Oh, yay! Oh, yay! Oh, yay!
My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, please now be silent and listen to the specific
instructions from the Time Team experts. During the English Civil War, 12,000
men fought battles in the streets of this peaceful Devon town. And one of the
Royalists who was hunted down after the battle was Vincent Stitson, of
the famous Stetson hat family. Cannonballs like these have been discovered in
the gardens of Modbury, which local residents believe hark back to a brief moment
in time of
the town's rich history. So we're joining forces with the local community to see what else we can
find in the houses and gardens. There are glimpses of a fascinating past hidden in
surprising places all over the town, like this fireplace, which might once have stood in a long lost
medieval manor. But what I'd really like to find is a missing 12th century priory, which
might well have replaced an even earlier church. But I think the secret of Modbury lies in the
ancient landscap
e of Devon, and the story of Iron Age trading links that stretch to Europe and
beyond. That one needs shifting ever so slightly. With so many storylines, we're banking on
the latest technology to help us keep track of what's coming up in the gardens of Modbury.
And we're joined by Jim Stetson of the Stetson family. He's come all the way from America
to trace his family history. And as ever. We've only got three days to do it. Modbury, although officially a village, it's more like a market to
wn, located between
Plymouth and Exeter in Devon. It's surrounded by the spectacular landscape of the South
Hams and dominated by St George's Church, perched up on the hill. We've invited the local
residents to dig one metre test pits to help us uncover the hidden histories in the houses and
gardens. So, Dani, you've been spending a bit of time down here in Modbury getting to know
the local community and the history. I mean, where do you think we should focus our
attention? Where should th
e test pits be? Well, we've been inundated with offers of test
pits. We've going to put 14 one by one metre test pits in all across the town, all the
way from the hill at the top, by the church, all the way down and back up Brownston Street.
So who knows what we're going to find. But isn't this a 17th or 18th century
town? Isn't that what we're going to find? It may look like that, but we're pretty
certain that since it's full of medieval burghage plots, there will be older fabric,
in the
back parts of the houses and perhaps in the roofs. And so I'm going to be
getting in and out of these houses, trying to examine the fabric
to see what story they tell. And a medieval manor house.
I've heard something of that. We. Yeah. Well, we think that was
destroyed during the Civil War, so 1643, but we think it was located here, and
there are rumours of masonry in the gardens. So we need some geophysics as well as the test pits
to see if we can work out what's going on there. Wow. And
this priory. That. Oh. The priory? Yes, we that can't have disappeared
completely. So we've got test pits for that. But we also want to have a look at the standing fabric
of the church, see what's going on there. I'm going to be really interested to see how well the
medieval, how much medieval stuff we find, because if the medieval town was very much destroyed
during the Civil War, then we'd expect less of it to survive. There's lots of it surviving.
It suggests it wasn't as badly destroyed
. I think we're missing a key part of
the story, though. While the medieval period and the Civil War are hugely important
events, they're chapters right in the middle of the story. If we want to really understand this
town, we've got to go back to its origins, and we've got to look to the prehistoric
landscape and the features in and around the time. Gosh. So there's there's a lot for us to do,
and we've only got three days to do it. To help us navigate the streets, to find out
what's behi
nd Modbury's elegant facade, Adam's building a VR model of the
town using aerial photogrammetry. Helen's beginning her search for Champernowne Manor,
which we think was destroyed in the Civil War by getting the geophysics team to work
in the garden of Palm Cross Green House. Yeah. The reason I wanted you to
come and do a survey here, John, is not just because this is a really
quite big area of grass for Modbury, but also because we think this was the site of the
manor buildings. And in fac
t, if you look around, you can see they're all over the place. Bits of
stone. Yeah. This one. But this one is incredible, isn't it, because it turns that corner.
