Archaeologists Find A Medieval Palace Buried Under Central London | Time Team | Chronicle

Behind these wooden doors is a hidden world that positively reeks of history. This is Lincoln's Inn in London. It's not a pub or a hotel. It's one of the oldest and most distinguished law societies in the world. Generations of lawyers have lived and worked inside these lovely old Tudor buildings, but underneath them may be something even earlier, a grand medieval townhouse built by Henry III's Lord Chancellor and the birthplace of London's world-famous legal community. There's just one big problem. There are only a few open spaces left where we can actually dig without knocking down a grade one listed building. Oh yes, and we've got nearly 200 lawyers watching our every move over the next three days. Lincoln's Inn is one of the four inns of court. Ancient legal societies which have had a key role in training and governing every barrister in England and Wales for hundreds of years. There's a magnificent building here for every period in British history. This one dates to the time of James I. This is Georgian. Oh, and this little thing is Victorian. And the earliest of all the buildings in Lincoln's Inn goes right back to the time of the Tudors in the 15th century. But as old as they are, there used to be something even older here because underneath this Tudor courtyard is thought to lie a grand 13th century palace belonging to Henry III's Lord Chancellor, Ralph Neville, the Bishop of Chichester. It was the establishment of this house which helped to transform this area from a medieval suburb into the world-famous legal center we see today. And Time Team has been called in to find it. Well, this is gonna be a bit of a doddle for you, isn't it? You'll be finished in a day. I don't think it's gonna be quite as easy as that, Tony. I mean, this idyllic little lawn, as you call it, I mean, it's a wonderful spot to dig, but there are two things that actually make it a lot more difficult than you might think for. Firstly, people have been living around here for ages. Any medieval layers may have been chopped away by the post-medieval period, Victorians, there may be services, drains, God knows what else in here that's destroyed all the medieval stuff. Secondly, and more importantly, is that. Yes. Now, that tree is gonna have a massive root system and it's gonna have a massive overhead canopy. We will not be allowed to dig anywhere near that. So we're gonna have to rely on geophys quite a lot. Yeah, but we've got the same problems. I mean, the tree roots are really gonna mess up our results, not straightforward. Suddenly, I'm really depressed. Nevertheless, this is the key location. This is as close as we can get to where we think the medieval origins might be. So we have to try and dig here. London archaeologist, Hedley Swain, our site director, reckons that Ralph Neville's house lies directly underneath the Tudor courtyard because most medieval houses were built around a central courtyard like this one. But digging in anywhere as built up as London is always a challenge. That is the five-meter exclusion zone there. And with so many restrictions on where we can dig, finding the right spot is gonna be really tough. And you're actually beyond the canopy there. So I've turned to our historian, Elaine Chalice, inside the Great Hall to find out more about the early history of the site. Yeah, we can only go back so far. Elaine's in our black books at the moment, or rather, the black books, the wonderfully named historical records of Lincoln's Inn. I want to know why on earth everyone thinks there's a medieval palace buried here belonging to some bloke from Chichester. We know in 1228, this land, or land right in this area, was granted to our venerable father, Ralph, Bishop of Chichester, our chancellor. And this is a land grant from the king, 1228, and the Bishop of Chichester builds a noble palace here. So originally, this was a grand townhouse. That's right. It would have been a place that would have been luxurious and sumptuous. The bishop would have been here when he was in London. It would have been active and full of people coming and going, lots of servants and retainers. And of course, because the bishop was also the chancellor, he would have had a whole collection, a small legal community of clerks around him, probably put off in lodgings around the main house. Ralph, Bishop of Chichester, was one of the most powerful men of his day, and his legacy is still reflected in the surrounding streets. As Lord Chancellor, the house he built here changed the surrounding area into a bustling legal community, as well as a posh place to stay, it was also the headquarters for his legal team when he was in town. Medieval houses were usually made up of lots of different buildings, the most important of which was the Great Hall. And if Bishop Ralph's was as lavish as we expect it was, it would also have had a chapel, comfortable lodgings, kitchens, and stables. Well, room for a pony at any rate. But our search for his house hasn't even begun. Excalibur. It's taken Phil and John all morning just to work out where to put our first trench. Phil, it's half past 12, the diggers have done absolutely nothing yet, and you two are just faffing around. No, we have not been faffing about, we have been trying to locate the trench based on the geophysics results. You've been at it for over an hour. So, come on, what have we got? We've got some good results. The black is possible wall lines, and it looks as though we might just have a structure. Now, it's coming at an angle to that building there, and, well, we're certainly far enough away from the tree roots. You see, you want to be so grateful that we've actually got good results and we think we can get a trench. Do you hear what they both say? We're thinking about whether or not we can put a trench in. So first, we need the tree, mate. Oh, God. