The Mysterious Medieval Skeleton Found Buried In Salisbury Cathedral | Time Team | Chronicle

Salisbury Cathedral. For centuries, this pinnacle of medieval engineering and architecture has stood proud, surviving wars, floods and the Reformation. But we're here because of what hasn't survived. 200 years ago, they knocked down some of the cathedral's most beautiful buildings. Somewhere over here was Salisbury's original bell tower, a magnificent Gothic construction that soared hundreds of feet into the air. While over there, the builders pulled down two private chapels, one of them built by one of the cathedral's most influential bishops. We've been given a unique opportunity to unearth these lost treasures. And what's more, to solve the mystery of a body which was recently discovered buried here in the ruins of the bishop's chapel. Which wouldn't be bad for three days, if we can do it. Salisbury Cathedral has dominated the Wiltshire countryside for almost 800 years. It's a building that's literally crammed to the rafters with some of the finest medieval craftsmanship in the world. A breathtaking statement of the wealth, power and influence of the church. But not all of it has survived the ravages of time and the redesigns of man. So we've been invited here by the cathedral's dean and chapter to rediscover some of the architectural treasures that have disappeared. And to be honest, we're really rather excited at the prospect. Mick, for years and years, you and I have been digging abbeys and nunneries and monasteries. This is a bit different, isn't it? This is fantastic, isn't it? The scale of it. Phil, this is your city, isn't it? Absolutely. It's funny, really. I mean, we all regard this as an archaeological monument. But if you live in the city, it's more than that. I pull back the curtains every morning and I see this. It's an absolute icon. It really is. Tim, you're the cathedral archaeologist. There's a little bit of me that's thinking this place is the best part of 800 years old. It's there. We can all see it. It doesn't really need one archaeologist, does it, let alone a whole bunch of new ones. To me, archaeology, of course, is not what is just under the ground. There are things under the ground. But it's the full study of the material remains of the past, including a big structure like this, with the highest medieval archaeology anywhere in Britain. But surely that's been here since the beginning. No, it hasn't. No, the spire is an add-on 50 years after the cathedral was completed. Yeah, we've got an engraving that shows that before that, there was a separate tower which had the bells in it, and that was there until the 18th century. Phil, I was going to ask you where the belfry is in the ground, but this being time team, I've got a suspicion I know already. You know us too well, Tony, don't you, really? Yeah, we're actually standing on it. I think what we're going to have to do is run the radar over it just to confirm exactly where it is. But it's bang here. The plan suggests the original bell tower had a massive footprint, which is the sort of thing Geophys was designed for. But this isn't the only thing to dig, because the major redevelopment in 1789 that destroyed the bell tower also robbed the cathedral of other stunning medieval buildings, including the private chapel of the cathedral's most colourful bishop. We've got this fantastic 17th-century engraving of the cathedral. The east end here, it shows a couple of chapels that aren't here any more. This one, ours, built by Bishop Richard Beecham. Now, Bishop Beecham dies in 1481 and he leaves instructions in his will that he's to be buried in the middle of this chapel. What's so exciting about digging a chapel? This was one of the key chantery chapels put onto the cathedral in the 15th century, when the east end of the cathedral was completely reorganised, because Bishop Beecham, who was a very, very powerful figure in the Wars of the Rosage period, had managed eventually to get Osman, the Norman bishop of Salisbury, from Ulcerum, canonised by the Pope in 1457. So there was a brand-new shrine in the east end of the cathedral here, and that's why he obviously wanted to have his chantery chapel as close as possible. Beecham was buried in his chapel in 1481, and engravings suggest it was a little masterpiece of medieval Gothic architecture. So one of our tasks is to bring that chapel back to life with a graphic reconstruction based on the archaeology in the ground... So there's all this stuff in the Beecham chapel. ..and some surviving fragments of its interior stored in the cathedral loft. Miniature fan vaults. They're so intricate. Look at the detail on them. Fantastic. The workmanship that goes into those things. And then what else have we got? But we have another challenge. When the chapel was demolished, Salisbury's records show Beecham's body and tomb were moved into the main cathedral. So it was a shock when an evaluation dig on the chapel in 2000 made an unexpected discovery. Yes, this is a real mystery, because we've got records that in 1789, when they were demolishing this chapel, the workmen found the bones of Bishop Beecham, and they identified him by an episcopal ring, and the bones were taken off and buried in the nave. So the last thing that anybody was expecting to find here were these two legs. So could this possibly be our bishop? Jackie, we can't prove that it would be a bishop here. I mean, bishops