One thousand years of British history in three days
York
26 March 2000

The imperial mausoleum site, in the Royal York Hotel grounds.

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The Viking street site, at Walmgate.

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The medieval hospital site, in the Museum Gardens.

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All panoramic photographs and QTVRs © Steve Shearn at SAS VR.

As if trying to discover all that can be discovered about a site in just three days wasn't challenge enough, when the Time Team Live programme went to York in September 1999, the Team set themselves three very different sites to investigate as well. 'I know,' you can imagine some bright spark at the Time Team planning meeting suggesting. 'York has got lots of remains from the Roman, Viking and medieval periods. Instead of choosing between them, why don't we go for all three?' And so it was that Tony Robinson and the team of experts found themselves faced with the challenge of explaining 1,000 years of British history over a sunny late summer weekend.

The three sites explored at York comprised:

• A Roman cemetery under the lawn of the Victorian Royal York Hotel next to York railway station. Here the Team uncovered three skeletons – belonging to a young man, a mature woman and, most poignantly, a four-year-old girl. Next to the young man were chicken bones, the remains of a 'feast for the dead' to mark his passage to the afterlife. Other finds included various coins and fragments of glass, similar to that made in a reconstruction of Roman glass-making techniques carried out for the programme.

• A Viking 'tenement block' beneath a derelict plot at Walmgate. Similar to the building found at Coppergate during the 1970s, this excavation produced remains of wattle boundary fences, amber, leather-working and grains, seeds and nuts indicative of the Viking diet. It also yielded a superb glass bead, unlike anything found in Britain before.

• The medieval hospital of St Leonard's, in the Museum Gardens by the River Ouse. This site was fully explored, making it possible to locate all the major structures of this large medieval complex. There was also a second world war air-raid shelter, uncovered on the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of war and stretching the period covered by the Team excavations in York to the best part of two millennia.

The Team's trip to York was not only covered live on television. Events were reported as they unfolded on the Time Team Live website. By far the most ambitious such project yet attempted in British archaeology on the internet, this attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors during the course of the weekend. Even before the Team got to York, the website was up and running with a wealth of detail about the city, its history, past excavations and sources of further information and reading. And during the weekend, our cyber-team backed up what was appearing on the television screens with a huge range of material covering every aspect of the excavations.

RealVideo snippets revealed off-screen activity, while RealAudio interviews with the Team and other experts gave the lowdown on what was happening at the three main sites and in the incident room. In between the live broadcasts, a diary and regular updates provided detailed reports of what was going on. Questions were answered and discussions took place on the Forum. And photos and information about the finds were posted almost as soon as they were made. You can still access all of this information by exploring the Live web pages and reading through the 'Old Topics' on the Time Team Forum.

Seal of St Leonard's Hospital, 1478.

6th-century Saxon pot from the Royal York Hotel site.

Viking glass bead from Walmgate – has no parallel in Britain.

Time Team: Training Excavation

York Archaeological Trust is planning to run a training excavation at the St Leonard's hospital site, York (as featured on Time Team), in the summer of 2002. If you would like details of this, visit the York Archaeological Trust website www.yorkarch.demon.co.uk; or send a stamped-addressed envelope to:

York Archaeological Trust Training Excavations 2000
Cromwell House
13 Ogleforth
York YO1 7FG

Tim Taylor, Time Team Series Producer on the York Live Event:

The live programme is now a regular event in Time Team's calendar. Because of the pressures and tight time scale, it is ultimate television of a particular kind – the polar opposite in some ways of the documentary. It involves a huge technical and logistical support team – more than a hundred staff, camera crews, edit suites, satellite vans, a website team and three teams of archaeologists alongside our presenters: Tony, Sandy Toksvig, our live 'stalwart', and, in York, Paul Thompson.

The financial investment is huge, as is the pressure for the archaeology to deliver. Although Time Team accept that we will not always find what we hope for, and that this is the reality of archaeology and part of the ethos of the programme, the atmosphere of a 'live' makes it difficult if there are too many archaeological dead ends. There were three sites in York and this, and the knowledge that wherever you dig there you are likely to find archaeology, gave us a certain amount of security.

