Llancaiach Fawr Manor is a gentry house in the uplands of Glamorgan believed to have been built around 1530 for the Prichard family who were an influential family with links to the royal dynasty of Glamorgan in the medieval period. We present the furnished Manor through live, costumed interpretation as if it were 1645, the year Charles I visited Edward Prichard during his attempts to rally additional troops and gain supplies of money and horses following his defeat at the Battle of Naseby earlier that summer.
The manor house team have been investigating the wider history of the site through documentary research, geophysical surveys, trial excavations and a review of material discovered during the restoration of the Manor in the 1980's with the aim of pushing back the known history of the house. Early signs were encouraging with strong indications of multi-period occupation in a field adjoining the Manor. This was enough to tempt the Time Team.
The plan was to see if there was an earlier manor house on the site - suspected from early maps which mention a house called 'Faldray' in this location. Geophysical survey results from the previous two summers indicated a moat or ditch which seemed to go in the wrong direction away from the present manor. Some reused architectural stonework discovered also suggested that there might be something earlier on the site. It became vital to get a build date for this possible earlier Manor.
Time Team really do dig for just 3 days...however there are months of meetings, phone calls, emails and organisation in advance. The day before the team started to dig, the Location Manager and his crew arrived on site to set everything up - catering, marquees and the incident room. Filming locations in and around the Manor were decided upon to make sure everyone could be ready first thing on the morning of Day 1. The dendro-chronologist (wood dating expert) was consulted regarding how early he needed to be on site to review the roof timbers in order to select which ones he wanted to sample. There were a few sleepless nights as we worked with the planning officials to see if the timber sampling could be done as the manor house is a Grade 1 Listed Building? I was worn out before we got to the point where the production meeting was held the night before the digging started!
Over three days there was a lot of digging, several furrowed brows and much discussion about the few finds coming from trenches also host to the odd frustrated expletives! I was surprised at how much filming took place - each shot is repeated 6 or 7 times depending upon how many people are involved in each individual scene. I had expected to be behind the scenes during the three days and was therefore surprised to end up in front of the cameras quite so often. In retrospect perhaps I shouldn't have worn the 'Green Man t shirt'?!
The weather held, unusual for Wales, as we worked around the World Cup football matches - which meant women in trenches digging whilst men watched the footie. We even managed to persuade our neighbours to have part of their land excavated as well as wishing we had the birds' eye view that Stewart enjoyed from the helicopter. We even managed to get some of the local schools in to see what was happening in their area so many centuries ago.
Eventually, at the end of three long days, there were conclusions and a few surprises... the 'moat' didn't turn out to be what we had expected, other features on the geophys were also surprising but we will have to wait for the radio carbon dating for an enclosure which could be prehistoric or even more important and rare than that. Even the Manor wasn't quite as old as we had originally thought! The account we had of Prichard's house in the parish in the 1530's wasn't this house after all... which means the hunt for that one starts now as well. But somehow, ending up with more questions than answers isn't so bad.
For more details you'll need to watch the programme ...it was an interesting experience, exhausting and eye opening but exceptionally valuable in terms of support for our continued quest to get to the bottom of this fascinating and intriguing place which has obviously been 'home' to many more generations that we had previously thought.
In the meantime...the search goes on for answers to the questions we set the Time Team that still remain unanswered. But that's archaeology!
