‘Cannons and Castles’ (Orgueil, Jersey) | Series 18 Episode 8 | Time Team

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we like to go to places where things once stood to dig holes in the ground, gather the evidence, and use our imaginations to discover what they might have once been like, but not today. Welcome to Montour in Jersey, an impressive fortress that for hundreds of years played a little-known but crucial role in the defense of not only the Channel Islands but all of Britain, although it has been studied for centuries, this place still has its secrets here, under this bumpy grass, but also up there. We have only three days to discover those secrets.

Let's hope we can achieve it. It's a ridiculously steep slope. Montage Jersey's oldest castle sits high above a bloody harbor protected on three sides by the sea. Built on a steep granite cliff. It dominates not only the beaches of western Jersey, but also access to the Channel Islands from France. Upon entering the castle, you pass through a formidable corridor of doors and courtyards dominated by loopholes, gun platforms and battlements. It was never supposed to be easy to get into, but it's natural. defense of the terrain that will really cause some headaches for the

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, I mean, it is a significant slope, yes, it is a little more vertical than I expected.

This is the first

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you guys have driven this machine over this type of undulating terrain, take over. It's only 25,000 pounds worth of equipment. Has anyone done this before? Not on such a steep slope. I don't think anyone has been that stupid. It's not until you get here, at the top of the castle, that you begin to appreciate why it was that way. It is very important to look strategically, you can see not only the beaches and the coast, but also far beyond on the horizon, that is, France. Helen Location Location Location That's absolutely what it's all about because this is the closest English castle to France that we can be within 100 miles of. the UK coast, but we are just 14 miles from France, putting this place at the heart of politics at some of the most important moments in our history, but why are we here?

Warwick, well, there are a number of mysteries about this castle. that we want to solve, even though we have this big stone structure around us and we know a lot about it, parts are missing, just a minute, you've been working on this site for 30 years, surely you must have broken it. all the mysteries now well, it's a short archaeological

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and there's a lot to do, so there are still areas where we just need to know about the parts of the castle that have been demolished and lost over time, what would you like? So that we can relate, I would like you to come here and look over the wall and look down at the green below us.

That green castle area has earthworks, lumps and bumps and there are clearly structures down there now. that area is unexplored, we know nothing about it archaeologically and almost nothing about it historically if we look at this plan that shows the outline of the castle as we understand it in the 13th century, we are not very clear about the northern side, this uncertainty at the end North of the castle is due to the later edition of the Great Battery and the monstrous Somerset Tower fortifications built in the 16th century which would have destroyed any earlier structure. We will have to closely examine these gigantic walls for clues to their composition.

To find evidence of 13th century walls and towers, the full plan of the first Warwick Castle, Helen, why should we be so interested in this period of the castle's history? It is because when this castle was built in the 13th century, it was right at the point where England lost its lands to France, so this place is now on the front line of one of the major power struggles of medieval Europe, so this is what king john represents, that's right, yes, king john, who was famous for getting everything wrong and losing all his lands. france, but to know more about this, our guys will have to do a pretty complicated job, right?

Our efforts will be concentrated on the bumpy grass of Castle Green and the steep slopes beneath the formidable north and west walls. It is a relatively simple task, but with a huge problem. Leading the search for the 13th century walls in the extreme terrain is Geo Fizz's intrepid team, but they're going slowly. It's a bit complicated, with Gia Fizz struggling for results. Phil has been looking for another way. him to begin the investigation and he found a small visible section of the wall. What I want to do is shy. We have laid the trench here. We have what looks like a wall and it is the wall that runs along now in the back.

From this, we actually have the main wall of the Tudor castle. The question is: does the Tudor wall sit on this wall? If that Tudor wall is located at the top of that wall, the Tudor style wall is later, this one has to be earlier. We hope it may be the war of the 13th century, but it doesn't have to be all we can say: it will predate the Tudors. The crucial thing about dating is whether we can identify anything from the original mortar, and that is it. Why we've put here, it's the place where these two walls meet, John, you know how much we love to tease you, but I think we've really outdone ourselves in getting you to take Geoff, that's the slope, yeah.

