The Abbey Habit (Poulton, Cheshire) | S14E12 | Time Team

so this means that the chapel could predate the

abbey

, as the site still refuses to be built in the 13th century. reveal any dating evidence, so we let the Portland research project continue its meticulous excavation. We have learned enough to believe that the chapel was built before the 12th century and was a parish church serving the community of agricultural workers and their families and the site was also used as a local cemetery. Later, when the

abbey

was built, the Cistercian monks evicted the community from the land and the chapel became a capellarad portem or gate chapel at the boundary of the monastic estate where the lay community was located.

They were allowed to worship without disturbing the monks in the farm field. Phil dug more holes in the stair trench. Mick, yeah, why aren't you doing anything? Yes, shameless devil, come and take a look at the fruits of digging a hole, come down, Mike and have a look, see what the teacher has to say, you can see the fruits and dig three holes. I dug that one behind you, yeah, and then there's this one here where the fines tray is and now I'm on the third one. right one and I'm starting to get a sense of the consistency across the site in these three holes and the thing that's consistent is that we constantly get this big rich layer of burning, look at all the charcoal and stuff like that, and every

time

we do it you get, it's overlaid with this nice clean clay.

We now know that the building is multi-phase. I wonder if one of those phases was really important and if everything was torn down or maybe it burned down and this is the result of it being demolished and then when they rebuilt it, they actually put in a lot of clay to compensate. the land for reconstruction, yes, yes, this seems, don't you like it? Yeah, that's pretty cool if it was a wood frame building on a stone foundation, which Jonathan was suggesting this is the wood frame building that caught fire. Wow, I'm just going to show you what you do if you dig a hole, I think we should do more, but for today Phil ran out of

time

to dig more bridge right, we came here to answer the question is the abbey on the site of the abbey and if it's not, then what's there and I think we're in some way to respond that I think we're on the right track, we know it's not the abbey, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we're pretty sure that It's a grange, it's certainly looking your way, but what about the fancy high status part of that place?

Is there a chance that we can put another trench to see if we can find that if we can find a good target, then we'll do it, we'll do it now, you two? I've been anxious to see if you can find where the abbey is. Yeah, yeah, is there any particular place there that you think is a really good bet? Well, there's one, there's one area that stands out, we can see the currents being deflected. two sides and that's where you can usually find some evidence of monastic activity in the remaining time we certainly should do some geophysics if we can we could even dig a hole that would be great right?

If we could find that abby. It will be great because we don't know what they look like elsewhere. We will be a real scoop, we won't know until tomorrow. Greetings, start of day three here at Paulton in Cheshire and our great news is that the Abbey pitch is there. It's no longer Abbey Field, it's Grange Field because that's what we find there, so where is the Abbey? Well, Mick and Stuart think this field here is a pretty likely candidate, although why should they think that when there is virtually no evidence in this completely featureless field I have no idea what there is a clue that frees up the streams is that the cessation monks are looking for a water source that they can manage to carry water for the kitchens of their infirmaries all that kind of rinsing the losers so they need a flowing stream generally and we have that here, you can see in this image aerial here, we're standing on this track here and we're looking at this valley up here, the actual management, the stream that comes here starts way up here there's a canal running through this field up here into this wooded area where there's a series of fish ponds oh, you've definitely seen them, yeah, the fish ponzo and that's a typical monastic feature, then the stream goes down there and you see that very distinctive right angle change. there, yes, yes, streams don't do that, they wander, so that's man-made, yes, you can see it, there's the sort of place you might expect an abbey to be in.

