there in labs Ð dendrochronology is a good example Ð but so often (probably due to time again) in the field we don't get a chance.
For me, the reconstructions really make me believe more in the theory. They're also often great fun and in this one I got to meet the mayor of the Isle of Sheppey. What more could you ask for?
Tim FitzHigham's day job is writing and telling jokes. His website is at www.fitzhigham.com
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
The Medieval Castle in England and Wales by Norman Pounds (Cambridge University Press, 1994) £18.95
There are a lot of books around on castles but this is the best one for telling you what they're all about. I get tired of looking at plans and pictures without knowing the social and economic background to why castles were built and how they operated. This definitely fills that gap! 'The best book of all on the subject' – Mick Aston
Norman Castles in Britain by Derek Wren (John Baker)
Standard text with gazetteer of the Norman castles of Britain.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Castles on the Web
www.castlesontheweb.com
An extensive resource, the Castles on the Web site includes sections on medieval studies, myths and legends, virtual tours of castles, books, photo archives and even how to rent or stay in a castle. Its weblinks to sites which themselves provide links to other castle-related websites could keep you browsing until Domesday. Castles on the Web also has a useful message/question board and a variety of discussion forums on the subject.
The English Medieval Castle
www.britannia.com/history/david1.html
Three illustrated essays on the English medieval castle provide a good basic introduction to the subject.
The Castles of Wales
www.castlewales.com/home.html
Jeffrey Thomas's site, with good general background information about Norman castles as well as being an excellent overall resource on Welsh castles.
Build a Medieval Castle
www.yourchildlearns.com/castle.htm
Free educational software. Make your own model medieval castle – a learning activity that teaches about history, feudalism and life in the Middle Ages. Build your own medieval castle, complete with towers, gatehouse and keep, to help understand how an army laid siege to a castle, how a castle was defended or what it might have been like to live in a castle.
Who did Edward III, who built Queenborough castle, name the castle and town after?
His queen, Philippa
During a lull in which war did Edward have Queenborough castle built?
Hundred Years War
How many children did Edward, a notorious womaniser, have with his wife?
Thirteen
For how many years did Edward rule after his father was deposed in January 1327?
Fifty
Who decided to demolish Queenborough castle because it was of 'no practical use'?
The Parliamentarians
Which country's raiders took Queenborough in 1667?
The Netherlands