don't have different bones to the rest of us, do they? Well, no, but there is a certain amount of information that I'll be able to get out of this that will give us some idea about who we're looking at. I'll be able to work out the age and sex of the individual, something about their lifestyle, what kind of social status they were, which we'll see whether that matches with what we know about Bishop Beecham, or somebody of that social status. From the records, we know that four people were buried here. Two of Beecham's relatives to one side, his close friend, Sir John Chaney, to the south-west corner, and the bishop in the middle. All we now need to do is to try to match the historical information we have for each of our four candidates with the physical evidence we find in the grave. Oh, that's a bit of an anti-climax, isn't it? So the knees are in there, and the edge of the grave... What's it come... Is this it, round here? That's it, yeah. See, if we can find the knees then, or the legs again, then we know exactly how far we've got to go down. It will give us some idea of what the condition of the bone is and just tell us a hell of a lot more before we go into this virgin fill. Over on the other side of the cathedral, our target is just that tiny bit bigger. Well, actually, it's enormous. That's pretty good, though, isn't it? I mean, so clear. The dark red are where we've got the wall foundation surviving. And look, the detail is absolutely fantastic. You can see the buttresses, the entrance, everything. I mean, that's the 18th-century drawing look, and it's pretty well the same, isn't it? You don't need that. It's all here. This geophys is fantastically good, clearly showing the remains of Salisbury's original bell tower. And the archaeologists are keen to get their trowels on it for all sorts of reasons. It's our only opportunity to look at how these footings were built at this particular period. Bearing in mind this is built at the same time as the cathedral, if we can find out how the footings were designed for this bell tower, which is a pretty substantial structure, maybe then we can find out how this medieval monster was actually supported. We might get a lot of evidence in there of the builders and people who used the tower and so on as well. We'd need to see that. Well, look, I've sketched on a ten-by-ten trench that would take in all the points you've been covering. OK, if you lay it out, then we can get cracking. Yeah. OK. As well as helping us rediscover Salisbury's original bell tower, this trench could actually give us an insight into how the cathedral was built. Because both buildings were put up at the same time, as part of one of the biggest civil engineering jobs of the Middle Ages, the construction of a completely new city. Originally, there was just a small hilltop settlement called Old Sarum, until a bishop decided to move his Norman cathedral and the whole town around it down into the valley where Salisbury is today. And he built a masterpiece, a building that celebrated God, would guarantee the bishop's admission into heaven, and would become a site of wondrous pilgrimage for the poor of the medieval world. Of course, some people on the team are bound to have a slightly different take on it all. These were celibate men who were the bishops, and they were always men. They acquired wealth and estates to support their office and their retainers. They'd got no successors to hand the estates on to, so they became wealthier and wealthier. What were they going to do with all this money? Basically, invest it in bigger and bigger cathedral churches. So are you saying that the cathedral isn't much more than an enormous folly built in order to express how rich the church is? Well, there's all that business of building it for the greater glory of God and getting to heaven and so on, but effectively it is a big demonstration of the wealth that bishop or that diocese has. And, of course, the bishop of Salisbury had immense wealth. And possibly the most important of these important men was Bishop Beecham, a man praised by the king for his hospitality and wealthy enough to bribe the pope to make a previous Salisbury bishop a saint. I think he was a whirlwind, actually. He's one of these men that seems to be incredibly energetic. But what we also know is he's one of these men who is able to move in multiple spheres. So, for instance, by birth he's part of the gentry. He comes from families that have connections to the monarchy. And we know also that he's been trained at Oxford. By the late 1440s, he's actually appointed bishop of Hereford. So he's coming straight from Oxford into a bishopric, which is quite something for starters. In less than a year and a bit, he's actually moved over to become bishop of Salisbury. Now, for a very interesting reason, and that is because of the fact that the previous bishop of Salisbury is actually hacked to death in Jack Cade's rebellion. So he must have been quite a brave man if his predecessor had been hacked to death. Absolutely, yes. And he stays active for the rest of his life here. Because he was here for 31 years, wasn't he? It's an enormous period of time, yeah. So he was about 60-odd, early 60s, when he died. Yeah, I would think so. He's got to be in that range. Which is, for that period of time, really old. When he writes the opening to his will, he's quite clear that he thinks he's really lived a long life. And it's just that sort