So it gives us that architectural, you know, it's it's definitely a corner of some kind
of opening. And then there's this other one here, another roll moulding, a lot smaller
than that one. And that's just a section, so doesn't tell us quite so much, but I think
we might be able to get some kind of date on these. Well, there's anot
her piece in the
steps over there. Really? So you want us to piece these together into a building? Kind of. What I really want is a plan
of a building from that lawn. Plan, Simon? Sounds easy to me. Excellent. Well, that's, I'll
expect that in about ten minutes? The Champernowne family who lived here were
of Norman descent. In the 14th century, they became lords of the manor in Modbury
and patrons of the Benedictine priory. They were hugely influential in the Tudor courts. Lady Catherine Ch
ampernowne was even governess to Elizabeth I, and while
Simon's hunting for their lost manor house, Matt's begun work in a test pit in a garden bed,
where we won't disturb the owner's brand new lawn. Yeah, so how far down do you
think you're going to go? Well, the first thing that strikes me there is
if you look at the height of the garden and you look at the height of the road outside,
there's quite a difference right now. One of them is worn down, or one of them
has built up, or it's hal
f and a half. So, my bet is 30cm before we get
into and it starts to get into anything. So we're only going to see some
heads popping up from the hall. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We've got a way to go, I think. I came from, Massachusetts. Flew over
for the Time Team event here. I'm very excited to be here. This is my first time in Modbury.
I am a direct descendant of Robert Stetson, who lived in Modbury. And, my history is that
I'm 12th generation to Coronet Robert Stetson. I grew up, knowing abo
ut the history of my family
all the way back to when they arrived in America. And we've always also, dedicated money and, have
a charter to support the Modbury church here. This is an amazing opportunity that I've had to come
out here, spend the three days with the Time Team, crew, meet a lot of local people, meet the
team that's doing all this work. So I'm being treated like a rock star right now, and it's
an amazing experience. So, let's get to it. So it's all hands on deck in the local p
rimary
school, and even Bear's been recruited to help out. Hammer meets small pickaxe. Just take the turf off first, because it's been really hot and dry recently. The ground is really
solid, so mats come in to help because we need as much weight on the space as
possible to get it to get into the ground. There were two battles of Modbury in the
Civil Wars. The first was in December 1642, when the Parliamentarians ambushed a meeting
in the courthouse in Champernowne Manor. They destroyed muc
h of the house and captured
some of the Royalists, including Captain Champernowne himself. The second battle,
two months later, was on a much larger scale. So, Sam, this is the field that the Battlefield Trust
are interested in looking at. That's it. So this is where the Ordnance Survey mapping marks
the battle's having taken place. And Modbury is one of the lesser known battles of the Civil War,
basically. There's never been any archaeological research done on it. And effectively, this
is
a just a really good opportunity for us to actually do some primary research on the site
that no one's ever done before. Why this field? Is there actually a record of the battle
taking place here? We know basically the direction that the armies were approaching.
So we've got about 8,000 men, approximately, Parliamentarians approaching from Kingsbridge
and about 1500 royalists within Modbury itself, and then about 1500 extra Parliamentarians
approaching from Plymouth from the opposite direc
tion. So they're all really converging on
Modbury. We know the roads that they're using to get here. Okay. So Royalists are really
outnumbered. Hilde, you've done plenty of battlefield archaeological sites previously.
What sort of things would be we'd be looking in the archaeological record for, to give us
an idea that a battle did take place here? So on battlefield sites like this, we're mostly
looking for metallic artefacts in the top soil. So we do that through metal detector surveying.
So on this side of the town, you might expect lead bullets of various sizes. So you had
8,000 Parliamentarians advancing along here, even if just half of them carried a musket
and just fired one shot. That's 4,000, bullets that landed somewhere, presumably.