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam. They want to put in a trench there. Where we sprayed on the ground. We're right on the edge of the canopy. I think if you let me know if you come across any significant roots, you'll be fine. All right, can we dig now? No, as Adam pointed out, it's actually in the garden. We haven't yet got permission from the gardener. You're joking to me. Big excitement, we're going to put in this trench as soon as we remove the geraniums. No, no, sorry, as soon as we find the person who will allow us to remove the geraniums. Isn't time team exciting? So at last, our first trench goes in by hand. After we find a new home for the geraniums, that is. Well, we've never done this before. Sure, I reckon we're there. We're going to have to dig extra carefully here to avoid cutting through the tree's major roots. It's an incredibly sensitive task. Even the spoil heap has to be taken away by wheelbarrow. But to be honest, this is starting to feel more like a gardening show than an archeology program. Phil's digging next to our incident room, which is the old hall, the earliest surviving building on the site. Like most of the other buildings in the courtyard, it's Tudor and it dates to 1489. But there's a catch. If the hall and surrounding courtyard are built on exactly the same spot as Bishop Ralph's medieval house, they may have completely destroyed it. These are called moulded stones and they're almost certainly from the medieval building. So Helen and John Schofield, our architectural historian, have been looking round the inn to see what, if anything, might have survived. What it is is a bit of a mystery. There are two possibilities. One is it's a doorway that you went through, but the other alternative is it's the arcading, which is the decoration they would do on the side of the wall of the chapel. So this could have been cobbled together from loads of different arches going along the side of the wall? I suppose so, though it does seem to work. It does. And of course, this chapel was then replaced by the chapel behind us over there, but this is the only remnant of that earlier medieval building. If the arch came from either the medieval hall or the chapel, it's possible we could find evidence of those buildings in our trenches. Look, there it comes. Running across there, this is all brickwork. Phil's only gone down a few inches and already he's found what looks like a brick wall. Well, I think it is. I mean, it's a solid piece of kit. Yeah, it is, it is. Trouble is, it looks more modern than medieval. The geophys has picked up what may be more of it just a few feet away from Phil's trench. So we've been given permission to open a second small trench. We'd love to investigate more of the gatehouse courtyard, but the huge tree rules that out. So we've decided to widen our search to next door and dig where there aren't any trees. This is the Tudor herb garden. Because it's close to the entrance courtyard, the oldest part of the inn, it's worth trying to see if there are any medieval buildings buried here. John, how far you got? They're not easy, these areas, at all. Oh, come on, what's wrong with this one? Well, it's so small again. It's just a keyhole and that's the problem we've got. And I mean, we've got a few reflections. The trouble is we don't know whether we're dealing with services or whether we've got wall foundations. So the only way is we're going to dig. Tracy, this is your part of the site. Where are you going to put in the trench? We're going to put a little two-by-one test hole over there and have a look, basically. So what might that hit, John? Just in this sort of area of noise and see what it is. So Tracy puts in our third trench of the day here at the edge of the herb garden. But everything's taking much longer than we want it to. What have you got, Phil? Well, I wish I knew, Hallet. And we're nowhere near the medieval layers. Well, not what I thought we were going to get. I mean, I was rather hoping that we might actually have a medieval building. We've got anything but that. Main thing is we've got this big wall coming across here. Now, this is the back wall of a major building. And then through the middle of it, we've got this curving drain that comes right the way through. All I can tell you is that it's a whacking great building. I would say it's built in one phase. And I would say that it's built sometime in the middle of the 19th century. But what its function is, what it's doing here, I haven't got the foggiest idea. Well, we might be able to throw some light on that. I've got a couple of maps to show you. You can see here on this map of 1875, there's an enormous rectangular building filling up nearly the whole of the square. And then by the time we get to this later map, 1894 to five, it's completely gone. So what is it? Well, so far, we've found it labelled as temporary courts. Yes, we know this was built in 1841. And in 1834, the Palace of Westminster burnt down