of information that Jackie can use to help identify the mysterious burial. Because over at the chapel trench... Ooh! ..we've just located the shin bones of our potential bishop. Looking just at those two bones, what's your instant reaction? What can you learn from just that first glimpse of those two bones? Well, the main thing it tells me is that the bone is in very good condition. I mean, the better condition the bone is in, the more you can tell from it. So that's a good start. While at the bell tower trench, a day's strenuous digging has revealed the first evidence of how the medieval builders set about constructing not just the tower, but possibly the cathedral. We've got this really lovely core foundation of a wall, of a bell tower, running all the way through this trench. It doesn't look very pretty. As you can see, there's this rubber cut going all the way through the middle. That's because they've taken away all of the really nice, pretty facing. Then over here, we've got this kind of white mortar just coming through there. That's an internal floor surface, we think. And it's much later. It's got brick in it and we've had clay pipe from there. But it's very much different to the stuff at the bottom over there. We think that's much earlier. Could that be an early phase? Well, I'm just wondering whether it's not actually the foundation for the whole thing. The foundation? Yeah. It's only a couple of foot below the surface. If the foundation for that cathedral is at the same depth, then we've got to stick on our hardhats and run like hell. Yeah, but we tend to forget, you see, that a lot of these big medieval buildings have a raft of stone or pebbles or timbers on which the whole thing is built. We can actually find out because we can empty the rubber trench and look in the section. We'll see whether that mortar is sitting on the natural gravel and that will tell us. Lucky they dug it for us. Absolutely. Which is all very well, but Raksha and Matt now only have two days left to get to the bottom of this massive trench because the autumn sun is fading fast. End of day one and we're losing light by the second. But the good news is we've found the legs of our body. But does it go that way? Does it go that way? And is it our bishop? We'll find out 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 Salisbury Cathedral where we're trying to uncover some of the architectural treasures that have lain underground for hundreds of years. Just behind me where that yellow digger is, we think we may have got the medieval bell tower. If we have, it should give us some clues about how this place was originally built. But round the corner here, and this is really intriguing, we could have the body of a very famous bishop which has been lying here for over 500 years. Although at the moment, Jackie, all I can see is a pair of shin bones. That's right, you've got this lovely sharp ridge down the front. That's the bit that hurts when somebody kicks you on it. Yesterday I said to you, well, we're not going to be able to tell a bishop, are we? Because a bishop doesn't have different bones from us. But you said, ah, maybe we will be able to tell. What did you mean? I can tell an awful lot from looking at the bone. Obviously I can tell what age the individual is and what sex... I mean, we're assuming it's a male, but it may not be. ..but what sex the individual is. Now, we know a little bit about the bishop. We know roughly how old he was, so we can see if that matches. But also, by looking at the kind of pathology, the changes due to disease, that, again, will help us work out what kind of social status this individual was and does it match that we would expect of a bishop. And an absolute classic for that would be something called dish, which is diffuse idiopathic skeletal hypostosis, which is a bit of a mouthful, but basically it means somebody who forms a lot of bones. What would cause that? Well, the condition is generally linked with things like obesity, diabetes, and that in itself can be reflective of a very rich living. So it's the archetypal fat bishop? Exactly. But finding out if these legs once supported the bulk of the king-entertaining, pope-bribing Bishop Beecham isn't our only challenge here, because we'd actually expected this trench to be fairly straightforward. But, to be honest, we don't really understand what we've uncovered. These are Jimmy's radar results from here. I thought that that could be a grave slab. It clearly isn't. You can see the end from Jackie's pencil case right to the edge of the spoil. I mean, it's such a clear response. It looks to me as though the grave is cutting it, so I'm wondering whether that's pre-chapel. Yeah, but the grave definitely cuts it, but we don't actually know that this grave belongs to this chapel. This grave could be later than the chapel. Maybe that plinth belongs to the chapel. Right. I see. So while Jackie continues to investigate the grave, Phil will try to work out what the mysterious plinth is and how it relates to the burials in the bishop's chapel. Meanwhile, at the other end, Bridge opens a small trench within a trench across the chapel wall. It's all a bit of a quandary. I think I'll go back to the bell tower. And so the staircase is just behind you there, and see that dark stain there? That's it. So that's one side. The other side of the doorway should be... ..about thereish, shouldn't it? Yeah. But whether it's the super