And that's not even accounting for people firing back at them. And then the Royalists also
built defensive earthworks around Modbury, so that's something for Stewart to
really kind of get his teeth into. I think. It's a vast area to met
al
detect. So Paul and Keith will have their work cut out. At the other end of the town, Stewart's begun his survey to work out how the armies
might have utilised this landscape. I've just left the churchyard and I'm following
that curious curving boundary which goes all the way round it, which was probably the former limit
of the Priory precinct as well. But I hope you can see it's actually not just a wall or a fence or
anything like that. It's actually a big high bank. And if you can imag
ine a wall on top of that as
well, how high that would be. And interestingly, during the Civil War, that would have been an
ideal spot to defend. It gives you height, gives you a view over the countryside behind. So I have little
doubt in my mind this would have been utilised for defence during that period. And now I'm going
to follow this boundary round, which seems to get bigger and higher towards Runaway Lane, which is
where it is thought that the Royalist troops made an escape and if th
ey did so, they would have to
climb over quite a high feature and drop down into this lane that I'm walking on now before they
get to Runaway Lane. And while they're around here, they're actually very exposed and in extreme
danger. It's very tranquil today down here. Very quiet indeed. But it's easy to imagine
the screams and the noise and the fear of the Royalists as they were escaping almost certain
death or capture. And this may have been their only escape route. The depth to which Runaw
ay Lane
is cut makes it actually an ideal escape route, because it's like being in a trench. You
can't be seen if you're down in the bottom, where I am now if you look, we're way, way below
the sides. They're almost vertical in places, so nobody able to see you as you walk
down the lane. On the other hand, though, it could be extremely dangerous because if
they were waiting for you and above you, they could easily turn their muskets on
you or whatever weapons they've used at the time. So e
scaping down something like
this had a risk factor. But when you need to escape to preserve your life, you're going
to go with whatever escape route you can find. It's noon and the test pit is
looking good. And despite his worries about the height of the
garden, we're already in the finds. Hi Matt. Oh, hi Helen, you alright? The garden that
we're standing on here in the garden level is maybe a foot and a half, maybe higher than
the road outside. So we might have a bit of make up to go thro
ugh first. But it's promising
though. We're getting a few good bits and pieces out of the top soil here, here's a few bits
we've had already. So that's my favourite so far. Oh, that's quite fine and delicate
isn't it? And what's this? Is this this is that Staffordshire brown and orange stuff? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. 17th-18th century? Something like
that. Yeah. So we're kind of heading in the right direction. And here's another
bit of I think that's glazed tile, again not, it's post-Tudor a
nd certainly
post-medieval but it's not bad is it. No it is, it is, it's uneven isn't it.
I mean it's definitely, definitely old! As we archaeologists say. Yes. Well that's marvellous. So we need to get through that
first, get down. I mean hopefully, if we're really lucky, we'll land on the
wall of a brewhouse. Well, brewhouse sounds very welcome,
on what has turned out to be a very hot and muggy June day. But our test
pitters are undaunted. Photos and information from the gardens are bein
g
transferred by QR code back to the dome. Okay. Yeah, I think this was a good idea getting the nails in Simon, because it's absolutely rock solid. So Pete, what have you been working
on? This is the data hub, effectively. Everything that's coming in from the drones
is ending up here. Everything's coming in from the mapping is ending up here. Everything that's
coming in for the trenches is ending up here. So let's give you an idea. Touch that. And here's
our lovely, lovely site plan of Modb
ury coming through. We've got all our test pits, all
our GPR and if we select each test pit, you'll see we will even be able to bring
up the various photos and bits and pieces. In the incident room, Helen
and Matt are on tenterhooks waiting to see if John's found the medieval manor. Well, you've only given us ten minutes,
but Simon's done wonders. So if we look at one of the radar grams, that's the top of the
lawn. And if we go down 80cm below the surface, we can see this clear reflection.
Now, that looks
like an intact floor surface, 4 or 5m across, maybe. And if we start to look at the plan, we'll
go through the time slices. And gradually as we get deeper down to the 80cm, we'll start to
see this rectangular block come in here. Here we are. We think this is the floor surface.
And you can see fragments of wall lines all aligned in this direction. And as we go even
deeper, we get more information. I've sketched it for you, so you can believe me. There's Matt's
test pit. Ther
e's Palm Cross Green House. These are the garden beds and that's the floor
surface. And we think we've got a range of buildings going right under the lawn.
Now that's about four metres across there. Yes. That is absolutely amazing. It
is so clear isn't it. And it strikes me that it looks like it could easily be
going underneath Palm Cross Green House. Well, it's certainly earlier than the lawn.
