A Village Affair (Full Episode) | S19 EP2 | Time Team (Bitterley, Shropshire)

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:18]Welcome to bitterly in Shropshire, the quintessential English village. Almost chocolate box.

[00:00:27]It's bursting with pretty cottages, a lovely church, an imposing stately home, all surrounded by empty rolling fields.

[00:00:40]But maybe not quite so empty. We've been invited here by the people of Bitterly because they think that their village once covered this entire huge field. So, are they right? was quaint little old bitterly once a much bigger bustling bitterly. We've got just 3 days to help the villagers find out.

[00:01:03]Let's hope they're not bitterly disappointed.

[00:01:06]Sorry.

[00:01:27]The village of Bitterly. A sleepy, tranquil kind of place. Well, normally a sleepy, tranquil kind of place. But with time around, you must be joking.

[00:01:38]>> Beautiful morning, ain't it?

[00:01:41]>> Just the right sort of conditions for digging holes.

[00:01:44]Lying four miles northwest of Lello in the county of Shropshire, Bitter is first mentioned in the Doomsday Book, giving it a history dating back at least a thousand years. And it's this history the villages are keen to uncover. And I mean really keen. 9:00 day 1 and the whole village has already turned out to up all itching to help us launch a fullscale attack.

[00:02:09]>> So you need your clipboard, John.

[00:02:11]Spurred on by June Buckhard, village resident and the leader of the young archaeology club. They've joined forces with us and they'll be honeycombing the village with as many test pits as possible. By the time they've finished, Bitterly won't have any more secrets to hide.

[00:02:29]It's Bedum down there. You wouldn't have thought that the little village could contain so many people. But why do they think that their village which is what about almost a mile away was originally up here?

[00:02:42]>> Well, you look around Tone and what we've got in this field. You've been doing this long enough to to have an opinion as to what this lot is.

[00:02:48]>> Well, I must admit I am standing on some rather gnarled looking lumps and bumps here.

[00:02:53]>> Yeah.

[00:02:54]>> Does the phrase deserted medieval village ring very accurate?

[00:02:59]>> Absolutely. It's it looks like medieval settlement remains. You've already put a trench in, haven't you?

[00:03:04]>> Uh, we have.

[00:03:06]>> Come on, let's have a look at it.

[00:03:07]>> Sort of.

[00:03:09]>> In a very amateurish way.

[00:03:10]>> What did you find?

[00:03:11]>> Uh, bag full of pottery. All of it dated very reliably to between 11 and 1300.

[00:03:17]>> Oh, that's medieval.

[00:03:20]Everything medieval.

[00:03:21]>> What do we do with this trench now?

[00:03:22]>> We need to see if there's a building here. So, we'll turn this trench it probably three or four times the area into an area excavation. What about down there where the village currently is?

[00:03:33]>> If we dig test bits in the existing village and those test pits have got nothing in them earlier than let's say 1500,600 something like that it'll begin to look as if that village is later.

[00:03:47]>> So we'll start off test pitting down there and over here we extend your trench.

[00:03:51]>> Yeah.

[00:03:51]>> Oh yes please.

[00:03:52]>> Yeah.

[00:03:52]>> So this is trench one and a half now.

[00:03:54]>> This is trench one and a half. Yes.

[00:04:00]So, we're putting in our first trench, trench one, over the vill's existing trench.

[00:04:07]Although they found medieval pottery, they didn't manage to identify any houses. So, by expanding their trench, we're hoping to find out whether the lumps and bumps and pottery really are the remains of an earlier bitterly. And Phil's hardly scratched the surface before he's got some results.

[00:04:26]And Hang on a minute, Mick. Tony Park. Oh, that's good. That's good.

[00:04:39]Look.

[00:04:42]>> Any ideas?

[00:04:43]>> Well, if it was down our way, it' be 12th, 13th century.

[00:04:47]10:00, day one. Already we have a sniff of a deserted medieval village. But a mile away back down the road, modernday bitterly is looking far from deserted.

[00:05:00]Under the watchful eye of Maryanne and the archaeologists, the villagers have already begun to pepper their gardens with test pits. So, >> you haven't found any pots of gold yet?

[00:05:09]>> No.

[00:05:09]>> Yeah, not yet.

[00:05:10]>> It's all to play for.

[00:05:12]>> It's her job to maintain order and report back with the results from the test pits.

[00:05:19]>> Hey, is it This is some sort of gym move, isn't it? should be own that.

[00:05:24]>> We're looking for dating evidence from across the whole of the present day village. With a bit of luck, at the end of the dig, we'll be able to chart the history of the modern village and even tie it into the history of the lost bitterly they think once existed a mile away.

[00:05:39]>> So, tell me what what have you learned about the archaeology of the village already?

[00:05:43]>> Well, we think that the houses have been moved from the field up the top because of a plague.

[00:05:50]>> Ah, so theories as well. whole theories as well. That's that's one idea. In fact, there's a a very strong oral tradition in the village that the medieval village was up by the church.

[00:06:00]Um, and that it was plague, definitely plague that made the move.

[00:06:06]So, we've got enthusiasm, we've got energy, and now we've got theories. In the 14th century, the plague or black death certainly caused many medieval villages to be abandoned. But did it cause bitterly to move location? So far, we're just lacking one thing. Good solid evidence.

[00:06:26]For me, one lumpy field and a scatter of pottery do not a village make deserted, medieval, or otherwise. But it's early days, and after all, Phil has already transformed the villagers trench, and the stonework is beginning to take shape.

