Lost Centuries at St Osyth (Essex)| S12E09 | Time Team

and the medieval tenosave center is not actually here, on this side of the priory, do you think that is correct? I don't think he was here at all. I think we have the priory there. We have the port, the creek there. If you are creating a city, you will put your settlement near those. things, so that will push you to the other side of the priory plus an old house here, this is the oldest recorded building 1300, absolutely nothing medieval, the features suggest agriculture, so this could simply be a farm with the settlement of There, Paul, I have to say that those are not the noises that Mick and Korenza made this morning, well, they may not be, but whenever I see pottery assemblages from a medieval city or settlement of any size, I invariably find many of Early medieval pottery mixed in late medieval and early post-medieval deposits, something that is simply not happening here.

There is not a single piece of medieval pottery from before the 15th century, apart from a Saxon shirt. If I look at this I don't see how there could be any medieval archeology here before the 15th century it just doesn't look right it just doesn't look like there is any carrenza not happy there is absolutely no sign of an early ozith saint having arisen around the priory during its first 300 years didn't I mean, we would have expected to find more 12th and 13th century stances, I think in the buildings around that open market space and I find it difficult to know that it doesn't look like this has a number of built properties. around this market, let's say in the 12th and 13th

centuries

, that is a problem, well, it may be that the market was bigger than we thought, some

time

s they are much bigger before they fill up.

We have a 1,500-person building here. built against buildings that already exist, we have a 1350 here and we have Saxon pottery turning up in the churchyard, there seems to be an early focus, well, a shirt, I mean, I think it's strange that all the points you're getting there, they're all getting there late , you know, you're talking about a 15th century building here, a 14th century building here, where's the 12th century and the 13th century? Just doug little test pits we still think we have

time

for it to show up, okay? So where is the door? All the pottery from the 12th and 13th

centuries

is on the edge of the river, so I think one possibility must be that it is down there.

I mean, this is later. Certainly what we don't have is regular planning. the market town set by priority is this kind of DIY, we wouldn't be in this mess if we had a proper plan, okay, so the big question is if the medieval town next to the church is to the north, is it next to the port? Is it just a messy city that has no center anywhere else? We'll find out tomorrow. Two days ago we came here to the Essex coast to try to find the medieval origins of the town of Saint Ozith and we haven't found them?

No, we've dug hole after hole in the current city and haven't found anything that predates the late Middle Ages, so with only one day left, Mix decided to throw practically all of our resources into this field by the stream. Because? Here, Mick, because the field trip here produced the oldest Satoshi pottery we have so far. You know, the great collections of things from the 12th and 13th centuries came from the other side of this slope. We also put geophysics here. I got a big strip at the bottom of this field, right above the creek, in fact right above where Phil was digging and John tells me a lot of this indicates settlement activity, some of it is probably industrial activity too, okay , then, what are we going to do?

Well, it's a big area to deal with and we only have one day to deal with it, so what we thought we'd do is dig some long trenches with a machine, I'll probably say five long trenches at a time, something like that. clean them up and see what's there and that will give us a sample in a fairly large area to see if we really have structures and if we have more fines, but why here so far from the current city? It probably has something to do with the fact that there is a port or trade on the river and they are not unusual applications for places to move.

You know, we tend to think of cities as static and villages as static, but over a period of fifteen hundred. For two thousand years they move around as their fortunes and economy change, I'm not surprised they lived here at some point, a lot of trade was carried out, the mayor lived in the priory when it existed and provided services. You live in the city, you know, you serve a market that supplies local areas at another time and the fortunes of these places change from time to time, so I'm pretty sure we're going to get something here by the time let him write a book.

Plus, it's still available. John Giafiz has identified a number of major anomalies and as soon as Henry can confirm the position, a new trench is born. Everyone is getting stuck in at an excellent level. By lunchtime, we should know if the mixed excavation or destruction strategy pays off. gas, our harbor expert is examining the beams at Phil's dock. Hopefully it can tell us if the structure related to the town or the countryside behind or both, most of the town's trenches have been closed, as after two days there is no tangible evidence of a settlement before the 15th century, but martin the vicar is not giving up, he looks good behind the stream, the mixed bet depends on geophysics and it is quite understandable that john is a little nervous, we are losing here, we will have to clean this up a bit, there is this.