straightforward bell tower trench or the increasingly complex chapel investigation... It does look medieval. ..they both have one thing in common. They're going to need loads of labour to get them finished in the next two days. But unfortunately, some of our team have been distracted by the sheer wealth of history on this site, and Stu is off on the other side of the cathedral, investigating something else entirely. I think I've made a major discovery, and I need the position of it to put it in the record. The most famous image of the cathedral is John Constable's quintessentially English view of 1823. So, ignoring both our pressing medieval targets, Stu's gone all arty on us. I think what we've got here is the exact position that Constable produced this very famous painting of the cathedral from... Where his easel was. ..this exact spot. Just here? Yeah, and I need to treat it like an archaeological find and I need the coordinates of it. That's a major event in time. That's fantastic. Well, the reason I'm confident I've got it is because if you look at the drawing itself for a start, there's a very, very high degree of observation going on. Huge amount of detail on there, isn't there? It is. It's a really good architectural depiction, so you know he's drawing it with a certain amount of confidence that you can rely on. Then, if you look at features you can see on there, for instance, you see these finials on the western end of the cathedral here. You see them there? Oh, yeah, I see, yeah. If you walk too far that way, they don't make that pattern. If you go too far that way... Of course. ..different sort of patterns... If you go that way, they're all going to be in line, aren't they? Exactly. So, if you go to a map... And you can identify those elements on the map. Exactly. That's coffee, by the way. So, you plot those positions on the map. So, with the edge of the vestry and the buttress on the chapter house, you draw a line back through those two features. You can do the same with the corner of the chapter house and the central gable that's on that drawing. And the same from the line of the finials over the edge of the cloisters and draw that line back. And where those lines meet is exactly where he was drawing it from. Very clever. So, I think we need to know the exact position of this. Yeah, definitely. It's a find. It's a find. It's fantastic. It's an event. Brilliant. Yes, yes, it is. It's just that we weren't looking for it. And, unfortunately, Stuart's not the only one off on his own flight of fancy. After over 170 digs, Phil had to choose this one to take his first helicopter trip. I feel like a tourist. These are amazing. And it's all very exciting for someone who's lived for decades in the shadow of the cathedral. Hey, there's hope. Absolutely. It is. It is. Normally, I see the world from six feet off the ground. This just gives you such a wonderful perspective. And to look down, actually physically look down, like a bird does on a beautiful building like Salisbury Cathedral. This is absolutely a dream come true. Meanwhile, back down with the workers. Jackie said she'd have the rest of our bishop visible by lunchtime. Jackie, lunchtime. Can't see him. I've got about an eyebrow's worth up here. So, predictably, it's taking slightly longer than we originally thought. But, in the meantime, apparently Helen's discovered another body, although, looking down there, Helen, all I can see is rubble. That's all it looked like to me a few minutes ago. But, in removing all this rubble, first of all, we encountered this one, and then a little more furtling brought us to this, which is going on a bit. And who knows how many more there's going to be. But you think that we have got a burial rather than just a couple of bones that have been discarded? Well, even if it is just a couple of bones that have been discarded, I think it's going to be very significant and exciting because this looks like a grave cut in the corner of the chapel. And when we look on the plan, you can see, in the corner of the chapel here, here is the grave of Sir John Chaney, and he was the bishop's friend. But wasn't he supposed to have been removed into the cathedral in the 18th century? He was, yes, but these bones have certainly been moved. Now, maybe the workmen didn't do what they said, or maybe what they did more likely was they just took out the big chunky bones and left some here for us to find. Hang on. If they were incompetent or weren't telling the truth about the removal of this body, then the same could be true as far as the bishop's concerned. That's what I'm hoping, yeah. So could these be the remains of one of Salisbury's most influential bishops? Only time-consuming, intricate and painstaking excavation will tell us now. This is fantastic, Raksha. You've got a huge area open. I know. It's absolutely amazing. And it's looking really, really good. Thankfully, over at the bell tower, the archaeology is of the much more chunky variety, and just as importantly, it all seems to make sense. The most amazing thing about this is that the geophysics, the plan and the archaeology match up perfectly, almost too perfectly. Not what we'd expect at all. No! That must be a first, actually. It's a pleasant surprise, really. The other thing, of course, is we still don't have the actual foundation of it, do we, whether it was built on gravel, whether it was built on a raft of stones or quite what they did. The