It's extraordinary to me because I could go through that. field a thousand times and to think that nothing has ever happened there apart from agriculture, you have not been on the right path, the obvious thing is to do some geophysics and see if there are any buildings buried here and then see what we find so that the

team

darling begins to bubble in the new field to test our hunch of the abbey. The new abbey field is located just below the chapel site and half a mile from our grange field, plus excavating some medieval walls just to complicate things we have also discovered. a rather strange Victorian cellar it's quite extraordinary these two trenches, isn't it? you've got this thing here that looks like an early victorian squash court and then you crash into it you've got something that's medieval have you managed to work it out? some kind of timeline for all of this, well we can't give you a timeline in terms of actual physical dates, we can't do that, but what we can do is give you what we would call a relative chronology so you can say we, what happened before, what exactly and step over here, our first phase is here, yeah, and that's our main wall that goes through the trench and you can see that it's actually turning to the left, oh, we've got the turn there.

We have a turn there that goes there. Phase two is this wall here that's actually attached to it, so those are our two really medieval phases. I pass by here, here's our medieval wall that goes through the trench, yeah, and then we have. i got a refund by going in that direction which is where the girls are, yes so far we are still in medieval times in the 19th century they made a big change in thinking and the salesman came in, that's where the bricks are probably They reuse some. medieval stairs and we have another wall there that is later and at some point this becomes a patio.

Beautiful piece of deconstruction. I'm amazed at the quality of the archaeology, but does it tell us anything about what was happening here in the medieval, I think it actually does, particularly if we look at this map from the 17th century, we're going in the right direction, so that's our group of buildings here and we are actually standing inside this courtyard, so we have discovered these two ranges that appear to be the agricultural buildings of the farm, we also know that the farm complex would have had a high status country house which could have been in this range, so we are digging a trench here to find out, thinking that high-status residents would overlook the earthworks we have identified as ornamental gardens as the search begins for the elegant residence, Stewart is busy studying aerial photographs to see if he can determine the boundaries of the monastic estate from the landscape features and an hour ago Alan Thacker, who has been walking Volumes of archaic Latin were found as important evidence.

There is a reference that reads as if it were a reference to Pulton's prior. I believe this is a new discovery and implies that Julicrest Abbey probably maintained a monastic presence on the original site of Poulton Abbey under an earlier foundation of data from the 1140s until at least the 1250s or 60s during over 100 years, that's very interesting because it's been one of my problems with this. I've been thinking well if they were. here so long if the monks were not here so long and then they were moved to eulercress, it is possible that the buildings are only made of wood and therefore our chances of finding them in archeology will be very difficult if you say For me, somehow This form continued until the 13th century, so it is most likely that they had already rebuilt it in stone, perhaps by then, which will make it easier for us to find it.

Yes, I think that's true, that's very encouraging and In the new fields of the abbey, the results of John's dear effervescence have not come through an abbey, but I was going to say that I can't see stone walls and things there, but it's quite encouraging, I mean, these are really good well-like anomalies, like that. storage pits or post holes or trash pits or something like that, trash pits or something like that. I guess my other concern is that you know this probably has alluvium on top of it, right with the streams? There must be floods, yes, and it has flooded quite a bit. a lot in recent years and when you walk around you see bits of brick and tide and all kinds of things on the surface, so I'm guessing there will be at least a meter of alluvium here before you get to the archaeological levels, I think we could do you have to see with knowing that?

Actually, because you won't be able to see through three feet of slime, are you just big things? Well, let's do that and find out if we're dealing with that. Unfortunately, testing the eluvium is going to be difficult because the mechanical diggers are tied up at the farm site, so John tries to persuade Helen and Kerry to get their hands dirty. How much would you feel between half a meter and one meter? And it's our first movie at four thirty. You have a shovel and a matic you have a shovel Yes, you have a matter I'm sorry, it's okay, it's all yours goodbye Oh, he's so understanding, isn't he pathetic in the farm field?

The trench we opened to find the fancy farm has revealed absolutely nothing, we're actually looking at that building there, so on the afternoon of the third day it's time to seriously rethink what rank the fancy building is. Having discovered these walls, we thought that the posh range was here, but now it seems that the building is facing the opposite direction and the luxurious country house is actually here, so Phil starts digging another trench next to the staircase and within moments their efforts are rewarded, that's a little cooler, they look a little good, Phil, where did they do it?