And I think you're going to need to dig it. That'll be my job then John, I guess. Well that would
be if we,
if the very kind residents of the house will agree to sacrifice their lawn. Right, ok. Have to go and ask them. Let's hope it's not a septic tank. Ideally not. We hope it's Champernowne Manor,
which was damaged beyond repair in the Civil War. We know 15 names of Royalists hunted down after
the Parliamentarians took Modbury. One was Vincent Stitson, who we think followed his fortunes
to America with his cousin, Robert. Cornet Robert Stetson is the founder of the
Stetson Kindred, a
nd almost every Stetson in the US can be related back to Cornet Robert
Stetson. So I'm 12th generations to him. And, the Stetson hatmaker is part of the line. And
there's other famous Stetson on the line, but, you know, so I'm always focussed on the American
side, and this is so much more fascinating for me, for all these different pieces that
are and I'm now starting to fill in. So. Here we have a family tree for the Stitson
or Stetson family of Modbury. We have two first cousins here. We
have Vincent Stitson and we
have Robert Stutson or Stitson, who we think made the journey across the Atlantic in or around
the 1630s or 1640s. And what we'd like to do is, is try and investigate this family more, and their
history within Modbury. We know that Vincent was listed in some of the records as being
a cordwainer. So that's actually a shoemaker who specifically usually works
in, something called cordovan leather, which is a very high quality leather. And equally
the Vincent Stitso
n that has his will pass through probate in 1690 over in the States.
The inventory attached to that Vincent's will includes a wonderful listing for a large quantity
of leather and lasts. So it's effectively a foot form that you make the shoe around. So the area of the
family, that we believe you are descended from, from Robert, very much carpenters.
So Robert Stetson's father, Thomas, he was a carpenter. And we also know that his
brother Hugh was a carpenter here in Modbury, and later also
a house carpenter down in Plymouth. And
certainly the Robert that we see over in the US. On the US side, Robert Stetson
had two sawmills and he was, where everybody brought their timber to be
sawn. And, all the housing construction was going through, I believe, was going
through those two mills for a time. Obviously, there's some sort of genealogical
sort of, link because you, don't you with... There seems to be an engineering
mindset that I can't escape, it's true. That creativity. I trie
d to... The warm afternoon wears on and
our test pits are going strong. A bit of glass. Do what? You need to write
down and fill in where we found the glass. Our volunteers are finding all
sorts in Matt's first test pit. Far has been this. What do you think that
is? What is that? It's a bit of metal. Is it. Curved round? That looks like the edge of a bucket
or something. Your guess is probably as good as mine. I'm thinking maybe, that
that the band off of the side of a wooden barrel perhap
s. Right. Okay. And. Yeah. So inside
this, we found basically little bits and pieces, like clay pipe. Oh, nice. We've had a
glass bottle, seashells. We've had some sheep's teeth as well. Right. Okay. So it seems
just like a sort of lightly buried trash barrel. Oh, yeah. It's like a rubbish... It's like a rubbish
bin almost, isn't it? You can see the bits of, clay pigeon that we were finding earlier. Yes.
They're all packed away. There's something actually left in the section there, isn't th
ere.
It's still. Yeah. And obviously it goes goes into the section outside of our trench. So just
really a trash barrel of little bits and pieces. And in the school we've got finds that
take us back to its Victorian origins. Remember what we were saying. Does anyone
want to have a look at it? So you can see what we're talking about. Yeah absolutely. Right.