[00:06:40]>> What it looks like beginning to look like is that we do have a wall. Uh, and I rather think that it's probably a collapsed wall. That's where all this rubble comes into play. Now, of course, whether or not it's a building wall or whether it's just a a field boundary wall remains to be seen.

[00:07:00]So, too early to tell whether it's a wall around a field or a wall of a house, but at least it's not just a pile of stones. In 3 days, we can't possibly dig up the whole of this massive field to explore every last lump and bump. So John and the team are geopysing to see if there's any evidence of buildings underground. Because to really understand all these lumps and bumps, you need to employ good old-fashioned leg work to get to know every shape, every contour, what bumps lie over what lump. You need to get close to them. And that's just what Mick has asked our new team member, Alex, to do. Fortunately, he loves his landscapes.

[00:07:40]>> There's just so much going on in this field. It's it's going to be quite something to try and take all of this in and report back on this. There's certainly a kind of change in alignment.

[00:07:51]There's certainly two kinds of features here. I don't know if one's an earlier field system or a later field system and the village, but quite what the relationship is at the moment, I don't know.

[00:08:02]>> It's a lot to get to grips with even with three days. But down in the present village, after a somewhat slow and shaky start and a trow full of expert guidance, we've now got a throng of budding archaeologists.

[00:08:15]>> So look for stuff that has right angles and straight edges and keep that kind of thing. But if it is just sort of a round piece of stone like that, I think you're pretty safe to throw that on the spoil heap >> and their hard work's paying off.

[00:08:28]>> This is our 20 cm level.

[00:08:30]>> How long you been digging now, Sandra?

[00:08:32]Half past 94 to 10, I think.

[00:08:35]>> And it's 10 1.

[00:08:37]>> Yes. Yep.

[00:08:38]>> Have they found anything?

[00:08:39]>> Yeah. Look at this.

[00:08:41]>> How's that?

[00:08:42]>> Which is lovely.

[00:08:43]>> Oh, which king's that?

[00:08:44]>> Edward the seventh. And the date is just >> early in his reign. And apparently there weren't many minted at that time. So that's really nice.

[00:08:55]>> That's great.

[00:08:56]>> And it's in fantastic condition. It looks as though it's just come out of someone's pocket rather than out of the ground. You didn't just drop it in, did you?

[00:09:03]>> No way. And did you find?

[00:09:04]>> So, half a day down and we've pushed the date of the present village all the way back to >> 1902.

[00:09:12]But back in the field, at least Alex is beginning to get to grips with those lumps and bumps.

[00:09:17]>> So, what have you found then, Alex? You come up with anything?

[00:09:20]>> Yeah, I think I have. We've got what I think is an arrangement of buildings.

[00:09:25]>> All right.

[00:09:25]>> And that's essentially because these parch marks if we if we go over here.

[00:09:30]Oh, criy. Yes.

[00:09:32]>> If you look at this, you know, it's just that bit drier. And that's telling us that there are stones underneath.

[00:09:36]>> And there are stones here as well, aren't there?

[00:09:38]>> Yeah, we've got stones here >> coming out of the grass. In fact, you can see stones all over the place, can't you? There's a load sticking out here.

[00:09:44]Look, this almost looks like a wall here, doesn't it?

[00:09:47]>> Yeah.

[00:09:48]>> I mean, that's u there's obviously some structure there, isn't there? We've got a platform that feasibly >> Yeah.

[00:09:54]>> comes down as far as here.

[00:09:56]>> That's right.

[00:09:56]>> And it's the way it relates to the end of this terrace. And you've got more stone walls buried.

[00:10:02]>> Yeah. So, we've got something here.

[00:10:04]Also, we've got a couple of lineers going through there converging which may in maybe some kind of trackway. And we've got what look to be platforms on the other side of that. So, I I wouldn't say village, but it certainly looks like we've got some buildings here.

[00:10:18]>> It might be a couple of farmsteads or something. Let's go and organize the machines to cuz we should get cracking on straight away.

[00:10:26]Fingers crossed this could turn out to be some evidence of settlement. To find out, we're putting in a second trench.

[00:10:33]And if these lumps do turn out to be the walls of medieval houses, and if Phil's wall also plays ball, then well, maybe the villagers theories are right. Maybe bitterly did move because of the plague.

[00:10:46]Maybe we've nearly sorted it. But then again, given mixed views on so-called local knowledge, maybe not.

[00:10:54]Aston's first law of local research says that the local version is invariably wrong.

[00:11:01]>> I don't think the villagers would like that.

[00:11:03]>> But Aston's second law of local research is that whatever they tell you is probably right.

[00:11:09]>> You had to balance up what they tell you really.

[00:11:11]>> But if their theory is wrong and this wasn't a village that was decimated by the Black Death.

[00:11:17]>> Yeah.

[00:11:18]>> What c could have caused it to collapse if in fact it did? There's a whole series of later reasons. I mean, the most obvious one is in the 15th and 16th century there's a change over from arable farming to pasture farming. You don't need as many people for that and people are either evicted or they drift away and go elsewhere. Another common reason, especially with a big house like this, is looking out. They don't want a load of hvels in the in the front. So, they they knock them down and clear the space in front of them. I like the idea that we're exposing the dreadfulness of the land owner and getting rid of all the peasants so he could have a nice view.

