Good morning, today is our last day of Thirty-One Days of the Time Team. Today, I am throwing it back to the last series of the Time Team to air on Television series twenty. It has been fun going through these episodes of the Time Team. I am officially done with series one, two, three, and thirteen, hopefully, more episodes will be posted from the series four. Anyway, the Time Team is at Horseshoe Hall and the run time for this episode is 47:06.
Oakham Castle is famous for the Horseshoe Hall and it is the best-preserved building from the 12th Century. It hosted knights and kings. The are plenty of lumps and bumps for the Time Team to explore to further the story of the castle. Oakham is the center of trading routes, the heart of the agricultural center of Britain, and was a target for invasion. What will the Time Team discover about this site? Tony introduces the dig with Neil Holbrook, John Gater, and Phil Harding. Not many remains of the castle except for a surviving grand hall. This grand hall would have been surrounded by earthworks and there would have been a tower nearby. Gater talks about the geophysics results he got. He warns that they may find the services such as gas, electricity, and water. Tony warns the team not to get drowned or electrocuted on this dig. Trench one goes in and the Time Team is already trying to avoid an electricity cable. Tony tours the great hall and sees that there are three hundred and fifty horseshoes on the wall. It is here that Tony learns the history of the castle from Marc Morris. It was built by the Ferrers family and the horseshoes may have been the result of a play on the name Ferrers meaning farriers who worked on horseshoes. The man who built the castle was a favorite of Richard the Lionheart. They would have fought together side by side during the Crusades. The status of the man and closeness to the crown would mean that the castle would have been grand. Stewart Ainsworth and Richard Morriss look over the grounds to visualize what the castle grounds would have looked like. What else would have surrounded the hall? There would have been workshops, stables, and other quarters around the site. Stewart will march around and learn what he can from the ground. Hopefully, Stewart will have better luck than Phil and John in trench one. Unfortunately for the pair, there is clay in the ground which has thrown off the geophysics results. The Time Team will have to rely on Stewart’s work. Trench two goes in over a potential castle outbuilding, which Tony believes is a garden feature. Despite this, Uncle Phil has discovered bits of the wall in fact this wall lines up with the great hall. Tony catches up with Matt as he goes over the demolition ruble that was found on the site. The demolition rubble consists of tiles. In Trench two, there is more wall only there is a door in the wall. Did this door lead into the stables or was this a people’s door? At the end of the day one, John has more geophysics results and alongside the building, there seems to a series of structures. Perhaps this is where the lord and lady of the manor stayed. Day two kicks off with trench three going in. In the meantime trench three is producing a wall. However, this wall is not in alignment with the geophysics results. It looks like it may have been a separate building from the great hall. This wall confuses the Time Team. In the meantime, the finds keep coming and including a horseshoe. It seems to hint that there was a kitchen off the great hall. What will the Time Team continue to learn about Oakham Castle? Will they find more horseshoes on-site? Will John finally get some clear geophysics results? Tune into the rest of this episode to find out! Overall, this was a good episode, because, despite the setbacks with geophysics, the Time Team continued to plug along in making discoveries to further the history of the site. The discovery of the horseshoe was fantastic and really fitting for this site. This would be a good episode to add to your list for the medieval period in history class.
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