Time Team Day 18 - Called to the Bar

Hello!  The Thirty-One Days of the Time Team continues on and this time the Time Team is going to Lincoln’s Inn.  Lincoln’s Inn is not an inn, but the center of legal London.  This is an episode from Season 16 and was pulled from the Chronicle YouTube Channel.  This episode is entitled Called to the Bar.  The episode has a run time of 48:46.

Instead of a muddy field, the Time Team is heading into London and the surroundings of Lincoln’s Inn.  They will be donning their best wigs and suits to do this dig!  The buildings that make up the world’s oldest and most distinguished law societies may hide a secret.  The Time Team has been brought in to look for a 13th Century Palace that may have belonged to King Henry III’s Lord Chancellor.  Will the Time Team find the remains of this palace?

Generations of lawyers have these lovely buildings.  There are many different styles of buildings in this are of London.  It is the legal center of London.  These buildings hide the earlier building that dated back to King Henry III.  Tony talks with Uncle Phil and John Gater.  Tony quips that this will be a one day dig.  Hedley Swain, is the site director, believes that Time Team can do it.  However, finding the right spot to dig will be a challenge because of the restrictions.

Tony meets up with Elaine Chalus to learn as to why everyone thinks there is a palace on the site.  IT would have been the home of the Bishop of Chichester and he was one of the most powerful men of the day.  The house he built, would have put a mark on the legal community.  The records show that there was a lavish house on the site.

However, the search for his house has not even begun.  It has taken a great deal of time for Phil to decide where the trench should go.  There are possible wall lines in the geophysics results.  Trench One will go in as soon as they get permission from the gardener.  Eventually, that permission is granted and the trench goes in by hand.  They will have to be careful to avoid tree roots.  The trench is near one of the oldest buildings on the site.  Perhaps when this building was built anything remaining from the Bishop of Chichester was destroyed.  This is where Helen Geake and an architectural historian come to examine the buildings on site.

Phil has discovered some brickwork in his trench, however, it could be modern.  Trench two goes in nearby.  The Time Team is going next door to the Tudor Building and dig in the herb garden.  Trench three goes in at this site.  However, things are taking extra time.  Phil has found a more modern wall.  What was this wall?  It is confusing to Phil.  Helen helps clarify what the wall could be.  Unfortunately, this wall is not what they are looking for.  It was from a Victorian courthouse.  Trench Two is providing demolition rubble and pottery.  In the herb garden, they are finding some more walls from the Victorian period.  However, they are finding a wig curler.  Day one is not starting very well.  Will the Time Team change their luck on day two?

Day two kicks off with Phil wanting to expand his trench.  However, some geraniums need to be moved again.  Phil with a sly smile says that since they got permission to move them once, that extends to moving them again.  Tony does not like his dodgy logic with over two hundred lawyers checking out the digs.  On day two the focus shifts to Lincoln’s Inn Fields an undeveloped part of the Lincoln’s Inn.  The lawyers have been aggressive in preventing development on this track.  So was the town house in this field?  What else will the Time Team find?  Tune into the rest of the episode to find out.

I liked the quip Uncle Tony made at the start of the episode that the Time Team had two hundred lawyers looking over their shoulders.  This was a very complicated dig with a variety of restrictions that the Time Team had to deal with.  This episode had up and downs and would be an episode I would show to a history class.