only problem with that, though, is on the radar, it could be as deep as 1.5 or 1.7 metres. So you've got at least six feet of material to dig through. I'd better not hold you up any longer. OK. I'll come back later. What's now clear is that the bell tower was built in the same way as the cathedral, with thick buttresses supporting its walls. And it's this simple but clever form of construction that's meant this extraordinarily heavy building, as much as 70,000 tonnes, has remained upright for almost 800 years, in spite of being built on a flood plain. It was part of a building revolution that transformed medieval architecture, a revolution that, for some reason, our buildings people feel is best explained through the medium of plastic building blocks. They developed from the Romans. They used heavy foundations, big walls that absorbed a lot of the stresses. But as they moved up, they wanted verticality. They wanted higher and thinner walls with more windows. But that meant more flex and probably problems. It's kind of funny cos they're building bricks, but in real life, they could have been real people under there. A lot of people died during cathedral construction, certainly, yeah. But then they did work out a method of actually sorting it out. If we look at this stage, it's the addition of the buttress, and that's allowing us to absorb a lot more of the forces and have a higher, thinner structure with more windows in it. It is intriguing that on this side, where you've got these buttresses tied into the wall, the wall still does wobble a bit. Not as much as over here, but it does wobble. Whereas on the other side, it's absolutely stable. Over the other side, we're using flying buttresses, with the next stage on as well. So is that technology used in Salisbury Cathedral? Not really. Most of the buttresses in Salisbury are the ordinary buttresses. Wasn't this place supposed to have been built on a marsh? Yes, it is. Very low-lying, very wet land. That might have been one of the reasons they used ordinary buttresses rather than these partly separate flying buttresses for differential settlement or something like that. But if we dig up the foundations of the bell tower, we might find some clues. Well, I'm learning stuff all the time about this fantastic site, thanks to plastic building blocks and historical records. But to be honest, the archaeology itself has been disappointingly slow. I am so frustrated by this. Yesterday evening, you said to me, this is incredibly exciting. If we can sort out what the foundations of the bell tower are, then we can work out how Salisbury Cathedral has remained standing, which nobody knows because the foundations are so shallow. And yet, nothing's happened. We're still in exactly the same place. You haven't dug the foundations. Come on, that's a little unfair. I can see where you're coming from, but it's taken a very long time to get it all clean, to get it to this state. How many archaeologists have we got here, Mick? I've never seen so many archaeologists on a time machine. We've got two big areas open. It's taken a long time to clean it all. So, in one way, I share your frustration in that it's taken a long time to get to this stage. But in both trenches now, we're poised at the point that we can start dismantling it to understand it, which is what Ian's doing over there, look. He's already cutting a section to get through to the foundation, to look at those foundations you're on about. If he's going to be doing that in order to get down to the foundations, it's going to take him a year. But elsewhere on site, Mick seems to be right, as usual. That is 44.83. Because over at the east end, Bridges Trench has reached the foundations of the chapel wall, and things are getting complicated. Crucially, what we have got coming up now is a construction cut. It comes up here in the section, and you can see it here running along here with this white mortar on this side and these old medieval roof tiles here, which are also part of that 1460 foundation. The material that you're on is earlier. Yeah. That's got to be 1460 or earlier. This is the foundation for the Beecham Chapel. It's cut into that. It's later. What you've got to do is carry on through those earlier layers. Let's try and get to the bottom of the foundations. Do you know how substantial the foundations of this chapel were? Or what was here before the chapel went up. Absolutely. This isn't what we expected. The records suggest the chapel, built by Bishop Beecham, was the first structure on this site, but clearly there was something here before that. Good-o. And this trench is throwing up other surprises as well. In this grave cut at lunchtime today, we thought we'd got the bones of the bishop's friend, but it turns out that we haven't. They were just bones that were found about eight years ago when archaeologists were digging here, and they collected them up and put them in there. A bit disappointing, but we're fairly philosophical about that. These things happen in archaeology. The exciting thing, though, is it now looks as though Phil's got a complete grave over here. That's right. I mean, you can see it quite clearly here. Got one edge there and one edge there. And what we think is that it's earlier than the foundations of the Beecham chapel. But we also want to concentrate our efforts on the deposits at this end here. What we want to do is dig a slot through there so we can see what the