The views were amongst the most
stunning from any Time Team dig
Could this be the perfect Time Team? Well it's not every week we discover a lost monastic site with a possible saint under the altar.
The Team was on the Isle of Mull thanks to Hylda Marsh and Bev Langland. Working with the Scotland's Rural Past scheme, they had been searching for sites in the woods around Baliscate when they stumbled across an intriguing discovery. Local archaeologists declared it to be a potential medieval chapel and the Glasgow Herald ran a story asking - are Time Team coming? Well, with our very own Mick Aston, lover of all things medieval, as part of the Team we just couldn't resist.
The focus of the next three days was a small woodland clearing overlooking the Sound of Mull. It was a stunning setting and, when the midges weren't out, an idyllic spot.
Arranged in the centre of the clearing were the earthworks which Bev and Hylda had discovered and they did indeed look like a classic chapel layout - an enclosure surrounding a small east-west orientated building.
Mick and Phil make a careful
examination of the site
A despondent geophysics team arrived on Day One. Their definition of the perfect Time Team is a flat field full of chunky walls, so a small woodland clearing did not go down well. With only small areas open to survey this was going to be a long three days for John Gater.
No single discovery could prove this was a chapel, instead we had to look for a list of characteristics set out by Mick - quartz pebbles, east-west orientation, a leacht, burials and carved ecclesiastical stones. Phil opened the first trench on the east end of the structure, hoping to find burials - one of the key chapel features.
But we weren't just focusing all our efforts on the clearing. Stewart had identified several features in the woods that could have been part of a wider monastic complex. Raksha set off deep into the trees to dig one of Stewart's targets.
Outside the eastern end of the building was a mound Mick identified as a possible leacht, an extremely rare thing to find in Scotland. No-one knows exactly what they're for although theories include them being an external altar or a founder's shrine. Either way it was down to Phil to make sense of the mound as he picked apart the pile of rubble.
Phil's work on the leacht began to quickly yield results. He revealed a regular square structure with a slot for a standing cross in the centre. This was definitely a leacht and Mick was almost certain we had a chapel, but did it sit up here in isolation?
A section from a carved stone cross
Well, our work in the woods around the clearing was beginning to suggest we had an even more intriguing story on our hands. Raksha had uncovered a building which could have acted as accommodation for a monastic site and what was more all the buildings we were uncovering sat on the promontory of a hill enclosed by a wall. These were all classic indications of a very early monastery site. And verily, Mick's cup did runneth over with excitement as he began to suspect his monastery was closely connected to Saint Columba - the Irish monk who brought Christianity to the north of Britain.
And still the discoveries continued. Back on site we'd uncovered a handful of human teeth from the north side of the chapel - these were all that remained of the skeleton after the bones had been destroyed by the acidic soils.
But Matt Williams uncovered an even more exciting burial right under the eastern end of the chapel. This is the classic location for the burial of the founder of a site and a startled team realised that we may have just uncovered the body of a local saint.
The final find waited until the very end of Day Three. From amongst the stone of Phil's leacht emerged part of a carved stone cross. It had been sitting on top of the leacht but had gone unnoticed as the pattern looked almost like a muddy boot print. It wasn't until it was cleaned that we realised it was part of an 8th century carved cross - it was the perfect end to a remarkable three days.