[00:11:55]>> Sent them yonder to the village.

[00:11:58]>> But whether this phantom village died out because of the plague or whether it was down to hvel clearances is all still up in the air. At the end of day one, the question is, have we yet got enough evidence to show that there ever was a village in this field at all?

[00:12:14]Right now, there's only one man able to answer that.

[00:12:18]Hey up, you're enjoying this, aren't you?

[00:12:20]>> Absolutely, Tony. I It's a superb day, ain't it? Sun's out, nice bit of digging and a thirst.

[00:12:27]>> I could do with a point at the end of the day. Ah, >> I've got news for you.

[00:12:32]>> What?

[00:12:32]>> The village doesn't have a pub.

[00:12:35]>> A village that doesn't have a pub?

[00:12:37]>> Yeah.

[00:12:37]>> What sort of a village is this? You've got to have a pub.

[00:12:42]>> Maybe that's why it disappeared.

[00:12:45]>> Yeah. A deserted deserted modern village. I think they've all gone somewhere else for a pint.

[00:12:52]>> Have we got a bit of a village up here?

[00:12:55]>> Not in this trench. No, I don't think we have.

[00:12:57]>> Well, you've got an awful lot of stone, haven't you?

[00:12:59]>> Ah, but just because we've got a wall, and I'm sure we got a wall, doesn't mean to say we've got a building and a village. I think we do have a wall. I think it's a wall that goes around the edge of a field. And you can see it actually. They they they had it in the bottom of their trench. Look, there's one face of it there. And you can see there's those two big stones up to the side of it.

[00:13:20]>> It's a bit disappointing, isn't it?

[00:13:22]>> There's still plenty of mileage in this trench yet. We've got to actually take off some of this rubble and then we go down to the soil below that. Who knows?

[00:13:31]There might be a medieval village there.

[00:13:34]>> Might.

[00:13:36]>> But there's still no pub in the village.

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[00:14:06]Beginning of day two here at Bitterly in Shroptshire where we're trying to help the people of the village which is just through those trees over there work out their history. Morning Ian. And whether or not the village once extended all the way across this vast field where the churches, but actually it's not them that needs the help. This is our first trench looking for the extension of the village. And what have we got? just a pile of rubble which was probably just once part of some field boundary.

[00:14:37]And as for trench 2, what have we got?

[00:14:39]Oh, look, another field boundary or something. And then along here, load of old rubble and earth. And look, what's this at the other end? Could it be?

[00:14:49]Yeah, another field boundary. There's not much here, is there? Nothing to write about.

[00:14:53]>> You're in one of your massive negative moods again today. I've told you about this. It'll be time for your medicine again if you go on like that.

[00:15:01]>> Why?

[00:15:03]Why? Why do I get that kind of response when I'm just stating the frankly bleeding obvious that there's nothing in these trenches?

[00:15:09]>> This was open the end of yesterday.

[00:15:11]We're We've taken the top soil off.

[00:15:13]Trace is still cleaning. We don't know what's in here. If this is all the same structure, look back to here. That can't be just a field wall.

[00:15:23]>> Michael.

[00:15:24]>> Oh, >> be honest. This is like my dad talking now, isn't it?

[00:15:28]>> In that trench, can you yet see indications of a medieval settlement?

[00:15:34]>> Not yet.

[00:15:35]>> Thank you. That's all I'm saying.

[00:15:37]>> Now, ask me the next question.

[00:15:38]>> What are we going to do next?

[00:15:40]>> Carry on until we see if there is any medieval occupation here.

[00:15:44]>> Alex, you want to put in another one, don't you?

[00:15:46]>> Yeah, of course. Of course. And I've got an area here um just up closer to the mana house, actually. Um, we've got these very ephemeral earthworks and they look to be like the tail end of plots laid up against a road that once went through the memorial complex.

[00:16:03]>> It's always been that end of this field that's interested you the most.

[00:16:06]>> Yeah, I mean the potry that Phil's got up there must have come from somewhere up there. So, yeah, it's quite reasonable that the settlement was above it and we should put a trench and have a look at that.

[00:16:13]>> Well, that's the and >> first bit of good news I've had this morning.

[00:16:16]>> And then you're going to have a lie down with a bag of cold peas on your head and leave us to get on with it. Right.

[00:16:21]>> I can't. There's no shop in the village, let alone a path.

[00:16:30]>> So, let's hope it's third time lucky. As we're opening yet another trench in the field to see if we can find any evidence of a settlement up here. Alex thinks that the earthworks here absolutely shout buried walls of houses. Like, I haven't heard that one before. But as we continue our struggle to find any hint of a village at this end, a mile away down in the bitterly we do know exists, it's a hive of activity as the village's own archaeological agitator June rallies the troops for another day's onslaught.

[00:17:00]>> Um, there's your muscle power, Karen.

[00:17:02]>> Across the whole village, we've now got 19 test pits open. And as the finds come in, Debbie, our pottery expert, is plotting the results on a map of bitterly. It's a crucial task because we're not so much interested in each individual find as the spread of finds as a whole using different colored dots for each historical period found in the test pits. This should help us build up a picture of when and how the present village took shape. So these three trays are from test pit 12 behind the school.

[00:17:32]And you can see there's quite a mix of modern and older pottery. This is nice.

[00:17:37]That's 17th or 18th that fits with the blue dot. That's really nice. That's a piece of what's called press molded slitwear. It's not wheel thrown. It's formed over a curved former. When they it's dried a little, they've pulled it off the mold, put the glaze on, and they would have decorated the edge with a cockal shell to give a pie crust effect.