and the royal courts there. So they would have required a place for their courts. So this was built while waiting for the royal courts, which are now in the Strand. So what sort of cases are we dealing with? Is this the common criminals, the shoplifters and the parking offences of the time? We don't think so. This is probably the slightly higher up cases, legal cases. Although it looks like a pile of bricks. Yeah, for 40 odd years, this was one of the most important legal buildings in London. Trouble is though, I wanted a mid 13th century Bishop's Palace and this is really going to slow us up. Oh dear. Not only has Phil dug up a Victorian courthouse, embarrassingly labelled Victorian courthouse on the map, but it could have wiped out any medieval archaeology. And if it covered most of the courtyard, is this all we're going to find in our second trench too? So far from there, all we're getting is demolition rubble mixed up with Tudor pottery. The earliest piece we've got is this. It's a little bit of Tudor green, went down in Surrey somewhere. Starts about 1380, 1400, goes through to about 1550 maybe. Okay, so that takes us back to contemporary with the standing buildings, nothing earlier yet. Not yet, no. Well, at least it's not Victorian, but over in the Herb Garden, no medieval either. So that is in situ, whatever it is. Only this rather puzzling wall, which seems to be just one brick thick. It's a very small wall for a Tudor Wendy house that ran in that direction. But the Herb Garden trench has got one more surprise before the end of the day. What is that? Well, that's incredibly appropriate for Lincoln's Inn. That's a wig curler. Oh, no way. Yeah, they're made of pipe clay and they're normally Victorian. Well, we've got one or two of them, so you never know, keep going, might find a wig's worth. But as lovely as it is, one Victorian wig curler doesn't make a townhouse, let alone a bishop's noble palace. We started off this morning looking for a 13th century townhouse somewhere around here. Well, we have found a building. It's right here, but unfortunately it's Victorian. And there's something older here too with some quite good pottery. Yeah, we've got this really nice assemblage of pottery coming out of this trench now and it's all the same type, Tudor green, dates to the second half of the 15th century. However, what we have got mixed in with it is this one tiny piece and that dates to the mid 13th century. That could be useful, couldn't it? But 15th century, what's this telling us? Well, it's telling us that this layer and the pottery that comes from it is the same date as the Great Hall. So it's Tudor, century the seventh. That's great. However, that's not, strictly speaking, why we're here. So is this a Tudor building? No. I mean, it shows us that there's been Tudor occupation, Tudor structures here, but we're not here for the 15th century. We know about the 15th century. We want to go earlier. And so in both trenches, we've still got more work to do. And it's that bit of pottery that'll kind of give us the oomph to go and get it. Yeah, we've had an incredibly frustrating day. And this is the one little indicator that we've got that we might be close to our 13th century townhouse. Will we find it? We'll know tomorrow. History Hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans. Enjoy our rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period. History Hit's medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones, Eleanor Janega, and Kat Jarman. Not only that, but we have a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of history through our network of podcasts. Sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code CHRONICLE at checkout. Beginning of day two here at Lincoln's Inn in the heart of London's legal system. Yesterday, we were looking for the medieval townhouse that brought the lawyers here in the first place, but almost immediately, we hit a big problem. This tree. Huge canopy means enormous root system, which meant that we could only put in a couple of trenches. We put in one here and we found some kind of Tudor level. And over here, Phil found a Victorian courthouse. So today, what we're going to do is radar all the way around this road to see if we can find anything medieval there. In the meantime, Phil's left here, scratching his head, looking at Victorian brickwork. What are we going to do, Phil? We can't get at the medieval layer while all this stuff's here. Well, what we are not going to do is act irresponsibly and just smash it out. What we will do is do a proper record and treat it with proper reverence. And then smash it out. No, we're not going to smash it out. What we're going to do is we're going to extend the trench that way so we can actually get down by the side of the foundations and it will get us back to earlier deposits, possibly even the medieval one. The other advantage of being able to extend that way, look, no trees. No trees, but I do see four little shrubs grinning back at us. Those four little geraniums were the ones that we relocated yesterday. Yeah, but aren't we going to have to get permission to move them again? I'm going to risk it that if we had permission to move them once, we'd get automatic permission to move them again. You are skating on such thin ice. There's over 300 lawyers looking out of their windows, making notes even as we speak. You could be in serious geranium trouble. I'll risk it. So Phil gets