There's a huge mass here, so I'm wondering if we have a couple of garbage pits interspersed or something. It's domestic garbage. They are tiles. They are pieces of ceramic. One shirt is from the 12th century. Definitely, yes, maybe a little earlier, it could be Norman Saxon. Well I think. that's very apt, I think you got it right John, in writing, garbage pits could mean houses, John identified seven anomalies, so Paul is here, Phil is here and Raksha fines suggest there was shipbuilding here, looks like you've found your anomalies, lots of metal, nails and stuff. That's all inside this well, that's all inside this well, so this time you got it right on your geophysics and John keeps saying I'm on a victory tour right now, oh what a victory tour, well, If you are in a victorious mood, what have you done? you have in your printout for this this is actually the anomaly it's one of the strongest ones we have well it looks like baked brick I wonder if it's not a kiln a blacksmith shop oh well that would be because oh look what I'm getting a lot of clinker and things like that in droves and it's not flint, it's no john, that's not flint, but that's it, it's all coming here just like we predicted, we're going to the river, we thought we'd have a 17th century Pier, but Gus has other ideas .

These piles are not straight. They are all twisted at various angles. One there is very crooked. These ones here, if I may dip into the water, this one here, I actually have the bottom. As you can see, it's got this nice chamfer at the bottom, which means that these piles were placed at about that height, so only that meter or so was really proud of the level of the river that was there, so we've

lost

all of that. the front half. and you can see there you can see where that broken board is. You can see very clearly that we've

lost

the front half of the structure, so Alan is actually standing at the front of the structure.

He is the river bank. This is the middle. from the river bank, we are in the middle of a coastal feature, what about the dates? Well, the dates seem to have arrived. All that pottery you're talking about seems to come from the bottom of these erosion levels. Okay, so the pottery dates the erosion of the present the disappearance of this structure, the collapse of the front, not its construction, so we know when it finished and we know how it finished, but what we don't know is when it was built and what it looked like. really and what Gus was for.

You're basically telling me that yesterday afternoon we had a nice little story, a beginning, a middle and an end about what this forest was and now you're kicking it all open again, that's right, thanks mate, no problems , but at least this. The enigmatic structure could be much older and could be related to the history of San José Carrenza. She has finally accepted that there is no former city here, but she is trying to discover what it was like in the 15th century, when the priory was powerful and the The city was probably booming yesterday. Brenda found a place that at first didn't seem significant, but her Location is crucial at the corner of the old market.

Brent is sure it was a public building as both floors were originally open plan, but she needed confirmation of her age, Martin, have you managed to get a date inside this medieval public building? We have discovered, yes, we have been very lucky, we have a lot of sack wood and we added the sapwood that might be missing because I don't have bark it takes us from 1494 to 1500. Brenda that is more or less exactly what you said yes, it is very close to what what I said I would have liked a little later but hey, the trees tell the truth classic site for guildhall chris do Do you think it was a town hall?

Do we have any historical evidence of the guild? Yes, well we have a good connection with the documentary evidence in the taxes of 1524, it was recorded that the um guild paid for attacks on their possessions, so this tells us that since it was a small booming town with thriving guilds a early 16th century, unfortunately this was probably the peak of its prosperity as St Joseph's fortunes declined after Henry VIII dissolved the priory 50 years later, so we have tool marks on these woods gus yes um yes we have a mick, you can see the striations that the bottom of the x cut when the light is right, yes, so what do you tell us?

There is definitely an iron blade access, not the bronze age, oh that's good. I'm relieved to do that and it's not the stone age, so it's in the era before machine tools, but we've had some pretty major trauma, but what kind of things are you thinking about? Well, what I mean by that is that this is a well-built structure that kept the riverbank solidly safe during most high tides, but there has been an exceptional storm surge that has simply washed away the entire front of this structure. , in which case you will find this interesting. I'm Samuel Peeps writing. in his diary on December 7, 1663, so it is correct for what you are telling me about what he says purely in Whitehall.

I heard and found out that last night there was the biggest tide ever seen in England and that it was in this river, all of White Hall. being drowned, I mean, that sounds like a big event on the coast, doesn't it? Since the pottery that was in that Eurasian plaza was mid to late, it was 1650 to 1700, it's 1663, between 1650 and 1700. Yeah, it must be the flood, so well, Samuel Pizza is right, I'm always a little cautious about an event that causes something, but you clearly know that damaging tides like that must have happened, it was an event like that, quite a cat, an unusually high catastrophic event that destabilized the structure. which had otherwise served sensibly and robustly enough to keep out most of the tides, but that was just once again, yes, incredible, incredible, with only two hours left, the vicar's persistence has finally given Its fruits, one and a half meters below the surface, have produced the most important thing. finds in the city, I can finally say that you returned before the 15th century in the medieval period, but yes, you returned there before, so what do we have?

Well, we have these three pretty small ones. shirts but they are enough to keep me happy basically we have this one which is a Lake London shirt where it is probably from the 14th century we have this one which is an early German stone shirt probably around 1350 and this one which is medieval Dutch pottery the generic term is ardenberg, but again in the 14th century, this is exactly the kind of thing you would expect to see in a medieval port city, you go to Holland or come from Holland, you fill the hold of your ship with expensive goods for trade, you have a corner of stimulus, you put something in like a basket of pots or whatever, it's not a huge profit, but it's better than just wasting space, wasted space was wasted money as far as merchants were concerned, so this is exactly what I expected see yes I'm happy now these are fantastic finds and Paul is convinced that the rich part of the city was close to the priory, but there is still no evidence that an earlier settlement began to develop here at that time.