I mean, I think the scariest thing for me is seeing Jimmy in that harness. There are many health and safety issues. We have to do it correctly, yes, and that's why he's taking time. It will be a while before we get new results from that area. I've moved here now, yes, I mean, this is more my kind of territory, a nice flat lawn and it's probably associated with the castle anyway, either in its earlier phases or perhaps with ancillary buildings associated with him, yes, but mick, you're not a castle guy, i can't imagine that the reason you want to come here is simply because this is part of a castle, no, i think there's a good chance there's something before here too I mean, if you mentally remove all that stone castle from the top, you have a promontory jutting out into the sea, which is probably the sort of thing that would be an Iron Age promontory, a prehistoric promontory, in fact.

Which case, around here there could be ditches and banks cutting through that promontory, so we could get something that even predates the castle itself. I think it's very likely so. Gfiz is already underway at the very promising Castle Green but meanwhile on the slope Phil is laying down our first trench I wonder what he will find can't wait to get up there maybe after lunch welcome back to the fantastic Montoguy Castle here on

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this isn't a bad job on a day like this so our archaeologists are already underway on that slope digging behind those trees, but down here at Castle Green John, you've got some girlfriends for us.

Yes, we said before that it's a fantastic area to inspect. Yes, the problem is that the results are not so clear. Because? Well we have problems with the bedrock, it is very close to the surface, the electrical currents do not go to the ground, having said that we have some results, you have some big black spots, right? I mean it's on this higher ground here, yeah, so you can see this green grass. I'm just wondering if there's a ditch that runs through here before you get to this higher ground, so I think it's an initial assessment ditch from where I'm standing.

I stood over this possible ditch and over this kind of possible building here, a possible building, you don't sound that convinced, well, I'm just worried that to be honest, it's all geology, but you always are, aren't you? So trench two enters Castle Green to look for a ditch that could augment the site's known defenses and, being cut into granite, should be easy to find. It could be a trench or something filled with this crushed granite material. It's a pretty clear edge if we are very lucky that it can even be traced back to the original castle built during the reign of King John.

When did we first hear that there is a castle here? Well we first heard something in 1209, clues that we don't mention the castle, but I got this description from the pipe rolls and it mentions the island of Jersey and the deliveries to the knights and 12 horse sergeants and 10 foot sergeants and also the horses of these knights, so clearly this fighter here there is a garrison, so we could assume that it was a The castle we do not know definitively until 1212. This is a letter from King John where he mentions the island of Jersey, Insula de Jersey, there comes Castro with his castle, so that's when we definitely know there's something here.

Why Chris? Why put a castle here? Firstly, at the beginning of his reign, King John of England owned most of the west side of France and Jersey, happily there was a candelabra in the middle of the Angemon empire. In 1202, the King of France summoned him to the palace to He vouched for his feudal possessions and refused to go, so they were confiscated by the French king and all of Normandy, the kosher tower and Brittany were recovered and Jersey became a remaining outpost. The island was disputed a couple of times, certainly in 1205 1206. and again a few years later, but the ruling elite who were in charge of the island decided to stay with King John.

You could really see it on this map. Can you see that when this whole part of France was English property, then Jersey was in full swing? in the middle and very well protected, but as soon as this part of France returns to the French king, suddenly Jersey is on the front line, yes, and our little promontory here on the east side becomes a perfect place to build a castle because it's in the right place to point two fingers at the french king something like saying look, we're english, so what was

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's position at the end of king john's reign? it was still in the hands of the english king, it was never part of the kingdom of england it was just a hangout for the old duchy of normandy and there began more than 800 years of union that sided with england, although it would cause problems with france, making a fortress on the island vital, but finding evidence of that original stone castle under the massive 16th-century walls is proving difficult, undeterred, Stewart hunts everywhere and may have found something in the northeast corner.

This union here seems strange, doesn't it? This junction here are part of the Tudor battery on the corner. It is not? we know the date for that, but it is built on that wall there, we have a wonderful junction here, where the tudor bastion butts up against a curved wall which must be of an earlier date which in turn is built against the rock phase that suggests the curved wall. The tower for me is that 13th or 14th century tower, part of the curtain wall layout with round towers like we had before the Tudors. Is this the first time you've seen her this morning?

