Time Team has a tradition of descending on the occasional back garden, but not many can boast six centuries of archaeology in one place. Paul and Vivienne Dickens had invited us to their new home, Groby Old Hall (pronounced 'Grooby') in Leicestershire, itself a 15th century manor house, to help reconstruct the site and find out more about its colourful history.
The Old Hall itself is a multi-period building, at the core of which is a 15th century tower. The house forms part of an extensive complex which served as the ancestral seat of a famous English family with origins in the pre-Conquest period. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, protected by English Heritage, as keen as the owners to find out more about the site, which had been neglected for many years.
Our pre-production research had uncovered a wealth of documentary evidence and the site itself included standing remains, earthworks (including a Norman motte and bailey) and, of course, the existing house. With such a wealth of obvious targets the team had to decide which one to tackle first. Mick decided it's always best to start at the beginning - with the motte and bailey, said to have been built in 1086.
Based on geophys from John Gater, Phil and our digger driver Ian Barclay began with a trench in the side of the mound, hoping to uncover the remains of a stone castle known to have been built on the site. Walls of a substantial tower began to appear and, as usual, presented us with more questions than answers. Instead of uncovering the foundations of the castle, its stone remains seemed to be disappearing down into the mound. This, combined with the results of excavation work during the 1960s, suggested that we may have discovered a Norman cellar and perhaps even an Anglo Saxon building pre-dating the castle. Phil was in his element - especially when he found a Neolithic flint in the rubble of the castle walls.
With Phil happily extending his castle trench the rest of the team turned its attention to the bailey associated with the motte. Mick explained that these enclosed spaces would have included buildings vital to the daily life of the castle. John Gater and Jimmy Adcock began a radar survey in the hopes of identifying the centre of castle life - the great hall. The results were very exciting, showing a series of large buildings to the south of the motte. With Stewart Ainsworth adding to the picture by identifying the perimeter of the bailey itself another trench went in over the tantalizing geophys. Over at the motte Phil had finally reached the bottom of his trench. The castle didn't turn out to have a Saxon origin but had been built onto bedrock with strong foundations and a large cellar.
With work at the motte completed our search for the great hall continued. We had uncovered well-preserved walls and evidence of a posh building with a tiled roof - but was it the elusive great hall? Our buildings expert Richard K Morris wasn't convinced - evidence pointed towards a chamber block. With the team uncertain John widened the geophysical net revealing further substantial buildings - one with supporting buttresses - had we been digging in the wrong place? With a trench in it soon became clear that our new target was an even bigger building; with substantial buttressed walls and a peculiar feature - an 'auriel' - essentially a large bay window. This would have been a major feature in a grand dining room. We had found the great hall.
With so much archaeology to deal with and the end of the dig rapidly approaching perhaps it was time to call it a day. Well, it's not as easy as that to stop Mick Aston. Helen had uncovered a wealth of information in the documents listing buildings of many types on the site - including a chapel. Mick just had to find it. The team united to identify the chapel location. Stewart and John used mapping and geophys, Helen scoured the documents and the archaeologists opened a trench. Another building added to the Groby site - quickly becoming one of the most interesting sites we had ever worked on.
After three days we were able to fill in some of the gaps of over 600 years of history at Groby Old Hall for its new owners. Mick was convinced by our findings that the original motte and bailey had been replaced with a huge and very wealthy palace complex which would have impressed visitors to the site. By the 15th century fashions had changed and the palace complex was replaced with the brick structure of Groby Old Hall, which is now in good hands.