[00:17:52]That's a really nice piece that.

[00:17:55]>> So, midm morning, day two, and the villagers are gradually beginning to push back the date of their village. At the moment, they're having more success than we are. Back in the fields, we've now got three trenches open. We're finding walls and pottery. But as for evidence of a settlement, there seems to be absolutely nothing up here at all.

[00:18:15]Well, apart from the one rather large thing that's been staring us in the face, the big house bitterly caught. And if anyone around here is going to know the lie of the land, it's the local land owner.

[00:18:27]>> Now, there's no bell or anything, is there?

[00:18:30]>> Well, just get around here. Look.

[00:18:33]>> Hey, you sure about this?

[00:18:34]>> Yeah. Well, we'll we'll play the mad archaeologist card if he's stroppy about it. We might find a shotgun coming out of the >> Oh, no. I got done for trespassing recently and you can usually talk people around and they know what you're doing.

[00:18:47]>> James, hope you don't mind us breaking into your garden.

[00:18:50]>> Hello. Hi.

[00:18:50]>> Hi there.

[00:18:51]>> Hi.

[00:18:52]>> Do you think if you'd been standing here a few hundred years ago and you'd have seen the village here, you'd have thought, let's get rid of that and look at the view.

[00:18:58]>> I don't suppose you'd be allowed to today, but but >> it been very typical in the past to to move the village from away from the view. It happened thousands of times.

[00:19:06]>> Yeah.

[00:19:07]>> Okay. So, there's the village. Uh, what about the the house? What do we know about that?

[00:19:12]>> Gosh. Well, it was built largely in the 17th century, but I'm hoping we'll find that there's a much older structure in the center of it.

[00:19:23]>> Does that make sense to you?

[00:19:24]>> It does. Yeah. I mean, we know that the church is normal and so close to the big house suggests that there's something here of that date, but I mean, ideally, it would be nice to do some geohysics around it and to actually go and look at the structure of the building. I think that would be the first thing we we would like to do.

[00:19:42]>> That would be good.

[00:19:43]>> You wouldn't mind the house being turned over to our team?

[00:19:47]>> Well, within limits, yes, >> we'll discuss those limits later.

[00:19:54]Well, maybe it's best to leave the house for a moment and break him in with a little gentle geop fizzing.

[00:20:06]I just hope James is as carefree about his lawn as the rest of Bitly's residents.

[00:20:12]Plenty >> of >> and their efforts are producing some rather unexpected results on the fines map.

[00:20:23]First glance at that I thought it does look like pottery. It's very very fragile and damaged. So that might be a piece of medieval pottery. What color have you chosen for medieval?

[00:20:32]>> Medieval is yellow.

[00:20:33]>> I've put yellow dot down there at number two.

[00:20:35]>> So Deb, in terms of my key yellow dots, I've got a definite one here and two questionable ones here.

[00:20:42]>> Yeah, I thought that the theory was that nothing was going on here in the village itself in medieval times. It was all happening in the field by bitterly court.

[00:20:51]>> As you know, some of these trenches have started today and we haven't seen the fines processed yet. So, it's going to be quite exciting to see how it develops. Well, I'd love to know how it's all going to turn out cuz like Maryanne, I thought that medieval bitterly was situated up in those fields and for some reason it died out and the village moved down here to its present location. But now we've got medieval pottery down here and up there. One big medieval village.

[00:21:19]That is, and I'll say it again, if we ever find any evidence of buildings in that field.

[00:21:26]>> Have a look in here. Oh, >> wow.

[00:21:29]>> This is the >> This is the bitterly called estate box.

[00:21:32]We got some fantastic old seals on some of them. Right. Okay. But the one that's probably most interesting for you is this old estate book. It's got one particular map in it which I think is quite is quite interesting.

[00:21:50]This is a parchment which shows wow the property here and the fields where you're doing the dig here. I mean what's fascinating to me about this is we've we obviously don't have any suggestion here of a settlement. So it's clearly by the date of this map 1766 you say it's clearly vanished completely um from where we suspect it may have been. This field boundary here though it's depicted as a hedge row there isn't it whereas we've got a wall in a very on a very similar alignment. That's fascinating.

[00:22:28]>> Yes it is fascinating. James' map shows no evidence of the village. Strong evidence that the wall Phil's been working on for a day and a half is nothing more than a field boundary.

[00:22:40]But then if it is, where does all the pottery come from?

[00:22:44]>> This is fine for a a bog standard medieval settlement. The stuff isn't very worn. You've got quite fresh breaks on the pottery. This is deposited quite near to where it was used.

[00:22:55]>> What about the stuff that you'd expect to find with the pottery? The bone and the burnt wood and stuff.

[00:23:00]>> Um, we haven't got any of any of that.

[00:23:04]>> That's quite odd.

[00:23:05]>> I mean, that absolutely. You would expect that if it was a village, they would have been eating animals. They would have been rearing. They would have been burning stuff. There is no charcoal. There's certainly no bone. I don't know whether it's the acidity of the soil, but is not not a scrap of it.

[00:23:20]>> This is really strange to me. We've got evidence of some kind of medieval occupation from this pot, but there's nothing else to go with it. We can't find any structures.

[00:23:33]There really isn't very much here at all.

[00:23:35]Where's the village?