relationship is of the layers of this wall, our famous plinth, which we still don't know what it is, and also go right the way through to the main cathedral building itself. Meanwhile, Jackie's going to be armed with her burial. Yeah, Jackie, you've been digging that all day. Is it the bishop? I still can't tell you whether it's the bishop or not, and to be honest, I'm not absolutely sure. It's even a male. I think, actually, the answer's going to lie under here, and that's really just covering the delicate pelvic bones so I don't lean on them and break them. But that's going to tell us the sex of the individual. So we'll find out tomorrow. So, is it a man? Is it a woman? Is it a woman pretending to be a bishop? We'll find out tomorrow when we lift the bishop's seed tray. Beginning of day three here in the sumptuous surroundings of Salisbury Cathedral, and we've really got our work cut out today. See this enormous trench? We're going to puncture down a couple of metres in order to try and find out what the foundations are made of, because if we can, then we can conclude what the foundations of the cathedral itself are made of. Meanwhile, round the corner, Jackie's still excavating her bishop, although there's a slight technical problem. She now thinks it might be a woman. Jackie, what was it originally that made you think that that skeleton might be a woman? Well, the first view I had of the skull was of this sort of eyebrow region here, and in a male, that is usually quite pronounced, whereas in females, that tends to be much smoother. And the brow is quite flat, so I thought, oh, this really does look more feminine than masculine. As I've started to uncover more of the skull and I can see more of the features, there are some masculine features there. I actually doubt whether that's Bishop Beecham at all. Why do you say that? Well, the clue actually lies in this grave, the grave of John Chaney's, who was Beecham's friend. Now, he died after Bishop Beecham. Yeah. Now, do you see this black layer here? Yeah. This black layer went all the way over the tomb of John Chaney's. Therefore, that black layer is later than the tomb of John Chaney's. That skeleton, that grave, cuts through that black layer. So that grave is later than that black, which is later than John Chaney's, who died after Bishop Beecham. But this burial was made inside the chapel. This is not the coffin of an 18th century or a 19th century individual. So this grave was put in before this chapel was knocked down in the 18th century? It was put in before the chapel was knocked down, so this must be an important individual. And as far as we know, there's no record of them going in here, so it's still something of a mystery. But this burial's identity is only one of the mysteries in this trench. We've also uncovered evidence of foundations that are earlier than those of Beecham's chapel, and there's nothing in the comprehensive cathedral records to explain what they could belong to. Over in the bell tower trench, the pace, as always, seems to be much more civilised, but we are finding more evidence of just how impressive a structure it was, before it fell foul of the serious cathedral redesign of 1789. For the last couple of days, Richard, we've been concentrating mainly on this part of the bell tower, but there's this as well, isn't there? Is that that? It's the base of a rather large pier. You can see on the cross-section there, it goes all the way up to the timber belfry at the top of the tower. It's rather ugly, isn't it? Well, it's needed, very necessary, not just for the strength it gives to the tower, because bearing in mind it's 200ft high. On top of that, you've got the belfry, and the belfry is heavy in its own right, but it's also got the bells. And once those bells start ringing, you've got all sorts of forces and pressures swinging around, literally. Oh, I see, so it's not the sound of the bells, which always deafens you if you're up in a tower when they go off. It's actually just the weight going backwards and forwards. Yeah, and all that energy that's been created on the bell. And as we begin to reconstruct the bell tower, it's clear it's a wonder of design, medieval or any other age. But the inventiveness didn't end with the architecture, because the faithful were called to prayer by a bell rung by this, one of the world's earliest clocks. This is the medieval clock, but where are the face and hands on it? Well, of course, being a very early clock, it doesn't have a face and hands, because all a clock is is a mechanical device for ringing bells. That's what the name clock, cloche in French, or clocker in Latin. So that's all it is. And it was the church, of course, that started to regulate time. First of all with sundials, and then in the 13th century, when the mechanical clock was invented, every monastery and great church got one of these very quickly. We actually have a remarkable bit of documentary evidence that tells us in 1386 there was already a full-time clockkeeper, and this probably dates from a little bit before that. So this is ringing the bells at fairly regular intervals through the day, is it? This is ringing an hour bell, and, of course, originally it was in the bell tower, and that is to regulate the service times accurately, and that's what matters here. Back at our trench over the Beecham Chapel, we've just made a fantastic little find. It looks absolutely terrible to me. It looks really