Hamsterley, County Durham
First screened 16 March 2008

What they found

Enigma
'The Castles', in the middle of farmers' fields at South Bedburn, near Hamsterley, County Durham, is real enigma. Various theories have been put forward for the structure but none have been tested archaeologically. Time Team's main objectives at this scheduled site were to try to discover its date and function.

There was certainly no shortage of stone rubble to dig through and investigate before the Team could be sure that they were looking at undisturbed archaeology. (Tony Robinson's back-of-an-envelope calculations estimated there are about 5,000 tons on the site altogether.) Pre-war excavations by a keen antiquarian had included some imaginative 'restoration' work, so no one could be sure that what they were looking at now was the same as it had been originally. Fortunately, the same antiquarian left a photographic record of the site, from which it proved possible to reconstruct the original positions of various identifiable stones.

Two phases
After some painstaking work, this enabled Time Team to identify two different phases of construction at the entrance to the enclosure. A circular 'guard house' type structure, which was at first thought to have been part of the original structure, was shown to have been added at a later date, when the entrance was remodelled. The original gateway was shown to have been flanked by two large facing stones, and would have made an impressive frontage, looking down the hill from the enclosure towards the stream.

The stone walls, measured at 5.1 metres wide in an excavation trench that uncovered both sides of the huge enclosure wall, were massive. They were shown to have been carefully built on terraces cut into the hillside, above a ditch on the outside. But landscape archaeologist Stewart was not convinced that they had a defensive purpose. They were, he argued, more for show; the structure was not positioned in the best defensive location in the landscape – indeed, in parts it was actually overlooked from the outside.

Inside the great walls, Time Team focused on two main trenches. One, in the middle, found evidence of some sort of structure – possibly a rectangular house built on top of an earlier round house. The other, against the edge of the wall, found a wall enclosing a possible pen for animals.

No firm date
Nowhere on the site was any firm dating evidence discovered, however. The experts were convinced from the excavations that it was most likely Iron Age or post-Roman. 'The Castles' has lost just a little of its enigma, with Time Team bringing a range of archaeological expertise and excavations to bear on the site for the first time.

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