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[00:24:06]Welcome back to Bitterly in Shroptshire where we've joined forces with its villages to investigate its history.

[00:24:12]They've opened a whopping 19 test pits.

[00:24:15]Medieval pottery is unexpectedly pushing the date of the present village back to the 13th century.

[00:24:27]>> A mile away in the fields, we've opened three trenches. We found more medieval pottery, but no settlement.

[00:24:37]In fact, so far, the only identifiable medieval building that we've got around here is the Norman Church.

[00:24:54]>> Oh, mate, this is a gorgeous little church.

[00:24:57]>> Oh, yeah. We need to look around though, Tone first.

[00:24:59]>> Do you want to go off and have a fertile? Yeah, I'll go and have a look around and then I'll see you a bit later.

[00:25:04]>> James, the first thing that is obvious to me is all these Walcots, Eliza Walcott, Charles Walcott, John Walcott.

[00:25:11]Who are they?

[00:25:12]>> A very old shop family who um who I always used to be very rude about because they increasingly hit on bad times. My story was always they lost all their money because they drank too much.

[00:25:24]But I was looking through some family papers and I discovered that all these people are actually my great great great grandparents. So, it's a tragedy rather than a travesty now.

[00:25:32]>> Yeah, exactly. So, I have to be polite about them now.

[00:25:35]>> Mick, how you getting on?

[00:25:36]>> Oh, very good. Got anything good?

[00:25:38]>> Oh, yes. Come down here and have a look.

[00:25:40]>> All right.

[00:25:44]>> Isn't that a gem?

[00:25:47]>> How old do you reckon that is?

[00:25:48]>> Well, I think it must be Norman. I mean, >> it's the font, isn't it? Where the baptism?

[00:25:52]>> It's the font where the baptism takes place. And it's leadlined. Look, they put a lead sheet inside it. But around the edge, you see it has these these little arches just like a Norman arcade in a in a castle or or a monastery or something like that with the pillars.

[00:26:06]Does it tell us anything? It does. It tells us something about the status of the church at that time because only places that were by the parish churches or minsters could have carried out baptism. So it tells us there's a proper church here at that date.

[00:26:21]>> So if it was a working parish church, >> Yeah.

[00:26:23]>> there must have been a working parish here.

[00:26:25]>> Yeah. This this church is serving a community. One of the things it does is baptize all the infants as they come along. But it's a 25 mileer that is.

[00:26:34]>> What do you mean by that?

[00:26:35]>> It's worth coming 25 miles to see that.

[00:26:40]>> Well, Mick might travel 25 miles to visit a font, but I bet the medieval inhabitants didn't. My money is on them having lived somewhere near the church.

[00:26:49]Question is where exactly. Phil's refusing to give up on trench one and a half, but it's not looking very promising.

[00:26:57]>> Not a hint of anything, is there?

[00:26:59]>> No.

[00:27:00]>> And trench two is looking, or should I say, smelling like it was just a cow buyer. But Alex's punt on trench three, where Matt's been digging, might actually be paying off.

[00:27:12]>> So, this is looking like the kind of stuff then you'd expect on an abandoned village site.

[00:27:18]>> Yeah.

[00:27:18]>> You got a lot of stones here, though. So this walls, floors, or just overburden natural?

[00:27:23]>> Well, I think these may well have been formeding forming barriers maybe between plots, you know, that you >> recognize. But it's a it's a sniff though. There's there's a there's an aura of medieval stuff going on.

[00:27:33]>> Good. Good.

[00:27:37]>> So at last the trace of a village. But exactly how big was it? John's devised a shrewd though somewhat lazy way to find out. scanning every contour to create a 3D topographical map and sort out house from hump once and for all. Back at the present village, we've also found evidence of medieval activity. If these two areas were once joined together, bitterly may have been more like a medieval metropolis.

[00:28:04]So, in the hunt for further clues, we've begun a house-to-house search.

[00:28:08]Architectural expert Richard K. Morris looks for different styles of construction. He believes this is the village's oldest standing building dating to the 16th century. So we've put in a test pit in its garden and we found not just pottery but a possible hint of an earlier structure. I mean in my experience of test pits all the best stuff is under the cobbling on there.

[00:28:30]>> Well, exactly. So that that's that's the issue is we don't actually have any dating evidence.

[00:28:35]>> But let's not extend it. Let's just take it down a bit further.

[00:28:39]>> Okay.

[00:28:39]>> Until >> Do you want to do another one somewhere?

[00:28:42]>> Um I'd like to do that if we uh if they wouldn't mind.

[00:28:52]>> And luckily, it seems they don't.

[00:28:55]>> I mean, that would be the ideal place, I would think, somewhere over there. We do a very neat job. Great. Okay, let's go and tell the troops.

[00:29:03]We got the um it's not actually very sharp.

[00:29:21]>> So midafter afternoon madness day two.

[00:29:24]We're not so much digging in the village, but digging up the village to find out how big Bitterly was. watching all you poor folks sweat in the sun. And I feel like I feel like some kind of feudal lady going, "Yes, dig another hole."

[00:29:40]>> And June, well, she seems quite at home as archaeological supervisor.

[00:29:45]>> I think that is a grade number one stone.

[00:29:51]>> Sorry, Sasha.

[00:29:52]>> All right, then. Thank you.

[00:29:54]>> As for our illustrious professor, no, I can't believe it either. He's actually getting his hands dirty for once.