Yeah. Well yeah. Like Victorian. Yes. Good, good. Remember I was just saying about blue
stuff became cheaper to do and was very popular
. The Stitsons' seemed to have been
very active in the community. Hugh Stitson became church handyman and steeple
keeper in 1641, just before the Civil War. So, Jim, I guess you're inside Modbury church now, this is the place that your forebears
were helping to maintain with all of those woodworking and carpentry skills
and their own skill and innovation. And, you know, we have evidence of that. How does it
feel to actually be standing in the same space? It is amazing, you know, I'm in awe,
but I also want to get a paintbrush. Jim's curious to find out if any
of his forebears work survives. So? So they would have installed screens,
you're saying, in between the pews? You basically, if you were somebody posh, in the posh seats, as it were. Or somebody of note, you'd have more prominent... You can certainly see for Hugh Stitson,
he's being paid on and off for various work on the seat. So for example, 1654 paid Hugh Stitson
for work done about the church in mending the seats. So
obviously, even that doesn't give us
conclusive evidence as to precisely what tasks he was doing. It's not inconceivable that
he's. Yes, he's putting things together. He's he's clearly a man that,
had quite a lot of skills. Jeremy's done an architectural survey
of St George's and believes there might be the remains of an Anglo-Saxon church
hidden in the undercroft. But the first official record of a church in
Modbury is in the Domesday Book, the Great Survey of England and
Wales, complet
ed by William I in 1084. And so he he thinks this is the first of
the original Saxon church, that's his theory. So this is the Exeter Inn. It says 14th century, but
do you think could be? Well. The Exeter Inn, it's one of the oldest buildings in Modbury.
It was believed to have been the meeting place for the Royalists as they prepared
to withstand the Parliamentarian attack. We put a test pit in the back of the pub to
see if we can find evidence of the Civil War, or anthing earlier. It looks
like a bit of roofing slate.
These are the architectural treasures. Oh, I'm not sure what it is, but. And inside we've heard there's a ceiling dating to this
important episode in Modbury's history. Oh, well, that is absolutely splendid. Isn't that gorgeous? Yes. That ceiling. That is a it's a bit early 17th century
plaster ceiling with decorated bits, with raised ribs and stamped ornaments
showing foliage sprays. It's geometrical, with a sort of big central and square panel and
heart shape
d panels springing from it either side. So what period then, is this building? Well, I think this that the building
must be 16th century, since it was, I think the present building
is 16th century, and this is a, an early 17th century enrichment of it probably
round as early as the 1600s or 1610s, but, you know, it's a spanker. It really is a
spanker. So this it's absolutely delicious. So this building so does give us some
hint of a pre-Civil War history for Modbury. Pre-Civil War Modbury.
It's
still here. Oh, quite possibly. So with a building like this, do you think the
frontage could have been destroyed? That bits of it could have been destroyed like the high street?
You could imagine that if the battle's raging, that buildings like this part may have
partially survived and then been repaired. I don't think it's very likely. I think if there
had been a significant Civil War destruction, we'd have lost the whole building and the ceiling.
We wouldn't have just lost the fron
ts. So this is Modbury toshing itself up in the 18th century
to look more fashionable and keeping the older stuff behind, on the sly, because they liked it. So
if you sat here by candlelight, as they would have done in the 17th century, the whole ceiling
would have danced and moved with flickering light. It would have been absolutely. It would all have
been sort of golden colour and, and it would have just constantly changed and moved incredibly
sumptuous and lovely. They're beautiful thing
s. And I could imagine a group of
Royalists hunched together under, under the ceiling, fireplace roaring. I'm sure they wouldn't like to... They
wouldn't like to claim they hunched over. They would say they proudly sat there
discussing how to route... strategising. If any medieval Modbury survived the ravages
of the Civil War or the Georgian refurb, it's likely to be lurking in the
roofs. So our dendrochronologist, Andy's taking samples from the roofing
timbers, which he's going to try to
date. Here. Oh, here we go. So that white
mark is where the bark was actually sitting. And that just ensures that I know I've got
the outer ring. That short sequence is tiny. But it doesn't matter if
it's got more than 50 rings. Which it has. Some of the chunks of masonry in the gardens appear to be remnants of
missing medieval buildings. Hi, Richard. I've heard. Oh, I've heard rumours that are correct that
you have found something very exciting. I think this is a very exciting piece. It's
clearly from a, a late medieval, trace meet, window opening of some sort. But the really
exciting thing about it is that it has no glazing inlays. And normally, it normally a tracing
window of this sort that a little groove cut in there, in the centre of the stone, where
the leaded light of the window would be put. And it's big, isn't it? It's really big. It's chunky, it's massive, and it's and it's late
medieval and it's sort of it's architecturally very, very impressive. So I think if thi
s was
part of a cloister, it's doing a sort of Gloucester on a small scale. So I think it's
this section of a of a window with a mullion going up and down, I mean, going down. And it
may not have been a two light window. It might have been a group of windows that went on and on.
