As someone who can't afford all of the "Must Have" subscription services, I hope they keep posting these on RU-vid for us common citizens.... You know, the one's that have to actually go to work to go to work.....
I live in Washington State, I so enjoy these programs and have learned so much. I started watching due to my ancestors who came from Feltwell, UK. KEEP these coming. I benign watch once I start they just play.
When I visited London in my 20's - about 50 years ago - this American knew almost nothing about Westminster Abbey, except that Queen Elizabeth II had been crowned here when I was a child. Still, it impressed me deeply. Over the years, I've learned a bit more, and this episode adds to how blown away I am by the history of the place. That's what I remember about being there - you can feel the antiquity.
I had the same reaction to it -- walking around and seeing Handel's burial, then turning around and just stumbling into Chaucer, then wandering outside, looking down, and there was Muzio Clementi the composer. It's like a who's who of the most important names in history.
So true. I wonder if, as she was being crowned, she realized that someday she be buried there for all eternity? Seems like a possibility....@@joshschneider9766
Aside from the TV budget of "Time Team", it would seem that this sort of archeological work should be continued beyond just 3 days. What else is down there?
@@bellehogel8665 my understanding is that that is what they do-bear in mind that they can't dig everything up and leave it, they have to document the finds and analyze/write up a report on them. A full excavation would require a lot more people and effort/funding and would likely be an extended commitment; this is really closer to a limited-purpose evaluation.
This popped up on my RU-vid feed and it was wonderful. I don't know where else I might have found this over the years, so I'm glad I ran into it here. More more! Riveting.
Visited the Abbey in 1996. Even thoughn I was raised without a religion, I still wanted to see it for the historical aspect, and being a Royalphile, lol. It was AMAZING.
I love going to see grand old churches. I may not be religious, but I love the history, art, and all else that comes with them is just fascinating to me! A shame that where I live in the US the oldest ones don't go much further back than the mid 1600's.
I visited London in 1977 and couldn't find the Abbey because it was completely covered in scaffolding. It was being sandblasted to clean all the coal muck off. My sister had to point me in the right direction.
I always love Time Team, but truly enjoyed this one since I actually visited Westminster Abbey back in 2007. I guess I was a few years early to catch Time Team at work.
Tony Robinson thank you for the interesting stories of Britain's 6 Cathedrals I enjoyed it tremendously I hope you will have more of the Cathedrals in time to come you are fantastic at what you are doing
This has always been one of my favorite episodes! Even more so after my trip to Britain in 2012. Only now do I realize that my mom and I sat on the very same spot as Mick and Tony at 3:20 when we had a coffee break while visiting the Abbey. The one thing that bugs me is Helen’s supposed confusion over what a Galilee Porch was, especially when she says that she had been asking others and they didn’t know either. I could have told her since it is clearly defined in my guidebook for the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire. If it is such a common church architectural term that it’s in something written for the average tourist, then the experts she was consulting just weren’t that good.
I was so hoping the team would perform - and report results of - more than just carbon dating of the remains discovered. It would have been amazing to learn the origins of the person who was interred. Given how mobile people were around the time of the Saxons, my curiosity was piqued considerably!
(Tiny bit more detail: the person's bones were carbon dated to around AD 1025 - 1155, an adult male, 23 - 25 years old; mild calculus and very small dental carious lesion.)
Very interesting - was just visiting WMA. However the skewed burials reminded me of a family joke. Grandmother was pointing out that all of the burials in the local cemetery were pointed east because it is from the east that the second coming is supposed to come from. An aunt who was Catholic pointed out the adjacent Catholic cemetery graves were pointed south. Grandma smiled and said I guess they will need to make a quarter turn.
Erm, do you mean “lost” as in demolished, or “lost” as in re-purposed for something else? I live in the United States, the southeastern “corner” of pennsylvania (the ‘burbs of Philadelphia). There are many older houses in the town where i live, but most of them have been “converted” into apartments.
@ 7:55 all of these people in one of the most architecturally stunning buildings in the world and half of them are talking on their phones. If I hadn't just seen it for myself I wouldn't believe it.
What I want to know is if the tombs in the abbey have any remains or are empty. Edward the Confessor, Edward I, can we really expect any remains after all these centuries of looters?
12:16 It seems to me if that you interpret that plan as a corridor with a right-angle turn, the total length of the hall meets the 120 ft length spec pretty closely. I'm surprised nobody commented on that in the video, because it stood out like a sore thumb to an amateur like me.
@commendatore2516 The disadvantage of Addblocker is that some sites take notice that you are using it and they don't like that, so they take "counter-measures". Such as not allowing you to browse all of the site.
Beautiful production as always, but it occurs to me...the space between the buttresses and the sacristy? How is that not a robing room? There is no doubt that the exterior footprint has been changed many times, why not consider that the space between the main building and the corridor is the sacristy itself? Walled away from the main building with only an exterior channel to the interior of the building would suggest to me that it would have been highly secure as was pointed out in the first part of the program.