[00:30:01]>> Cool. Mick, this must be the first time in 10 years that I've seen you on your hands and knees.

[00:30:08]>> 20 years.

[00:30:08]>> You That's the last time you did any trailing. Is it?

[00:30:10]>> No. No. Last time I did any trailing was last weekend.

[00:30:13]>> Cuz I dig three of these a week at home.

[00:30:15]You see, >> you do love your test pits.

[00:30:17]>> I do love me test pits.

[00:30:18]>> Why did you choose choose? This is your particular choice, isn't it? This is like the desert island discs.

[00:30:23]>> Absolutely.

[00:30:24]>> Of test pits. Why did you choose this one? If that's got medieval stuff, it it'll show there was something here before the house was built. So, we'll know there was a medieval structure or medieval farm before the present house was built.

[00:30:37]>> So, we need him to trail as slowly as he can while trailing as quickly as he can.

[00:30:41]>> Well, I was going to say I don't don't recognize that word slow at all.

[00:30:45]>> I thought you were going to help.

[00:30:46]>> No, I'm off to the next test bit.

[00:30:49]Nearly the end of day two. And while it's still a frenzy of activity down here, back at the field, everyone's packed up. Well, nearly everyone anyway cuz Matt's made a rather interesting find.

[00:31:02]>> This is all from this end of the trench.

[00:31:04]Maybe the first 2 or 3 meters.

[00:31:06]>> There you go. 12th, 13th century.

[00:31:08]>> That seems very familiar. That down at the bottom.

[00:31:16]That's a lovely piece of floor tile.

[00:31:18]Yeah.

[00:31:19]>> You got any date for it?

[00:31:20]>> I think it's about 13th century.

[00:31:22]>> And it is interesting that as we're getting towards the church and towards the big house, the quality of the finds is going up. Tell you what, I'd like to put a trench up there >> in the garden. There's no one around for you. We just do it now. The digger down tools at once, guys. Mick makes the decisions here. And anyway, I've got something to keep you out of mischief.

[00:31:48]>> Well, Phil, there may not ever have been a pub in bitterly.

[00:31:52]>> You said there wasn't.

[00:31:53]>> But there is now. The Phil's head.

[00:31:57]>> Why is that?

[00:31:58]>> It's your own little treat. You go off and have a drink.

[00:32:02]>> Why is that a reasonable pro?

[00:32:08]>> Uh to you free. Thank you very reasonable price. I shall have to put the word in with a lot of landlords to to adopt your pricing scheme.

[00:32:19]>> Been a funny old day, isn't it?

[00:32:20]>> It's been great, isn't it?

[00:32:22]>> No.

[00:32:23]>> Confusing. We're scratching our heads.

[00:32:25]>> What's the confusion then? What what what can we tell you?

[00:32:28]>> Okay. When we're talking about a village Yeah.

[00:32:30]>> What on earth is it that we're looking for?

[00:32:32]>> Yeah. Because we've been talking about Wait a minute. We've been talking about a village now for 36 hours. If it starts up there.

[00:32:40]>> Yeah.

[00:32:40]>> And at some period in history ended right up by the house. That's not a village. That's a small town.

[00:32:45]>> It would be a town. Yeah. Where's that air picture now? Cuz that explains it, doesn't it?

[00:32:49]>> Yeah. This has got some some interesting features on it. And in particular here, we've got what we call ridge and furrow agriculture. So, it's a medieval field system between the two villages. So, we know >> Hold on a minute. You just said two villages.

[00:33:03]>> Absolutely. Because we've got medieval pottery up by the church and the manor up here.

[00:33:07]>> We've got medieval pottery in the test bits down here now.

[00:33:11]>> But they can't be continuous settlement because of the region furough. So there there must be two centers of medieval settlement.

[00:33:17]>> So when we've been talking about the village of bitterly, we should have been talking about possibly the two villages of bit.

[00:33:23]>> Absolutely. Why didn't you tell us before? Because we've only known that since the test bits this afternoon.

[00:33:28]>> Hang on a minute. Also, if there's a church up here by Bitterly Court and it's a parish church, why isn't it near the people?

[00:33:34]>> Yeah.

[00:33:35]>> Well, there might have been another one down there recently.

[00:33:37]>> So, there's not one bitterly, there's two bitteries. And there's not one church. There's >> There could be two.

[00:33:43]>> On that bombshell. Let's have a drink.

[00:33:46]And >> it's really exciting, isn't it?

[00:33:48]>> No, it's highly confusing. Why didn't you tell us before?

[00:33:51]>> Well, if I'd have told you, you wouldn't have invited us to have the beer, would you?

[00:33:54]>> Oh, drink here bitterly and go home.

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[00:34:25]Beginning of day three here at Bitterly in Shroptshire where we're trying to unpick the history of the village. And yesterday afternoon I found out that in times past there may well not have been just one bitterly but two bitterly one up there and the other down here. Not only that, but there could have been two churches. One up there and the other down here. And then yesterday evening Mick says there could have been two great houses, one up there and the other right here.

[00:34:54]If we can prove the existence of two medieval mana houses, then it would look like mixed two village theory is also spoton. Where there's a mana house, there's likely to be a village. He thinks that bitterly court was probably one of them and that another called Park Hall near the present village could have been the other.

[00:35:14]>> Well, you just look at that photograph and just see what you've got. And that's only obviously a fragment of a much larger building and it's probably of the late 16th century. So, did this survive till fairly recently? If there's a photograph, >> it was taken down, pulled down in the 1950s.