So it could have been a continuous arcade. I've got used to expecting this Priory
to be a tiny little thing with a couple of monks at the most. And, and
this is something much grander than I really wasn't expecting
. And
what do you think about the date? I think it's, probably mid to late 15th century or thereabouts. And so that is the point at which the
Priory is, it's it's given to Eton as part of its of Eton's endowment.
And then we only have one prior left, before the whole thing stops. But that
prior, I mean, I'm really tempted to put his name on it, William Burslem,
because he was the prior for ages, for decades. And he seems to have been a really
dynamic man. So I'm tempted to go and pick thro
ugh the records to see if we can find anything
that, you know, a receipt for the stonemason. But if he was, he was a down and out
prior, and almost the first thing he did is replace the tatty old
cloister with something glamorous. The Benedictine priory was one of the
longest surviving Norman priories in England, was originally founded in the 12th century for
just one prior and two monks. Its main function was to administer lands and revenues and to send the
proceeds back to the motherhous
e in Normandy. Records suggest that it was to the north of
the church, even though there's nothing there now. But the more we look, the more pieces of
buildings we're finding in unexpected places. What we appear to have is what's called a mullion. There are
two bars, so originally this one stood upright. This is a window opening. That's a window
open in this sort of sort of vertical. And in somewhere in here, will be two bars.
But to me that that looks sort of 17th, both 17th or 16th centur
y. And
this might actually be part of the, the Champernown mansion that we've, we've
been looking for a piece of fabric that's been reused when this wall was rebuilt,
probably sometime after the Civil War. All of these fragments will be pieced together
in Bear's reconstructions. Towards the end of the day, there's a surprise in the school test pit.
We found our first piece of medieval pottery. Well, this is pretty exciting find, because this object is much older than the ring pulls and othe
r things in
the tray because this is medieval. So we're thinking about the period from, say, 1200
to 1500. And that appears to me to be handmade. So we're back before we're about 1350 or so. Do you know, I've just noticed fiddling
while I've been listening to you talking, John, and I've just noticed fiddling about with
these bits of roof tile is we've got these two bits here which have obviously just been recently
broken. And I'm thinking they're either medieval or early modern, because wha
t it is, they're not
they're, they're reduced still in the middle, but I'd be interested to see what you think the date is.
Those two bits obviously fit together because I've just been broken digging them up. This bit,
which has obviously been broken for some time, that's not a recent break, actually fits
right against there. That's suggesting that these broken bits of roof tile haven't moved very
far since they were deposited. It makes it a bit more likely that they've come from a building
of whatever the date this roof tile is, that was quite close to here. Hello. These are your marbles
as well? We found your marbles that you're lost. It's extraordinary what you can find in such a small trench as we've
discovered in Test Pit three. When I was first discussing that we were coming
to Modbury and we were looking for test pits, Dominic said, he said come and dig in
my garden because when I was younger, I lost a toy soldier and see if you can find
it, and you'll never guess wha
t. We found it. No. So, so to have been reunited with this little gem after so many years is just. I
mean, it's unbelievable. Oh my word. One, I can't believe that you found it
Dani. But also, I can't believe that you remembered the story of losing this. I
know it's obviously a family heirloom, but. When you when you love your toys and
you lose them, there's nothing more punishing and desperate. And so, yes, that
has stayed with me. But the fact that it's, you know, that we could have found
such a tiny
little thing is quite unbelievable. Oh, it's amazing, isn't it? I say this as being auspicious. What other treasures
has this test pit produced? Well, if we go from the modern all the
way, way, way, way, way back to this, which is some prehistoric flint.