The first time this morning. Yes, when the ivy. was dismantled, we found something that had never been drawn on any plans or described before, so we have now located an original 13th century corner tower beneath the 16th century defenses, but around the corner, Phil is fighting for take the trench to a place as far away as the previous one. eventually oh it's quite a challenge to get here phil what was the purpose of this trench to see if we could establish the date of this war? Have not you done it yet? What we have discovered is that we have the outer edge of the steep drop here and then on the other side of here we have the main core of the wall, what we would like is for this wall to go below and be before the main wall of the bastion style Tudor, so at the moment you have absolutely no date.

There is actually no evidence of war, but what we have is a rather unexpected date. It's this water pipe or this pipeline that runs through here that we think is probably a relic of the German occupation. Why do you think it is a German well? Apparently everyone who digs around. the castle says the only thing you ever find are relics left over from the german occupation, it seems like the best option for that, so you have a pretty solid dating for the 1940s, now you just have to go back to the 1300s Yes, and I mean there are two ways we're going to try to approach that, firstly, see if we can establish whether this wall goes under the buttress and the second way is to look at the mortars, which would be significant about the. mortar.

Well, according to Warwick, 13th century mortars tend to have quite a few shells, while Tudor mortars are much grittier, but he also tells me that there are miscellaneous mortars that we just have to hope we don't have. There is no sign of the 13th century in trench two, or the rock-cut ditch is deeper and wider than anyone expected, but it is yielding little to help us date it, although this might not be the only ditch down here with the which Stuart thinks he has stumbled upon. another near the castle gate and after clearing the brambles, he calls Jimmy with his radar to confirm if he is right.

This is another circuitunknown defensive around the castle. If you follow the outline around it, you can see that there is actually a ditch. around here and heads towards where the drawbridge of the original gate of the medieval castle was, so really this ditch should be part of the original defenses of the 13th century castle, so it should be just outside the stone walls of the 13th century, there it is, yes, it is clearly there. It's on this side of the castle, this is the weakest side down here, you could easily go up here and get to the base of the towers to undermine them, so I think some form of defense is needed around here and to be able to demonstrate this.

It's part of those original defenses that would be great, I mean, the radar we've done through it shows it's about a meter deep, so we should get some dateable material, that shouldn't work out well, I hope so, I mean, Given where it is on the baseless slope, there should be all kinds of material in that trench, shouldn't they move on? We'll continue with the tea there were rumors of cake, you know, before we start filming this, you'd be lucky, so trench three goes in to see if there's a second trench cut under the western wall. If Stuart is right, he should run tight. crashed into the lower slopes of the castle parallel to John's ditch, but the question remains: where is the wall that should go with it?

Stewart has a hunch and is about to boldly go where no landscape researcher has gone before with a bdi. He has measured something 30 feet. Above, can you see that the masonry is different from the battery? Yes, up there, encouraged by the daredevil antics of the rest of the team. Good luck Stewie, you head towards the rock face confused by an archaeological site with so many ups and downs. He reached for Mick to get it. My head is all over what's going on, so Phil's looking for a 13th century wall up there, we've been digging a trench, yeah, but suddenly I find out you've dug another trench here, yeah, well, there's another trench that you see coming here. earthworks, so we want to know the date of that too, but you know, given the magnificence of these castle walls, part of me is a little disappointed that you're just digging trenches, but the castle walls are only half.

Of the defensive system, as well as on each line of stone wall, there would have been ditches in the front as part of the other part of the defensive circuit, so we must look at those as well and do you think all those ditches will be the same day, I would be surprised much if they were because the walls are of different dates and therefore different ditches would be expected to be dark accordingly, after all this is the weak side of the castle, the rest is defended by the sea. and rocks, this is the side you can reach by land, so you will have to review your defense strategy from time to time dig another load of trenches, it is difficult for me to concentrate solely on mick because while he digs in the trenches Stewart swings perversely in the air about 30 feet above our head Stuart.

Hello, what are you doing up there? Take a look at this masonry. You see. You see this block. Can you see there is a band of masonry going in that direction? different to what is above it and it goes on a curve, this is before that, that is tudor, so it has to be before and it looks like it is the corner of a round tower, could it be the 13th century wall we have? We are looking for it, it seems very likely, well, the castle is beginning to reveal its secrets, although very slowly and it is hard work, isn't it?