The priory was built on the workers' end of the city. Phil has confirmed that there was an industry along the creek but it was much later what you actually have is a flu which is a dark thing and it actually comes right this way now it has awall on that side and a wall on that side and as the flue goes by when it gets here, it widens on that side and on that side into a main chamber, that's what I'm actually standing on now when I actually found it. I thought it was going to be a furnace or something, maybe even a blacksmith's shop, but now that I have it I realize that it is much more substantial than I ever imagined and I think it must be a furnace or something, which it isn't.

HE. I don't know how old all the bricks are, well this is a hand-made brick, not a machine-made one, it is a little smaller in dimensions than the average modern brick, yes, and it doesn't have those characteristic frog indentations. the Frogs. at the top used to put them in water, so this is potentially an early Stewart Tudor brick, 16th century, early 17th century at the top, could it be contemporary with our war? Generally speaking, it is contemporary with it, yes, I suppose it would be a very convenient place to unload a barge or something, bring in raw materials or maybe take away finished products.

Well, I couldn't help but notice that on your tray here's a piece of nail with a washer, that's the deal. Um, the diamond shaped rove that you use to join two planks of a barge or a bait, so you can't sail very far with that, but as long as you have the wood to go with it, that would make a nice little barge, well , the end of the road has arrived. from a trench right over there, so it looks like we also have on-site boat building or boat distraction, yeah, thisThis is a used ship rivet, so, um, which means they had a barge and they broke it up and which presumably can't be practically dated, yes, but except for the fact that the clinker building that uses these rows, you know, things like Mary Rose don't. use these, the Mary Rays sunk in 1545.

They continued to build a carvel there, so this could be the early 16th century, but some ships and barges still used roads like this until about the 17th century. This morning Mick was sure that we would find workshops and industries along the edge of this stream and we have roughly the 16th century of the Tudor period, but the 12th and 13th century settlement of St Joseph remains as elusive as ever. In the first trench that we opened yesterday afternoon we found a group. of mysterious garbage pits and now the trench is finished haunted mix we have evidence of buildings here can you see the kind of light colored patch in that area?

I can enter? Yes, yes, when you say light-colored patch you mean this. that's right, what is that, that's mortar, so there's a wall or a bottle and door structure, yeah, there's a cobbled toilet outside, look where the smaller stones are, this kind of sandy thing, that's true, that It's not natural and then behind you. We have a post hole at the bottom of a receding ditch that is full of oyster shells, oysters of course are an important part of the diet, so they are not the luxury we think of today, are they? Does that mean we have a building? yeah, we have a building here or an oyster bar, well we have a building, you know, one of probably many that came through the site, but we don't have a date, well we have, I mean, most of the pottery that comes from these features are from the 15th century, we are no closer to finding the medieval than we were, yes, we are because we have a lot of residual pottery that is earlier pottery that is mixed with later features and we have everything from the 11th century to the In the 15th century we have the whole range of medieval pottery, not only do we have imported things, we have things like this that are part of a 13th century French jug, this is exactly the sort of thing we would expect to see in a medieval port of the east coast, but you'll see he has his goofy smile on his face.

I haven't told you the best yet. We have a great advantage. Why is it an advantage? It is a piece of a Middle Saxon German wine jug. it's so common, it's very rare, the only kind of places where these are found are the ports of middle Saxony again, mainly on the east coast of England, so are we saying that in the eighties or nineties someone in Germany imported wine or beer or whatever? Here it was important enough that a German trader came up the creek bringing this sort of thing with them, so given the evidence we have which is not exhaustive, are you prepared to say that we have a Saxon settlement?

Oh I think so, we have a full range of pottery, we have structures that almost certainly go in every direction, that is enough to show us that we have a settlement from that early medieval period, so our elusive Sentosa settlement is no longer difficult to reach, the earliest occupation began next to the river and this would have been a very busy port in Saxon times. We are sure that the mysterious beams that Alan Williams brought us here to see were part of a dock or slipway used for loading and unloading. cargo but the terrible flood of 1663 would have devastated the seafront of saint joseph and devastated many small businesses the ship builders, sail makers and blacksmiths would also have lost their homes and the old port of santosa would have changed forever ours is the story of two towns the rich and the poor the rich and the poor we have in the priory people like brother mick immersed in prayer and contemplation in the elegant house we have lady carrenza feasting on imported ceramics looking down on the plebs like phil and Eating common people's food and trying to scratch the living room by the stream makes you happy.