So it's pretty amazing, isn't it? It's the first prehistoric find to send back to the dome, where we're collating the day's news
from the test pits with all the surveys. John did send some other geophysics over Derek
as well. L
et's have a quick look. So he did some magnetometry out in the fields to the west of the
town. And if we bring that in, pop it in the right place. You can see there are some features
in there, but I was kind of hoping that'd be some telltale prehistoric activity in those fields.
But unfortunately, we didn't see much in that data. But I spent a lot of the day in the village
looking around, and actually the central area here around St George's Church, you can see it's got
a very organic shape
, to it. Yeah. So tomorrow I'm going to be looking at into the wider landscape.
It's a great use of the the 3D modelling, 3D data that we've been doing today as well. So not only
has Adam been doing his great drone work, but we've been looking at a whole variety of
things. So, I don't did you did you spot this out by the church today? Yeah, this this could
well be a 15th century font. And there's a coat of arms on the front of it. And if if this was made
in the 15th century, it's probably s
till in use, around the Civil War. And this could have
been where the Stetson family were christened. In fact, as fate would have it, in 1651,
the Champernownes and the Stetson families each baptised a child in Modbury Church on
the same day. It's been a hard day for the metal detectorists, who struggled to find any
evidence for the Civil War on the battlefield. Very difficult to find in this. There we go. And is that what we've
been looking for? A lead bullet. Very, very nice. That's just
what we're after,
isn't it? We've been looking all day, haven't we? We have. I mean, this is the first
one. It's practically the end of the day, isn't it? It is. Obviously in classic fashion.
So what I will say is it's it's quite small. Yes. So that could be maybe one of two things. If
this is a sort of Civil War bullet, then we could be looking at maybe a pistol ball or something
like that. What we may also be looking at is hunting, sporting activity that's not associated
with the battle.
Well, I'd really like to see, slightly larger bullets that would have
come out of actual full size muskets. Yes. And Paul's on the case, immediately. Paul, I heard you found something exciting. Well, no signals like this all
day. And then out of the blue, at the end of the day. There we
go. Oh, you jammy! Musket ball. Well. That's proper chunky. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, that is a lot.
Funnily enough, Keith, you wouldn't believe just found one as well. All right. It
was a lot smaller than thi
s, though. I mean, this to me looks a lot more like the calibre
you'd expect from a musket. Yeah. This is, like, fired as well. It's definitely been fired.
Yeah. I mean, you can see it slightly deformed. There's a slightly flattened face there where
it's taken on the, the inside of the barrel shape from from the musket. And it's also
generally a bit squashed. So that's probably from where I actually hit the ground. But this
is a lot bigger than the one Keith found. And this is a lot more in
keeping with what you'd
expect from a Civil War battle. So we were kind of almost writing this field off, weren't
we, today? But right at the end of the day, we've had two lead bullets that I mean,
maybe less than 100m from each other. So perhaps we do definitely need to come back here
tomorrow and see what else we can find. Yeah. Great. Well done. Really good. Really good stuff. Yeah.
I couldn't tell that. Right. Exit left. These Civil War finds will make a great
addition to the Time Team
Virtual Museum. The problem will be choosing which
finds from the test pits to include. So I've just got the finds for all of the test
pits together to try and see what's coming up in the different ones. So working through
them in numerical order of the ones we've done, two is brilliant. Really interesting.
We've got big chunks of medieval here, so you've got that handle that was sort of big
stab in it. They haven't let it fire properly. We've got quite a lot of that. We've got some of
th
is Totnes stuff a little bit later and then we've got this bit which is actually going
back to the 11th, 12th century. Wow. Again, really early. That's amazing. And it's undisturbed. It
looks like you've got intact, undisturbed medieval deposits in two. Well, the fantastic thing with this
then is obviously it's I wasn't expecting any of this. It's amazing to find the medieval, but to
actually get back as far as Norman times, this is the earliest material evidence that ever
to come out of Mo
dbury. As far as we know. This pushes our story right back to the first
records of Modbury. But where was the 12th century priory? What happened to the Champernownes'
medieval manor house? Two days left to find out!
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