[00:35:28]>> That is that >> that's that lump. Yes.

[00:35:31]>> But it's interesting that it's on what is probably an earlier site, isn't it?

[00:35:34]Because you can see here, look, Terry, there's the arms of a moat >> going around three sides of this, >> which suggest it's a a medieval site that this thing's plumped on.

[00:35:44]>> Well, that would be more significant for us than the story of Italy, wouldn't it?

[00:35:48]>> Yeah, but it's a scheduled ancient monument.

[00:35:49]>> Does that mean we can't put a trench in?

[00:35:51]We haven't got permission to dig here, but but there would almost certainly have been a fourth arm to this moat. You know, it's unlikely to be just that shape.

[00:35:59]>> And that would have been across here, but we do have permission to gez here to see if we can pick the line of that up.

[00:36:05]>> The thing I like so much about this is that it's entirely transforming our notion of this village.

[00:36:10]>> Absolutely.

[00:36:12]If Mick's right about the moat being medieval and not tuda, we really could be looking at not one bitterly, but perhaps two bitterly, each clustered around its own big house. But if Park Hall was a tuda new build, bang goes the theory. Trouble is, we've got less than 10 hours to find the evidence that could clinch it. Although we can't dig up Park Hall, John started to geopase to see if the TUDA mansion was built on a medieval moed house.

[00:36:43]Mix hauled in some volunteers to dig, yes, another test pit as close to it as possible. And if it produces highclass medieval finds, it'll help us prove the existence of a top-notch residence here.

[00:36:56]And up by the church, we're now throwing our weight at the other big house, Bitterly Court, to find out if it was once the manner of the other medieval bitterly.

[00:37:06]>> That's timber frowning up there. This house has got a lot going on.

[00:37:11]All quite promising. But since we obviously can't dig up this big house either, Phil's finally got his way.

[00:37:18]Putting in a trench right next to it to see if it too has medieval origins.

[00:37:26]And although the big guns are now focused on the big houses, the villagers, well, they're still happily digging away at their test pits.

[00:37:35]Because if there was a big house down here, it's still the village's test pits that will establish whether the village grew up around it.

[00:37:45]>> Right back now.

[00:37:46]>> Archaeology isn't supposed to be fun, you know.

[00:37:50]>> It's really exciting.

[00:37:53]>> What are you doing?

[00:37:54]>> Bits of clay.

[00:37:55]>> What? No. Tell me what you've got.

[00:37:56]>> We found quite a bit of pottery. Some of it, but told it's medieval.

[00:38:00]>> There was medieval.

[00:38:02]>> Oh, there we go.

[00:38:04]Well, we're right opposite Park Hall and down the road and Bitterly Court's right up there. So, this is possibly the hub of medieval activity.

[00:38:15]>> And the more they find and the more they wash, the more precisely we're homing in on medieval bitterly.

[00:38:22]>> I've just been at Bridge Cottage and they've found some medieval stuff, haven't they?

[00:38:26]>> So, June, I mean, it's it's really starting to pay off, isn't it?

[00:38:29]>> It's just amazing. It's absolutely amazing. And what's really staggering me is is actually the sort of um the tightness of the medieval finds there.

[00:38:37]>> It's here. It's here. This is the medieval core of >> bit. This is this is probably where it was.

[00:38:43]>> Yes.

[00:38:44]>> Thanks to the villagers hard work, I think we've nailed the location of one medieval bitterly. And it does seem to be focused around the site of our potential medieval Des Park Hall. Back at our other bitterly, well, everything's gone rather quiet. Our first two trenches have run their course. No settlement. Matt still has a hint of a house in his trench, but we're now really focusing our attention on the trench by bitterly court. Well, most of us anyway. Two of the team seem to have sloped off. But I think the cause is justified. A reward for our enduring test pit volunteers.

[00:39:23]>> We need a prize and we thought the best prize we could give a budding archaeologist is a tel.

[00:39:29]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:30]>> Could you make us a tel?

[00:39:31]>> Uh, should be odd. Yeah. Right. If we pump on that. You >> want me to do this?

[00:39:35]>> Yeah. You might want to do some.

[00:39:37]>> Yeah.

[00:39:39]>> God, why do I get the hard work? So, what am I doing then?

[00:39:42]>> Right. If I If you can hit that there.

[00:39:44]>> There.

[00:39:45]>> Yeah. Again.

[00:39:51]Okay. Right. A bit more heat.

[00:39:56]>> Well, that does make you warm up.

[00:39:58]>> That does. Yeah.

[00:40:00]Just you remember this tri isn't for you.

[00:40:05]>> Ah, but you've got to remember I'm still in the contest. I'd be very competitive over this, you know.

[00:40:16]>> No, Phil, this is a prize for the villagers. But then he's not the only member of the team who seems to think he deserves a little something.

[00:40:23]>> Show me the archaeology. What's going on?

[00:40:25]>> Go over to the table over there. Look.

[00:40:27]So, we got all this stuff from the top of that hole there.

[00:40:31]>> Is that medieval?

[00:40:32]>> I mean, this was this was lovely. The everybody said, "Oh, it's stone." Took it away. My pot washers, right? Washed it. And of course, once it's washed, you can see the fabric. It is actually a piece of pottery.

[00:40:43]>> You can see the curve >> and it's a big piece and it's freshly broken. That hasn't gone very far. So, we're on the site of where somebody's living in the 12th, 13th, 14th century.