back to work and the poor old geraniums get moved again. Yesterday, we were frustrated at every turn in our hunt for Bishop Ralph's medieval house. And today could be just as slow. Phil's hoping to strike it lucky by digging outside the Victorian courthouse. A few yards away in our second trench, we've yet to find anything at all apart from a few bits of Tudor pottery. And over in the herb garden, all we have is a bizarre miniature wall. We really need to get a move on. But Headley, our site director, has now disappeared. I've just left Lincoln's Inn, which is over there. That's the boundary. That building's Victorian. I know it does look much older, but we're now moving into Lincoln's Inn Fields, which that notice board there tells me is the biggest public square in central London. And the lawyers here have been fighting for hundreds of years to make sure that it isn't developed. So, Headley, why have you brought half-hour archaeologists here when we know there aren't any buildings? Well, the very reason it hasn't been developed means that we've never done any archaeology here. And this potentially is a really key location for understanding early Roman London. In what way? At the western end of the square, that is currently the eastern boundary of middle Saxon London, as we understand it. If you walk about 15 minutes swiftly in that direction, you come to Fleet Valley and Roman London. So we're sitting between middle Saxon London and Roman London. Now, we currently think that the two are unrelated, that after Roman London was abandoned, middle Saxon London grew up. But it seems to me just too much of a coincidence that they're so close. So it's just possible that this site might help us further understand that link between the Romans and the Saxons. But has that got anything to do with the Inns of Court that we're looking at? Strictly speaking, not. It was just too good an opportunity. John, you've done the geophers? Yeah, and it's a big open area at last. So no problems? Well, having done the survey, I mean, look at the results. You've got lots here, haven't you? Aren't these structures of some kind? Yeah, but it's all World War II temporary structures. And basically, the whole of that far end, they've masked what's going on. There's only this quiet area at this end, but we've still got the problems of the trees. So what we've done, we've marked with red and white tape the 15-meter restriction zone around the trees, and we've got one tiny triangle in the middle. Now, that happens to be in one of our quiet areas. So basically, you're gonna put in your trench where the evidence is absent? Yeah. So if finding a bishop's townhouse wasn't difficult enough, Hedley and Matt decide to look for half of Saxon London as well. There's only a few bits of, like, rubbish. I hope it's worth it. Flower potholes. And this takes us back to about 1657. Across the road, Elaine is doing a bit of digging of her own into the later history of the fields. In the Tudor times, it's crown land. It's not the inn's land, but it's right on the edge of the inn's land, and the inn always has concerns about what's being developed there. So how was it used? Well, it was public access, and you can go and exercise your horses there, break your horses in, you can take walks in the fresh air. But it also had a darker side as well. It was where you got vagabonds and beggars hanging out. People got mugged there. So it could be fairly dodgy in the middle, a bit like a lot of London squares today. Absolutely, yes. The fields have certainly robbed us of half our team. And I'm worried that Hedley and his merry band are losing sight of our main objective, Bishop Ralph's medieval townhouse. And even worse, the geophys survey of the rest of the courtyard is coming up with nothing. Is there a maker's lot? So when Raksha finds this huge chunk of stone, I could almost cry with relief. So can you give us a date for this then, Richard? On that bit of stone? Come on. I'd probably put later medieval rather than early medieval. This groove is what's called a window check. And this is where you'd put a metal or a timber frame for the glass that came out this way. We know that it could be 13th century because people who had money could afford glass that was very expensive. The problem is there's very little on this hunk of stone to tell us what the date is. It's difficult to say whether the stone's medieval or Tudor, but it does suggest we might be close to the remains of a substantial building. I really hope that's true because the only building we've got so far is one we don't want, the temporary Victorian courthouse. And a picture of it still exists in the library. This is the Great Court in 1880 and there is Phil's building. So that's just before it's knocked down. Yep. Isn't that an amazingly lucky chance? Yes, it gives us an idea of what it looked like. It's tall central section here with an aisle bit around it. And you can see why there was a rather scurrilous description of it as looking like a third-rate dissenters' meeting house in a fourth-rate provincial town. I think that's from somebody who just lost his case. And Phil's not too keen on it either. It's really holding up his search for the medieval building. Phil, you shifted those geraniums then? Absolutely. What's all this sand here? It looks like Morecambe Bay. Yeah, that's a water pipe. Oh, you're kidding. No, no, I'm not. So all this talk about what a good idea it would be to extend in that direction was rubbish? No, well, yeah, it's worse than that, actually. Of course, there is that concrete drain as well. Oh, yeah, that's a laugh, isn't it? I can remember just a few hours ago, you were saying, oh, we've got to extend this way. This is the only way we can extend. It is. Now look at you. What are you going to do? Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave Bridget here to complete the work here. And I'm actually going to join Raksha over here because there's a lot more work to be done in here. This is where the really exciting stuff is cropping up. We've got the Tudor levels. It's this one here. Down where Raksha is now. But more importantly, we've got deposits below that, which have got much earlier material in, material that might well date back to the earliest phase of the inn on this site. So if we want to find the start of this place, this is the trench to dig? This is undoubtedly the trench to do it in. So essentially, you've left the useless trench in order to come into the really exciting one. No, I haven't. I'll leave that observation with you. So after all that, the poor old geraniums got moved for nothing. With so much to do, we can't afford to waste any more time digging up the Victorian courthouse. As it is, we've also become distracted by Trace's strange wall in the herb garden. The dating for this trench is fairly solidly Tudor period, but can you date the bricks? Not really, no. Not from this angle anyway. But that's nothing compared to Lincoln's Inn Fields. Earlier this morning, half the team disappeared there looking for Saxon London. Just hold on there for a second here, and I might push Spade in it and see how deep it is. They've gone down through several layers of modern rubbish until they finally hit something. We're one metre 20 deep now, and you can see there's that yellow post hole there. Actually, and it's still got a kind of square wooden imprint in the middle. And just across through the middle is a kind of spread of charcoal and burnt material. Could Headley have proved us all wrong and found Saxon? You can see there's bits of clay tobacco pipe in there. There's a bit of glass there. So we're probably still looking about 16th, 17th century. Right, so we've still got the best part of 1,000 years to dig through until we hit the Saxon period. But when Matt extends the trench, he finds two more post holes. It's definitely a structure, but what on earth could it be? This is a map of 1658, and it's the last map we've got before the Great Fire of London. And what it's showing us, you can see that all the fields are combined into one quite large open space. But apart from this little building in the middle, there's nothing, which is what we'd expect. The whole idea is it's an open space. However, in this trench, we've got some post holes from what appears to be this period. So have you got any idea what they refer to? Yeah, I think we might have a pretty good idea what it is. This is one of those areas where during the Great Fire of London, people came as basically refugees, and we put up big temporary, almost like big tents, and they would easily have been put up on a structure like this with big post hole. Okay, so it could be we've got refugees from the Great Fire here. Yes, it's very, very possible. It makes good sense. The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed almost half the city. Starting in Pudding Lane, it spread west before coming to a stop not far from Lincoln's Inn. If the post holes are from this period, they're a wonderful discovery. But they're not why we came here. And back at the inn, we're desperate for something, anything to do with the medieval townhouse. So, thank goodness for archeological bloodhound, Phil Harding. He's picked up the scent, and his decision to switch trenches appears to have been a wise one. Because he's found what he thinks is a foundation trench for a building stuffed with pottery. Oh, look at that. If you get this amount of pot of the same vessel, gotta be good for dating this layer. Ah! You rang? Yeah, come this way. Come and have a look at this. Just tell me everything I need to know about that little pot. Okay, it's a Tudor green jug, made somewhere in the Surrey, Hampshire region. Dates probably to the 15th century, and it's probably a drinking jug. How much would it hold? Looking at that, round about a pint, possibly. So, what's it gonna come up? I mean, well, we can probably... Ah, so we know that bit goes on there. And the rim's just coming up from there, so there you go. So that's answering my question. That's getting on for a pint, looks like it, doesn't it? A pint in there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The jug means that Phil's foundations go back at least to the early Tudor period, but they could be even older, because we're finding more and more stray bits of 13th century pottery. Could this at last be our medieval townhouse? Well, Paul, our pottery expert, has his doubts. The two really crucial pieces are these. Now, these are both medieval, and they both date to around about 1250, so I'm quite hopeful that there are medieval deposits down there. The really interesting thing to me is that there's a type of pottery that's really common in London between 1250 and 1450, Surrey ware. There isn't one single piece from anywhere on the site, despite the fact we've got earlier stuff. I'm pretty convinced there's a gap in occupation at the site