They didn't give any indication that geophys found anything to suggest that, but it would be interesting to see what might come out of another trench. This show always leaves you wanting more!
@@anne-droid7739 Excellent observation, but geophys looks for walls and ditches and a paved floor does not show up on the scans. A robing room would simply be blank space to geophys as we have seen in Roman excavations.
@@DodiTov I was thinking in terms of foundations heavy enough to support the kind of masonry in the other sacristy. A robing room wouldn't need that, though...but then again, another robing room wouldn't be necessary.
@@anne-droid7739 Well, yes! Look at the plan as laid out. The "corridor" could/might have had openings to access the corridor from this proposed "robing room". The buttresses we see today are an addition/renovation as seen from the inside with the processional arch. The ones we see tpday within the proposed room would have been added as the original structure was deleted. Frankly, it does not make sense that there is a processional corridor *without* a robing room, especially if the corridor accesses two different chapels...as it does. Where did they put on the vestments for the processional? Clergy are not prone to just stroll about with heavy vestments from site to site. A sacristy located in that space would only be logical, with the corridor a staging area for the processional *from the sacristy*.
Fantastic series, question please earlier Mick found steps and a ceiling of what was thought to be what you were looking for Why did you not drill the ceiling to see what’s under it ?? , I would of thought it would go down at least ten feet ?. Cheers .
I have been thinking about that, too, but it's hopeless considering I am 72 & I can't get to my knees with all the arthritis in my back, hips & knees 🤣😘
Sure, pilgrims probably nicked some bits of Edward's tomb, but it's a Catholic shrine, seems worth considering the Protestants might have stripped the gold from the Papist memorial. Stunned they didn't tear it down, actually.
I predicted those early Saxon graves were probably in the year 1066 and what did they come back with? Carbon dating stated that they were 11th century burials! I should have been in archaeologist!
i saw this place in a movie i think and i immideatly fell in love with the architecture, its one of the finest examples of European high gothic architecture
@@kasperkjrsgaard1447 They've only lost their dignity, self-control and the respect of the rest of the world. Maybe they'll earn it back in the next 4 years.
The site has been fully excavated, because a new visitor center will be built there. The bones are from the time of Edward the Confessor but not earlier. www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/rediscovering-the-great-sacristy
Wow so.nice to see a literal piece of my family history. More than two of my direct ancestors visited here, likely many times in their lives, as they were English lords who signed the Magna Carta. After of course successfully defeating the king of course.
Wait, how did the shrine of Edward the Confessor survive the Reformation?? I read somewhere that his shrine was lost after the hired men with pickaxes and hammers destroyed it!
English Aristocracy. I have Connections to the Spencers via my Family history, ancestors at the heart of Bedfordshire, Bucks, Northamptonshire, Warickshire..Maternal line. 🏴🏴🏴🇮🇪 distant cousin Nathan Field acted at the globe as a young boy, connections to Elizabeth 1st and William Shakespeare.
It’s one of the only UK Abbey’s left after the destruction of the reformation period of Henry VIII. He only left Westminster stand as his own relatives were entombed there.
They often will fill the dig sites back in if there are no immediate plans to continue the dig by some other organization. They’ve mentioned it in other episodes: it’s far safer and more responsible for the finds/archeology to be re-buried than to be left, exposed to the elements.
Fun fact. There were several "Ministers" built by the Saxons. All of them were pulled down by the Normans and either a better Cathedral was built or perhaps the site became a Monastery or an Abbey?
half of these episodes are blocked in the UK. which I think is very hypocritical considering half the point of time team was to get the people of the UK interested in their history.
There is nothing unusual about people being buried around and even in the church. It's only from the 18th century on that separate cemeteries became commonplace and mandatory for a number of reasons (lack of space, hygiene, ...).
39:00 A human being, born, raised, fed; with hopes, dreams, joys, fears like all of us. A mouth that spoke, ate, drank, hopefully kissed in passionate love. Teeth that were part of someone’s smile, that someone picked after a meal or ran their tongue across in contemplation, that once broke forward as that person placed their baby teeth they had just wiggled out of their mouth under their pillow for the tooth fairy to collect. And then, a thousand years later, someone else gets to touch them, while I, another thousand kilometres away, am able to watch it, well afterwards and again and again should I want to. Mind-boggling doesn’t even begin to describe it. Not to mention what that person would have thought of it, had they known.
Yes it’s true that the history of Britain is filled with colonial horrors But there is just something about there history that is just interesting I think Britain’s effect on the world will be something we feel for centuries to come
🤔Westminster? Excavating something new besides another tile to the bucket loads already found? 🧐Lets look for another dig for something really old and untouched! ...I will never do that again! Watch this video! 😉