[00:40:53]>> And is this fancy stuff? Can we get an idea of the status? Now this is peasant stuff.

[00:40:57]>> This is >> this is the big pot of pottage sitting there months on end on the hearth while you chuck more beans into it, more onions >> and then it gets ferments a bit.

[00:41:08]>> More brassacas.

[00:41:10]>> Do you get the impression of what a medieval house was like with people eating this stuff day after day? You think they stunk? They stunk as bad as their animals.

[00:41:18]>> Think student life when you're trying to >> an unpleasantly vivid picture, Mick. But I thought we were trying to find a luxury medieval home. If there was one, its owners seem to have had a few groy neighbors right on their doorstep.

[00:41:34]A mile away along the road at the other village, we've been carrying out the same strategy with a trench right by bitterly court.

[00:41:42]Phil's got some results.

[00:41:46]>> Right, Phil, we got baited breath. What have you found? I am intrigued by what looks to me like a piece of roof tile. I'm sure it's not pot and Richard being an expert on matters architectural. I'd like his opinion. It certainly looks like a glazed ridge tile bit to go on the very top and this is a point that's been cut off perhaps. So you'd have that typical dragon back kind of thing on on the ridge. If so, that's from a very high status building what 13th 14th century.

[00:42:18]>> But it's pretty tenuous evidence, isn't it? I mean, >> is it so accidental that from this trench which was deliberately put in to be as close to the big house and to the church as we could? Is it so accidental that this is the one place where we get evidence of a building with a high status roof? I still think this could be very significant. I I'm pinning my hopes on this.

[00:42:45]>> So, afternoon day three. Our two village theory is still looking good. Evidence that Bitterly Court had medieval origins and that there were some associated buildings nearby down at Lower Bitterly. We've nailed the settlement, but what about the big house?

[00:43:02]>> John, we're after a moat. Have we got one on the gez?

[00:43:06]>> Half a moat. Half a moat is better than none.

[00:43:10]>> But it's not a complete moat.

[00:43:11]>> Show us.

[00:43:13]>> This is what we can see on the ground where the dashed lines are. That's where the water is. There's the house in the middle here. Now, the geohysics shows the moat continuing up to the house. But at this point behind us, there's no suggestion in our results of the ditch ever having completed a circuit.

[00:43:33]>> Hang on. There were two choices, weren't there? It could either be a medieval site with a moat around it or it could be a tuda site with a moat around it.

[00:43:41]Does that help us decide which we've got?

[00:43:44]>> I think it does because the fact that it's if it's incomplete, if the geohysics is suggesting that, then that suggests more of an ornamental moat rather than sort of semi-defensive moat with your big house here and then this body of water running around the garden facing south on that side of the house.

[00:44:02]So does that mean that this is much more likely to be a TUDA building because the Tudtor wouldn't have been worried about attack whereas the medieval people were?

[00:44:09]>> Yeah, we can start to forget about the idea of a separate manner and then all that discussion we had last night about whether it had a church with it and so on. We can shove all that to one side because it doesn't look like that now.

[00:44:24]It's quite a magical place this bitterly. Now you see it, now you don't.

[00:44:29]No medieval mana house in the bitterly of today. and no church either. But it does look like the bulk of the medieval village was down here. So, we're back to just one bitterly.

[00:44:41]So, why are the village, the manor, and the church so far apart? And why did everyone think there was so much going on in the fields? Well, we've now completed the topographical survey, which is our last hope of an answer.

[00:44:58]>> There are lots and lots of lumps and bumps, aren't there? see why >> the people who lived here >> thought that there must be a settlement here.

[00:45:07]>> We just don't have the features we'd expect associated with a deserted medieval village, you know, with hollowways, raised platforms, a kind of regular um street system, if you like.

[00:45:17]We just don't have that, do we?

[00:45:18]>> No. No, it's just not there.

[00:45:20]>> What about the wider landscape, Alex?

[00:45:22]>> Well, if we zoom out a bit, and that that's great, Emma, because that really brings out this road here. This is a road I've been interested in. It's on a north south alignment. It goes all the way down to temporary Wales to the south and it goes all the way north up to Wlock Edge. And that I think is is an early it's a Saxon route if not earlier.

[00:45:40]It could be prehistoric. Okay. And that's the focus for the church and the settlement there.

[00:45:45]>> So the church is there essentially because it's on that roadway.

[00:45:48]>> I think so. I think that's the focus at that point. So it does seem that in the 11th century bitterly grew up along the main road with a church, a manor and a few houses around them and a few more down here. Alex even thinks that road could have been an ancient trackway.

[00:46:06]Judging by the lack of pottery we found after the 14th century, it looks as though bitterly was hit by the black death, which is what our villagers thought. But it wasn't completely obliterated.

[00:46:19]Instead, the surviving village began to flourish down here at its present site and disappeared completely from the fields by the house. Just why that happened is something that June and the villagers will have to keep digging for.

[00:46:32]>> And it's been just an amazing experience for all of us.

[00:46:36]>> After what we've put them through, I reckon they all deserve a prize. I think what I'd say to you is if you can bear it, you ought to carry on because you will no doubt learn a lot more if you spend another couple of years doing this. So, thank you very much for all your help and and also for it's been a really welcoming place to come to, doesn't it?

[00:46:57]>> Yeah. So, thank you very very much.

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