These come from everywhere here in the trenches Tony, I mean, I was literally working my way back. Look, I went through a lot of burning, which is kind of like demolition, all that black stuff, but then look, it's falling on clay with all these tiles. and they are all destroyed, it's not a floor that was actually laid, but they tore it up and used it as a base for another floor, but we have all those beautiful tiles, what do you think they tell us? Well, I mean. I think in terms of date, they're probably 14, maybe even early 15th century, but they're actually quite elegant mosaics.

I mean, this one is particularly elegant. We have a little line there, it's been cut there, but that should. It will be the lion's head and we have the rest of his body there, but this piece in the corner is very revealing. This should be part of a larger decorative scheme of a very elegant apartment. Now he was saying that it is there, something that the elegant one bit there. Yes, yes, but it seems like the fancy part really ended on this part of the site. It is the final moments of the third day and now the trench in the wall is joining the torrent of tiles.

Oh wow, cool, look at that in the new field, the hole. It's only a meter deep and there's no sign of the bottom of the alluvial layer I think we'll all go back and leave Helen Yes, it's not my turn anymore John, it's your turn Fun It's your turn to dig Come back Good to see a woman at work Phil look we have one from the other trench now it's broken oh yeah and yours aren't yeah you're so competitive what do you think this means? Surely it doesn't mean there's a huge floor stretching across the two. trenches no, I mean they were deposited again from here somewhere, but none of them are in situ at the moment unfortunately we are not going to find either the apartment or the building where these beautiful tiles come from because we ran out of time.

This place has caused us a lot of problems, hasn't it? Half the time we thought the fancy part was up there and then we thought it was down there and then we thought everything was facing this direction and then the other direction. Can we now say what the farm would have looked like on the ground? I think so, Tony, but maybe if we do it according to this plan, that's for the best. You know, the big wall we've been hitting against for the last three. days after three days, that's right, running around here that actually runs like this, yeah, so we have some more walls running that way, that way, that way, so we have this big block there, yeah, then a each side we have We have one more wing like that and then probably another one on this side and our elegant building is probably closing in and forming that courtyard plan that we saw in the 17th century plan, so,Where would the elegant building have been on the land behind us? so we haven't actually excavated it at all no, unfortunately no, what's up with these earthworks?

Because that's why we came here in the first place, isn't it? I mean, the earthworks have fooled us quite a bit because we assumed. they were kind of a planned garden and so the fancy part would overlook that planned garden, but actually looking at them again, I mean, this big one here appears to be a fish pond, so it just provides fish for the main complex, so the farm would have looked like this, there was a courtyard surrounded by half-timbered buildings, there would have been a gated entrance at the front, the two side rows were made up of agricultural and service areas with stables, butters and stoves, and the fourth row would have looked like this. have been high status homes, this central block was then surrounded by a series of agricultural buildings, barns, breweries and even has a dovecote.

Stewart finally finished his study of the landscape and his search for the elusive abbey and drew a map of the abbey. estate the abbey is not in the yellow area because the Portland research project has established that the building here is a chapel and they have investigated all the other possible sites here and found nothing it is not in the orange area because the building here has turned Turns out it's the farm, so Stuart thinks the most likely place is the pink area where Helen is digging. This is a pond for a stream that comes this way.

Its old course ran down there. That very undulating course there and the modern pond for the stream is this. big here and that's it, that's it, that's actually a departure from that, exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to see with the Cistercian waterworks and it would imply that in this pink zone this is where the site of the abbey should be, so i think we need to familiarize ourselves with the history of the abbey in 1147 a local landowner gave the cistercian monks an estate in

poulton

so that they could found an abbey they built the abbey next to the local stream the pulford stream which they diverted to supply water to the monastic complex the monks evicted the local community and annexed the local parish church which later became the chapel of the gates on the edge of their property the abbey only lasted 60 years until the monks were lured to a new abbey in staffordshire by the earl of chester and as we go along maybe helen will find him under all that eluvium don't come back come back I've had enough