Each transmission for live television has to be a specific length, and must be timed and scripted so that Tony can read the linking pieces to camera that introduce each new section on autocue. From the start, the script assumes a certain progress in the archaeology. The researchers and I try to be as realistic as possible, but there is something slightly unreal about a script, prepared a month before a shoot, that reads: '11-o-clock day one, locate remains of Roman burials on the cemetery site.' Somehow reality, technology and expectation have to be matched up.

The director, Jeremy Cross, has to attempt to keep a grip on the production, transmission and developing story lines, while the researchers, assistant producers and Philip Clarke, the executive producer, adjust the storyline, scripts and autocue pieces to camera so that they show what is actually happening. I keep them aware of where the archaeology is going and push or drag the excavations and discoveries in the direction that is best for the programme. I also have to make sure the archaeology is not misrepresented, which involves negotiating both the speed and the strategy of the excavations with the local archaeologists – in York they were John Oxley from the City Council, Keith Emerick from English Heritage and the site supervisors, Nick Pearson, Patrick Ottaway and Barney Sloane. I also receive vital information from our Time Team diggers. We need to achieve the programme's archaeological goals without pushing the archaeology further than is appropriate.

On Day Two of the York dig we faced a situation that is typical of the issues that arise on Time Team excavations. A third burial had emerged at the Roman cemetery site and there was also additional evidence from geophysics – who had, with their usual accuracy, located the first burial site for us. They had found a 'curved shaped' anomaly that might indicate a building. The local archaeologists were convinced that there was not enough time left to excavate both targets. At the end of the day, the key parties – John Oxley, Keith Emerick, Nick Pearson, Mick Aston and I – tucked ourselves into a cosy corner at the Royal York Hotel to go over the options. The script team and directors were meeting upstairs to develop the next day's story lines and needed to know, as soon as possible, the direction the archaeology would take. Despite a certain amount of pressure from them, Mick and I were determined to listen to what the archaeologists had to say.

After an hour we arrived at an agreement that allowed the excavation to expand into the new sites but ensured that the excavators would have as much time as they needed to do their job properly and record the results. With Time Team's diggers, York's experienced excavators and Margaret Cox and her team of osteoarchaeologists on hand, we made a good case that the work would be carried out to the highest standards.

This kind of discussion – balancing programme requirements with archaeological need – is a regular and vital event on Time Team shoots, and the fact that we achieved this within the pressure of a live programme is a measure of its importance.

A final memory of York illustrating another crucial element to the balancing act that is Time Team was at the end of Day Three. Everyone was exhausted as we approached our last segment of the transmission, at the Roman cemetery. I had walked through all Tony Robinson's next sequences with Phil Harding, Margaret Cox and the other archaeologists, checking responses and giving them a sense of how long they might have for spontaneous chat. When Tony arrived, surrounded by cameramen and sound crews trailing cables and accompanied by his autocue operator, he talked to Margaret about the first two burials and then turned to Phil who would be taking him on to the next trench.

Tony's opening question didn't get the usual obvious answer. Live sequences are usually high on adrenaline and scattered with words like 'amazing' and 'incredible', but Phil had been given space to respond. The crowds of local people who had looked on patiently for three days were attentive. Phil had been watching the excavation of a four-year-old child, who had died in Roman York more than 1,700 years ago. He commented on the smallness of the ribs and Tony told him that the results of DNA tests showed the skeleton was that of a girl. Phil, clearly moved, talked for a few minutes about his feelings about the child's death.

Watching Phil and Tony create that moment – the cameras and microphones capturing it for transmission to an audience of millions – was for me a defining event. We hadn't glossed over that small tragedy and rushed to the next item. In a way, the balance Time Team achieves between television and archaeology was encapsulated in that moment – which happened because of the teamwork of the people who had taken part in the programme, and was made possible by the relationships that had been forged over three days with the local archaeologists and diggers, and the people of York who came in their thousands to see the sites.

You can read more by Tim Taylor in his book, The Ultimate Time Team Companion: An Alternative History of Britain, Channel 4 Books, £20.

York Mega-Quiz
By the end of the Middle Ages, York was a city full of churches and other ecclesiastical establishments. As well as eight monasteries and friaries, 31 hospitals or 'maisons dieu', two ecclesiastical colleges and dozens of chapels and chantries, it had at least 40 parish churches. Here then is a special end-of-series Time Team Mega-Quiz, with one question for every church. Can you answer all 40?
Try the York Mega-quiz!