between 1250 and 1450 from the finds we've got at the moment. Does that make sense? Actually, that is a bit spooky, because you haven't been through any of the documents, have you? No, no. Ralph de Neville, Bishop of Chichester, builds this place and dies in 1244, and then the lawyers come and found Lincoln's improper in 1422, and it's just so close to those dates. But nobody has ever suggested that there's a period of abandonment between the two. It's a tantalizing question. Could Ralph Neville have built a grand townhouse here only for it to have been abandoned soon after his death in the 1240s? But it's a question which we'll have to wait for tomorrow, because perhaps inspired by Phil's pint jug, I find the rest of the team over in Lincoln's Inn Fields, yes, you've guessed it, having a beer. What are we doing playing beer and Skittles in the middle of Lincoln's Inn Fields? Well, it's beer and Skittles without the pub. This is Kales, Tony. It's a medieval Skittles game, and you either throw a stick or you throw a ball. And if you're lucky, you hit something, like Phil Teng. You didn't? How do you think we got on today? I think we did incredibly well today. But it's also, as ever, very frustrating. Well, out here, we've hit archaeology that we weren't expecting, and we haven't got the archaeology we hoped for, the Saxon, and then back in Lincoln's Inn itself, there's now good medieval, good Tudor coming out, so lots to do tomorrow. These are the only Skittle games that they play. No, actually, we've got a game of boules as well, but instead of bowling at a stationary jackball, though, they used to bowl at a feather. A feather? A feather. Do you hear that, Phil? We need a feather. Come here. What? This is our jackball. You dare! Beginning of day three here in central London. Two days ago, we were invited into that building through the trees, that's Lincoln's Inn, where we've been asked to see if we could find a 13th-century townhouse, which was the beginning of all the legal business that takes place there. But Hedley has hijacked half of our archaeologists and has got them working over here in the open spaces of Lincoln's Inn Fields in order to try and find the border between Roman London, which was over there, and Saxon London, which was back there somewhere. But, Hedley, your people have been digging for the best part of a day now, and you've got this huge hole, but you've only got back as far as, what, the 17th century? Well, you know, Tony, if archaeology was predictable, we wouldn't do it and no-one else would be interested. We were expecting relatively straightforward, no stratigraphy, bit of background noise, all the way down, either to Saxon or natural. We're finding loads of finds, and now we've also got 17th-century archaeology, and that actually is really interesting. We've got post holes and layers here. What's so exciting about 17th-century post holes? Well, after the Great Fire of London, 1666, the refugees, in effect, brought their possessions and came and camped out on the field. So, it's just possible that this is what that relates to. Which is very vivid and dramatic, but none of this has got anything to do with the 13th-century building that we were asked to find. No, it hasn't. You're just far more interested in the notion of Saxon London and Roman London than you are in this 13th-century townhouse. To be honest, the opportunity was there and it was just too good to miss. Exactly. Well, you can't fault Hedley for determination. And while he finishes what he started back at the inn, we're really going to have to get our skates on if we're going to find Ralph Neville's townhouse by the end of the day. In the herb garden, there's still no sign of it. Yesterday, Tracey uncovered more of her wall, which we now think isn't a building, but just the old back wall of the Tudor garden. Oh, my goodness! As suggested by this nice silver coin from Elizabeth I's reign. So, all our hopes of finding the medieval house are now resting with Phil in the courtyard. He's found evidence for a big stone building which seems to have been pulled down in the early Tudor period. Come on, then, Rachel, let's swing a pick at it. But he doesn't know when it was built. The crucial thing is that we had some good pottery out of that robber trench yesterday, which is what date? That was roughly second half of the 15th century. We've also got residual mid-13th-century pottery coming out of this trench as well. There's not much, there's only three sherds, but they're in quite good nick. So, it looks to me like there was definitely something going on in the middle of the 13th century here. I mean, we're getting more and more of this stone, some of which is carved. And I see we've now got some wall plaster and we've also now got window glass. So, we're beginning to get, you know, what's above the wall, the building itself. That shows that the material that we've been looking at and thinking is demolition rubble really is demolition rubble of a building and that we are genuinely in a foundation trench. And it gives us some indication of the quality of this building. It's plaster, and you know, you've got floor tile as well. Before we get too carried away, Phil, one thing we haven't got is this 1250 to 1450 horizon. There is no pottery whatsoever of that date come out of this trench yet. Despite Paul's misgivings, Phil's starting to convince himself that he's got a medieval building that stood here until the