Yes, who knows what we will find tomorrow, usually on time, team, I try to end a part with a cliffhanger, but I can't think of a start to the second day here on the island of jersey, where we are looking at the impressive castle of Montal Guy and trying To unravel some of its secrets yesterday afternoon, John suggested that we make a long, thin trench here because we had started looking at the defenses in front of the castle and he thought there might be a defensive ditch along there and perhaps some sort of building over here, so regardless of what we found, we have this ditch here.

It's huge, a cut in the rocks almost five meters wide, it was filled back in and then cut back at that end so they can continue to use it, but at this end of the trench there is nothing, no evidence of dating, well , we have a few pieces of pottery emerging from the fields of the ditch, but nothing firm yet, John a little frustrating, a little unfinished, well, no, the ditch is good, I mean, I wasn't sure about the building, but We have made some more resistance on the radar. Look, we have another huge ditch showing in both sets of data and they both show another huge ditch.

Where is the ditch? Well, you can actually see it in the grass, the lush, dark green grass, this is, this is right over here, yeah, that depression there. Yeah, the ditch that runs past there now is either related to the castle or part of this plum fort we talked about that might be here, so do you want to dig it? We have to do it. It looks pretty promising, but I have to do it. I admit this part of me thinks we're a bit trench crazy on this dick, so trench four rolls into Castle Green to investigate John's geophysics.

A third ditch would mean that the approach to the castle was heavily fortified, but does it relate to the 13th Century or could it be much older, you will laugh if this turns out to be a prehistoric side and we have a large medieval castle behind us. We are now unearthing diagnostic and dateable artifacts throughout the site, but they are I'm just not doing much to take our history back in time World War II German barbed wire I think so, frankly, the finds so far have been a bit disappointing. . You can see that this is obviously from the late 19th century.

Ink bottle Devil tree is the word that springs to mind, except Phil, you just showed up with stuff from your trench, absolutely Tony, I mean, most of what we've been getting is debris that's been thrown around on the walls, but it turns out we have some pieces of pottery that I'm pretty sure are from much earlier, what do we think about that? Olga. Well, this is definitely our first piece of prehistoric pottery and I imagine it dates back to the Iron Age, but you see if you want Tony early, look very early. a piece of Flynn, this is actually going to take our history back to probably 4000 BC.

C., something like that, but we don't really want to go back to the beginning, oh, I know you want the first things, Fred Flintstone, but we. We're actually trying to date the oldest castle here. Have any of you seen anything in ceramics that can be said from the 13th century? A piece of 13th century castle high up wedged under the corner of 16th century walls, so you're back on your ropes recording archeology with a little eagle-eyed help. Yes, I can hear you stupid. I found a new wall up here, Henry, which is really very. It's good, it's a curved piece of wall that goes around this cliff and it's mortared with the crushed burnt limpets that Warrick said probably means it's the 13th century.

If I give you a couple of positions, can you map them out for me first? one now where I'm watching roger that's all um where my left glove is now henry observation encouraged by this medieval discovery stewart follows the base of the vast 16th century wall in search of more we're walking on a wall of ivy right now Yes, Follow me behind and if we have to use our bombs to climb, no problem. Well, now there are some stingers down here. Well, bingo hidden under the ivy is a second tower. This is really good, besides the northwest.

Corner tower we can add a second 13th century tower just along the western wall. Everything we are finding at this site is geared towards war and defense, suggesting that this castle has seen some serious action. Looking at it, you really get an amazing feeling. How difficult it would have been to storm a castle like this, how many layers of defense there are, everything is absolutely bristling with defenses, isn't it? But the stone castle, once built at the beginning of the 13th century, does not remain static. It's constantly being added and remodeled It's constantly being added because the castle and the island are constantly under attack Yes, I wrote down some of the attacks.

I've been trying to make a list of what's been going on and I'm having fits. After attack after attack, um, there's a big one in 1294, right? Yes, around 1,500 people are believed to have died at that time, which is probably around 10 for the island's population. That's terrible, isn't it? It would have made a difference, yes. Who, then, who is attacking at that point on the fence? Oh, no wonder they're not very popular, I mean, they call me finger, sorry, sorry, and then moving on to the 14th and 15th centuries, there are several sieges at that point, so I guess um.