early Tudor period. There's no doubt that it would have been an impressive stone building. And it's got our experts wondering if it could be either the original medieval hall or the previous chapel, both of which the records say were still standing in the early Tudor period, even if we don't know where. I've got chapel and there's an old chapel, a previous chapel. Hall is a previous hall. But Helen's come across a reference to renovation work on the old medieval hall, which she thinks might be an important clue. I don't think that this hall was put on the same footprint as the previous hall, because in the documents, it says that in 1492, some members of Lincoln's Inn are fined for pulling down the timbers of the old hall. And that's when this one has already been built. And there's some references. It says the window's to be made with glass at the east end of the hall. Now, I would have thought that if you've got a hall running north-south like this one, the east part is going to be the side and not the end. I think you're absolutely right, because unless Latin's been translated so badly it's untrue, end means gable end. So you must have a hall at 90 degrees to what we're in now. If Helen's right, then the medieval hall would have stood at a right angle to the current one, just like Phil's wall, which means it could be right underneath where we're digging. And with the prospect of the medieval hall dangling before our eyes, suddenly it feels like Bishop Ralph's palace is almost within our grasp. It's just up to Phil to find it. Over in the fields, our little sideshow has just got a lot bigger. Hedley's still hunting for Saxons and opened up a new trench altogether. He's also doubled the size of the existing trench, where yesterday Matt found some 17th-century postholes. We think they might have been used to put up tents to look after the refugees from the Great Fire of London in 1666. Yeah, I mean, it's all good post-medieval stuff. It's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find in London. And we're also beginning to wonder whether some of our finds might be what they left behind. This is the first time, if it is, that we've got evidence for the poor people that were driven out. So do the finds work for that? I think it'd certainly make a case for it. I mean, most of the stuff you've got is the common post-medieval types for London, sort of 1550 to 1700. But the two bits you've got in here, I think, make a pretty good case. You've got a nice bit of tin-glazed earthenware. I mean, that's certainly 17th century. But I think the clincher is this. It's a bit of a Staffordshire slip-work plate. Now, they start making these about 1640, 1650. Now, like anything, when something new comes along, it's quite rare to start off with. Then it gets much more common as time goes on. Now, the fact that there is only one piece of this suggests to me that it's quite early on in the life of the industry. So I certainly wouldn't have a problem with pushing it into the 1660s. It's an incredibly powerful image of this, what's now a very tranquil spot, being full of refugees with the few possessions that they may have managed to grab as they were forced to leave the city. And these might actually be some of them. Obviously, it's really, really difficult to sort of pin down such a short-lived event archaeologically. But it would certainly fit the picture, yeah. In September 1666, the big open spaces of Lincoln's Inn Fields were turned into one huge camp for refugees. Their homes and much of the city razed to the ground. But a clue to what their London looked like still exists inside the Inn's chapel. These are beautiful old windows, aren't they? Oh, they're gorgeous. Have you noticed over there, just ahead of St Simon, that's the chapel that we're standing in right now? And if you go right to the far end on St Matthias, you can see two houses. This is the kind of habitation that would have been burnt down during the Great Fire of London? Exactly. So there'd have been crowds of people leaving London with their possessions and their pets and their babies and everything, and this would have been one of the first safe places that they came to? That's right. This area and any area, people went in all directions from the fire, but they would have been like refugees today. And there are 65,000 to 80,000 of them. There's a huge number of people, and they'd be scared. They'd be terrified. It's now nearly lunchtime on day three, and outside in the courtyard, we're still puzzled by the fact that we haven't found any pottery from the mid-14th to early 15th centuries. But it seems the answer may not lie in our trenches after all. This might be what you're looking for. Is that real? Oh, yes. It's a Surrey white-wood jug, late 13th to early 14th century. But that's the period that you said we didn't have any pottery from this? That's right, yeah. That's the Great Gap at the moment. Up in the library here at the inn, they've got a case full of whole pots that have been found during building work over the years, and this came up. I mean, it's just exactly what we haven't got, if you see what I mean. But, of course, we have now. Do you know where it came from? I do. Cesspit, east end of the chapel, Lincoln's Inn. You're kidding. Well, that's there. Yeah. 30 metres away from where we've got these whacking-great foundations of a building which, I am more convinced than ever, must be medieval. Now I'm happy to concede that, even though we've got a gap in this trench between 1250 and 1450, there must have been people here in this time. That jug didn't walk here on its own, you know. How rare is that? Complete, it's really rare. There's maybe a dozen of them known, I suspect. If that... I've got to do this. Just don't drop it. I've just got to pick it up. And to think that the evidence was staring us in the face all along. While the jug proves that people were living here throughout the Middle Ages, it still doesn't tell us when Phil's building itself was put up. Yeah, this is where we want the pot. And he's only got a few hours left to find out. And this, of course, is where we're getting diddly-squat. And time is also running out over in Lincoln's Inn fields. Our second trench there has revealed, no, not Saxons, but a huge Second World War air raid shelter. Very posh-looking air raid shelter, isn't it? It's very posh. I mean, three chambers. And we also have electricity, where Dave's digging now. And we have water. That's even posher. I know. What on earth are we going to dig up next? If I were a betting man, I'd want to cut my losses and run. But Hedley Swain is a man who just doesn't give up. Can he pull it off? Will he hit Saxon before the end of the day? In a word, no. Basically, a big quarry pit filled with domestic rubbish that's masking what we want to get to. So it takes away the possibility of getting Saxon. And we haven't found a single sherd or anything that we might date to the middle Saxons. So I think it's reasonable to say we haven't got London Wick this far over. If it was here, the quarry pit would have erased all traces of Saxon London. But sometimes on Time Team, you just have to take a gamble. Although I'm not sure how we're going to explain all this to the park wardens. And if you'd like to find out more about the origins of Saxon London, then you can log on to the Time Team website. But it's not all bad news. The quarry pit's thrown up a lot of medieval tile. The irony being that this quarry pit could have been used to make tiles for the Medieval Inn, the reason why we came here in the first place. Plenty of tile, weren't there? Back at the inn, time's running out. Phil's trying desperately to find out if his building could be the Medieval Hall. There you go. Pot. Ah! What have you got, mate? Look at this. Got a bit of handle. Ooh, look at that. Let's have a little look, shall we? Oh! Could do with cleaning it up, mate. It comes out of the ground and you want it in pristine condition. Well, you know. Oh, yeah. It's covered in mud. Call yourself an expert. Ooh, I like that. Right, that is my bit of South Hertfordshire grey work. Er... Late 12th to 14th. See? Isn't it... You've it paid out, mate. God, yes. At last, this is the news we've been hoping for. The medieval pottery found right underneath the wall's foundation means it must have been put up in the 13th century, when Ralph, Bishop of Chichester, had his magnificent London home here. Phil, three days ago, I said we were looking for a 13th-century townhouse, the origins of everything that surrounds us now, and that the likelihood was that it was in this courtyard. Have you found it for us? Absolutely, Tony. That slot down there is the foundation trench of what I believe is the earliest stone-built building on the site. I can quite believe that it goes back to the 13th century, and I can be absolutely certain that it was gone by 1500. Can you tell what kind of building it was, though? It was a massive building. We know that there is no brick in the construction of it. We've got beautiful painted window glass. We've got green sand mouldings that would have gone round the windows and the doors. Helen, how does that work for you as far as the history is concerned? When you take into account its size and its quality, and above all, its date, it has got to be the Great Hall, the predecessor of our old hall there. That's built 1492, this was pulled down soon after. It's got to be it. Hedley, you were supposed to be our boss, but you weren't interested in any of this at all. You went haring off into Lincoln's Inn fields, hunting for Saxons. Did you find any? I was fascinated what was going on here. It was in very safe hands. We found some fascinating archaeology over there, including possibly something to do with the Great Fire. If I'm honest, though, we didn't find Middle Saxon London, but do you know what? About ten minutes ago, at the bottom of that trench, our first bit of Middle Saxon pottery from this part of London. That's very ironic, but does it actually tell us much? Not a lot, but it's a start. Three days ago, we set ourselves an ambitious target, Ralph Neville's grand medieval townhouse, the place which helped give birth to London's legal community. And against all the odds, we think we've found part of it, the 13th-century Great Hall. Made of stone and finished with plaster and painted glass, it certainly fits the contemporary account of a noble palace fit for a bishop. We've also uncovered so much more about London along the way, from the first piece of Saxon pottery ever found in this area, and over in the fields, remains from two of the most destructive periods in London's history, the Great Fire and the Blitz. Not bad for a dig where we didn't know if we'd find anything at all just a few days ago. Oh, yes, and just in case there are any lawyers watching, not a single geranium was harmed during the making of this programme.