What are they doing building big towers and launching missiles trying to get through the walls? Presumably yes, that was standard siege warfare in those days. So, were the walls ever broken? In 1373, the French broke through the outer wall but could not. take the tower, they said at the time that its stairs were long enough and the foundation was too strong. You'd think they could send you home up a few more stairs. Don't you have to go back to Vaughn's with that Henry? I wonder if Make me a bit of a model, not in that way Stuart thinks he has located a defensive earthwork under the corner of the 16th century great battery.

A large pointed platform appears to be on top of the rock cut ditch jutting out towards Castle Green and you have this large flat earth work coming in and lying on the slope, well to me it looks like it is an outwork or a bastion, some form of defense that covers this kind of weak area here, you saw that the feeling of a triangle is It's not there, yeah, yeah, that would be nice, well, what would be really cool if you could model that, yeah, and see how fits with all the defense lines and topography, see if it is a defense job under the orders Henry receives? but he is not the only one who inspects the castle.

This week we have a very striking kit on the site. Ben, all of our technical people are very excited about what you're doing. What exactly? This is a 3D laser scanner and we. In fact, we're using it to digitally document the castle right now. How does it work well? What it does: It shoots a laser beam and any surface it hits calculates a three-dimensional point in space and does so thousands of times a day. second, create a rich cloud of data points that is a kind of exact replica of the castle. Why do we need a 3D model of the castle?

Look, I have eyes here, I can see the castle, we have a camera here that can see. the castle too, why do we need you? We can use it to create very precise measurements at any point inside the castle, so if we scan the exterior walls and then go in and scan the internal rooms, we can create measurements throughout the building so you can actually take slices, so say, outside the castle. Yes, once we have everything scanned, we can literally cut it at any point horizontally or vertically and create sections along the entire length of trench three.

Now it has hit rock bottom and thrown up something useful. pottery, what data is from the 15th century, oh, right at the bottom, yeah right, the base, well, I was just hoping it was some kind of 13th century or something, we thought it was medieval, so it's later medieval, but, unless it's been washed, it does clean up, but from the evidence it looks like it's from the 15th century, but we've got a lot of debris and other pieces coming in, yeah, I mean, that's a cracked section you've got there with all those lines of tip, isn't it?

We have water. stone there and it looks like some form of building was here or up there somewhere initially, so if that is bedrock, presumably something sat on top of that platform, it didn't, it must have done so to confirm if there was a structure. Sitting on this platform, Phil walked over to take a look and trench five slowly exposed a small but solid wall in the granite spur. Henry's contour map is also revealing evidence of a defensive structure that confirms Stewart's suspicions. That's where we put the trench over the big ditches. It's not like that, it's correct and the platform is in this area, isn't it?

Yes it's correct. You can actually see. I think there is a part of that trench that is going through an earthquake and it only shows it in colors that represent the height and the height difference, whereas you can see more if you model it by slopes, so the blue areas of the parts steep are slopes and the red areas are flat parts and that way you can see how dramatic that platform is, there is a flat area and how dramatic that slope is. Going down here, I mean, that's classically what you'd expect from work around the castle, so at some point an arrowhead bastion was builtover the trench excavated in the previous rock.

These gun platforms offered great angles for defensive fire and were popular around the world. 16th and 17th centuries, all this is something positive, but it has nothing to do with the 13th century. Time to join the brainiacs for a cup of tea and find out what's going on gentlemen, I'm really struggling mainly with the archeology of this castle. I think because it has the big Tudor castle lying around and it's hard to see anything else, but our first goal was to find the early 13th century castle. We have done it there. We have found a tower in the rock behind us.

We have a very beautiful tower from the 13th century sitting on the rock. There we find a fragment of another on the west side and we have the known one in the southwest corner, so we have the entire west. side and the whole 13th century plan is complete, but where we are now, the ditch in that trench and yes, this wall behind us that is not from the 13th century, does not seem to be, I mean, it is possible that this year it is part From that, it can't be dated, the only thing we can say is that it is overlaid by this earthwork that we are sitting on, which appears to be a 16th century gun platform game and probably dates back to something, so that ditch there it is.

It's older than that, but it could be as early as the 13th century, but if it's probably somewhere between what I'd like to do is put another section in there, the testicles which had very little information, just see if we have any dating from that one, so mick orders a second section through Stuart's ditch, his hope is that trench six provides an early date for this defense of the ring in trench five Warwick dating techniques cause Phil Shell to surprise Warwick yes, you know what you were saying about that shell mortar and if it had projectiles it was from the 13th century look and look and look again, there are whole projectiles in the mortar yes, they are projectiles, it is not a Shelley mortar, but it is a mortar with projectiles, for Therefore, it must be Shelley mortar, which must be from the 13th century.

This is a mortar with occasional shells in full shells at this time. This is a real Shelley piece. mortar that Stuart found in the battery a moment ago, where the mortar is full of broken and crushed shells that have been in a lime kiln and are burned and that's what you see, all those dark bits are fragments of limpet shells that They have been crushed and then burned in a lime kiln that mortar doesn't have it, so this projectile mortar is from the 13th century, yes, and this projectile mortar is not from the 13th century, but the Shelley mortar is definitely 13 cents.

I'm losing the will to live. All day when it comes to the archeology of the Montour boys, confusion has reigned, but fortunately, the fogs finally seem to be clearing and, hopefully, when we go tomorrow we will be able to tell the full story of this castle. Time team, there are bound to be some surprises along the way at the start of day three here at Montal Guy Castle in Jersey and in fact we came here to do a fairly simple job which involved finding a couple of 13th century walls so we could identify the original. castle on this site, but as the days go by the archeology has become more and more complicated, not only do we have things from the 13th century, we have from the 15th century, we have tudor, we even have prehistoric, frankly because of the When we leave, I think They'll probably have to rewrite the guide because what we're finding is really amazing.

There is a lot of activity around here. Yes, we are trying to resolve these defenses. Yeah, I'm talking about Phil Up. Look, he's on top of this thing that looks like some kind of early gun platform and he would have gone up, but he's also collecting material that comes from the 13th century tower at the top. top, so it has, you know, the first ones. mortar cascading down and this down here here is where this trench that is interrupted by this weapons platform this lower one is doing rounds remember we are doing this to see if we can get more dating material wait this is all very confusing up The part top is from the 13th century, 14th century, yes, here you are calling the gun platform, presumably, this is Tudor, yes, and below we have this ditch, which it is best to assume is from the 15th century, we are probably getting dating material now over there.

So we'll learn, I don't want to make it even more complicated, but what's going on down there, where we're in Castle Green, where we thought we had prehistoric, where Matt is, does he have PT stuff in the background with bits of wood? I think it could be prehistoric. It would be nice if it was the Iron Age or you know something to do with defences, but any early date would be helpful. Do you think we can figure this all out by the end of the day? I think so, but I think we have a particular job to do because normally all the things we find are distributed in a fairly flat place.

Here we are spread out on the side of the hill and knowing that this part here is a date. but a little higher than it might be before, it's really a bit strange, so we're going to need Henry to go and plot everything, I think, to make sure we understand the relationships between all of this and the early findings of the extension of the ditch. supports our military history, so where do they come from? Well, these literally came out of things that were scraped off the top of this trench here, so they came out of the heat of the ruin, okay, well, this is the bottom of a sword sheath.

You can imagine the leather scabbard and from its construction I put it in the 17th century or maybe even the 18th century, so you can imagine that the leather of the sword scabbard is there now, although it is very interesting, it is a jet French. I think in the 15th century I'll have to clean it up to make sure it's hard to see, but on this side you can see a fleur-de-lys on the other side of the fleur-de-lys, these jet ons or counting tokens were minted by the thousands in Throughout Europe, they often featured ornate designs, they were used for complicated arithmetic on a lined board, something like a two-dimensional abacus, in three dimensions, our study of the castle is nearing completion and should help us make sense of this mess.

The site and trench two have now hit rock bottom, although the pottery is definitely medieval and not prehistoric, but what if it were said that the Phil building investigates one of the great mysteries for us since we came here? This wall here doesn't seem to be. Same building as the big Tudor castle there we weren't even convinced it was necessarily part of the original 13th century castle and it sort of seemed a bit isolated here, but whatever it is, Phil, did you get it? To solve the problem for us, we have solved the problem, Tony, and we always knew that this wall was rotating and actually hitting the bedrock on that side.

Well, we've excavated here and we can show that this wall runs right into the natural, so this is a completely freestanding tower and we think it's exactly like one of those over there. I've spoken to Warwick about it. We know that it is not from the 13th century. We have seen the mortars, they are not Shelley mortars, they are mortars with projectiles. It's probably from the 15th century and is almost certainly part of that defense there. What was it for? What this tower does is cover this lower ground. Here you have people up here defenders with weapons, bows and arrows.

It's literally like. a big pillbox that's designed to keep people off those lower slopes and this is something new that nobody knew about this. This is something crucially new for the entire Castle Helen development. The big structure up here looks like a 15th century defensive structure, how come? It ties into the story quite well, especially if it's connected to that tower that was built by Richard Harliston, who arrives at the castle at a really peculiar time during the water, the roses, somehow the French took over the castle and Harleston is sent to relieve it for the English, wait, so it's the British laying siege to their own castle, yes, absolutely, I know it's a bit backwards, isn't it, but anyway, the French are driven out, yes, and Harleston is proposes to upgrade the castle, now this tower here, you can see I have the loopholes, but just looking through the trees is what now looks like a window which is a gun port for modern artillery.

Now this tower also looks like it was built for artillery, so they are part of the same defensive system which makes sense. It is not like this? You would have a tower there guarding the main entrance and one here facing the back. Absolutely everything links these new defenses together with those of the 16th century refortification, showing that the castle was under constant threat and Stewart. He believes that Montogo's defensive evolution reflected advances in weapons technology, so he is mapping known medieval firepower against the castle walls. Its effective range from arrows is approximately 100 yards. I can estimate 100 yards.

Just marking this death distance is chilling, I would never think about it. You could be killed by an arrow or a broken cross, but that distance when you get to the 15th century and you start using musks, you have a different order of beasts to deal with and you have these musket balls that are coming at you and the penetrating power It is such that if you are at this distance the ball would not kill you, but it will go straight through you and come out the other side and take out two or three people on the other side, with a few pieces of meat flying everywhere people die by splinters a bone behind the person who was hit first by the tudor period when the cannon suddenly comes in they are going to do a lot of damage at two and a half thousand yards and this firepower could be favored by geography, looking at the levels , the top is lower than the top of the hill here so I think the natural hill is probably better as a defensive position than from the castle, how far is the ridge? up the hill here is about 300 yards, if you're at the top of the hill, you have a cannon, you can hit the castle pretty easily, this would be a horrible place to be wouldn't it?

So we moved on and now we have established that there is no ditch in trench four, but it turns out that Castle Green still contributed to the war effort, although we haven't found the large ditch we were looking for here, what we have is a surface of land ancient or early medieval. ceramic, but at this end we have this great feature here, we only have one side now we think it's a quarry pit and they're removing everything loose further down, the natural wind blowing sand and stuff here and they're mixing it with stone to make a kind of soft paste almost with large pieces of stone and they are using it for the core of the wall and at the time of the reconstructions of the castle in 1470, I had not heard that word. prehistoric mentioned once and it's not in that trench over there where we have the 14th century at the bottom of the 15th century halfway there there's nothing prehistoric down here at all, but you got us all excited about the possibility of prehistory here down, that's true, yes, and there is no evidence, I mean, there are prehistoric things at the top of the castle base, that's where the prehistoric site must be, but how far back in time have we gone back to this site ?

The answer is in trench one, where is it here? a visitor, I said where are you, they said, I think it's still in that trench by the castle wall, we haven't seen you for two days, yeah, well, I've been up here digging just what you've got, well, we. I have reached the bottom of this medieval wall and I have just reached under the wall towards these rocks and this ancient ground surface. I'm back in prehistory, how do you know it's prehistory? Because the whole soil is absolutely full of iron age. I work with marijuana and prehistoric flint.

You tried to insult me ​​a couple of days ago by calling me Fred Flintstone, but I don't regret it at all. I still love the look on Flint's face, he looks at how sharp my edge is. Actually, he goes on an arrow shaft like that, but that. The arrowhead is probably around 3000 BC. C. It's really satisfying that we've managed to nail the prehistoric part of the story this far, isn't it? But I know you're not even remotely interested in her. The only thing that interests you is the medieval era. things and when I talked to you a couple of days ago and we talked about why we put this trench here I said we wanted to know which of these two walls was the anterior and which was the posterior and I said there were two ways we could do that was through stratigraphy and the other could be because of the mortar and the stratigraphy that we can show with this is that this low wall here is the previous one and it is before the great tudor wall behind and it is the 13th century ah now I can't tell you the date because the mortar was Being the crucial date, we don't have the shell mortar here, so I can't say without a doubt that this is the 13th century, but it could be.

Definitely before that tempting heat, right? So you're satisfied now yes, yes, I'm going back down. I leave you to talk toBarney Rubble back to the future. Our 3D photo model of Montourgoye is almost complete and Stewart is excited. to use it as a tool to accurately measure the dimensions of the huge Tudor gun battery added late in the castle's life. I'm really interested in the thickness of the big battery for a number of reasons having to do with the defenseless castle. What is the measurement? the face of that north wall of the big battery towards the inside of all of that, so we're looking at twelve point four or five meters, that's thick, I mean, when you think that the average stone wall probably only has a maximum of two. meters thick and how deep it is from the corner to the inside of that curve of the battery, I'm looking at 23,271 meters from end to end that was put there simply to absorb the fire from the

cannons

up here on the hill because if it is simply a wall, so a two meter thick wall would simply break under the impacts of cannonballs, so they need that depth of soil to absorb the impact and although this huge Tudor-style weapons platform buried much of of the original castle, archeology is not completely lost to us, so when do you start to have good reflexes right in front of where you are standing at the 11th hour?

Jimmy has made a remarkable discovery. His radar has detected a complete 13th century tower within the last bastion which concludes our investigation and it's time to draw. Together, what we have learned about the first stone castle and its subsequent development, what can we add to this now that we did not know when we started, can we confirm that there is a half-round town, we have also found a completely unknown round. tower a round tower there 15th century battery down here a solid half just down on the round surface I think I'd better put this together this amount has been in use since prehistory the steep-sided granite hill has been recognized as a perfect defensive position For at least 5,000 years, the site was etched in stone in the 13th century, when a fortified keep was built.

Built at the highest point, protective curtain walls and towers surrounded it atop the summit of the hill and partly down the slope in the 15th century the castle had a military remodeling, two formidable moats were dug in the rock below the hill and a couple of gun towers were added to protect the entrance and cover the access to the castle . The end of the 16th century heralded the most substantial changes. The towers and walls of the first castle were demolished or buried under a monstrous gun battery and a high D-shaped designed tower. To protect the heart of the castle, the arrowhead bastion at ground level was the icing on the cake, leaving Montolgoy groaning under the weight of the weapons, but all this refortification proved useless as the castle became a prisoner of its own geography.

I still have those measurements, yes, I have Stuart. The place I am now is just over 200 yards from you, but I am actually more than four meters higher than you. I'm not even at the top of the hill yet so I have the advantage so you're definitely taller than me what do you want from me? Well, we've been trying to figure out why these defenses are so complex, particularly on this side of the castle, and why the castle seems to get higher and higher over the periods and it's actually quite interesting because if we were standing on the battlements of the castle from the 13th century, we have the height, we have the advantage, we have bows and arrows, bows and arrows exactly, so if someone were attacking down there, the effective range of a bow is about 100 yards, which is the phase right down there in the lower law, if you find a barn arrow, should I get it?, it would be dead, that's pretty cool, but then when they got muskets here, their effective range isn't that different, it's about the same distance, so where is it?

Matt, it was a terrible day, but the big difference comes a little later in the Tudor period, yes, Canon, of course, Canon makes the biggest difference and you've got a hill up there. where henry is exactly up there, if you had a cannon on that ridge at 200 yards, that's the distance at which the speed of the ball would completely crush any wall here, so in the Tudor period to build this big chunky work here To stop the impact of the ball completely destroy the wall destroying this castle suddenly you have the height you have the advantage So are you going to fire your cannon at home? it doesn't have a cannon we have a very fun stupid to make sure you get the latest updates, please Subscribe to this channel, follow us on social media, subscribe to our newsletter and join us on Patreon.