ghastly. I can't see a thing yet. Maybe put some liquid on it, some solvent, and let's just see. Oh, look, fantastic. Oh, look at that. No, that's really... OK, I'll take it back. Oh, look, there's a cross! Look at that. It's a cross. It is a cross. That's extraordinary. Golly, I see what you mean now. You're right, it isn't in bad nick. It's not. It's not at all. Look, you've got that circle, you've got letters all around the outside. This coin is the first of its kind ever to be discovered in Britain. It's a 15th-century quatrino from Ancona in the Papal Territories of central Italy. Maybe it's been dropped by a foreign craftsman working on the chapel or the cathedral, maybe something like a mason, you never know. So is this the edge of the grave? It could well be, couldn't it? And as we get to grips with the dating sequence of the trench, it's becoming clear that most of the graves we're uncovering form part of a burial ground that was here before the chapel was built in the 1460s. But there's still our mysterious body that was buried here long after Beauchamp was interred here. You're into the pelvis area now, Jackie. Any indication of what the sex might have been? In a female, the pelvis is opened up, so it's broadened out, so that angle would be quite broad, whereas in the male, it would be fairly tight and shallow, and that's looking quite a sharp angle, which suggests it's more likely to be male than female. Any idea about the age? Well, it's certainly not a spring chicken. There are some little bony changes down the spine where you've got osteophytes, little new bone growth around the margins of the vertebrae. So the suggestion is we've got somebody at least who's over 40. So not a woman, and categorically not the 60-year-old bishop. But the question remains, who was important enough to be buried in the Beauchamp family chapel but mysterious enough not to be entered in the official cathedral records? There are only four known burials here. But our grave, it seems, is somewhere around here. It has got to post-date John Cheney's grave, and I did wonder whether one could say with any confidence whether this grave ought to be before the Reformation. Extremely likely, because this was abolished in 1548. And it's important also that we think about the fact that it's family, because this is a chapel that is essentially a family chapel. Yes, so all we need to do is go and look through the family tree and find out who died in that 39-year slice between 1509 and 1548. In theory, it ought to be quite simple. I hope so. It's a tough challenge when you've barely half a day left. For the last two days, we've been marvelling over how straightforward the archaeology in this trench is. Well, at least that's what we thought. What's gone wrong, Raksha? Matt's just gone and found a wall that we never knew even existed. This wall running along here. And the other interesting thing is, is the floor layers, they seal the wall, and this foundation is cutting into it. Hang on, doesn't that mean that that wall is earlier than the bell tower? Yes, it is. On what was supposedly a greenfield site? Yep. What does that mean, Rich? I don't know. It shouldn't be there. If that wasn't bad enough, what about where Ian is? Ian, you were going to go right down as far as the base of the foundations, weren't you, until you came to the natural? Yep. What about those two stones in the corner of your trench? They appear to be two ashlar blocks which are underneath this floor with herringbone tooling on them. What would herringbone tooling say to you? It looks early, and you're probably talking Norman or earlier. When you say earlier, so it could even be Saxon? Possibly. I bet you're glad it's you who's got to interpret what's happening here. I'm loving it, yes. This is the last thing we expected. And if that wasn't enough, the archaeologists are now getting very hot under the collar around at the east end, where they think we may be about to rewrite the history of Salisbury Cathedral. Where we have the problem is this whacking great chalk foundation... Absolutely. ..which literally dominates our entire trench. The seriously big question is to take that chalk foundation and the buttress and say which is earlier than the other. And as far as we can see, they pretty much butt up together. Do they butt up? I don't agree with that. No, they don't look as if they butt up to me. You can see that the flint foundation of the buttress appears to overlie this big chalk raft, which means, stratigraphically, it has to be later than... What it appears to do doesn't prove that that actually is what it does. But with just a few hours left, this is only one of all sorts of problems that we've got to solve. That response there, it matches exactly with what you've got. Including the mysterious building under the bell tower. We weren't looking for walls under some alignments. Never mind Helen and Elaine trying to discover the identity of the interloping burial. Moving history. While Stuart tries to untangle the complex stratigraphy of the chapel trench. I may once have felt that things were proceeding a bit slowly on this fantastic site. I now feel we're flying by the seat of our pants. Guys, for the first time, I've put all the evidence we've got. Now everything is fairly, fairly tied down. That's brilliant. So, what exactly is this chalk foundation? Well, the most obvious solution is that this behind us here, I think Beecham himself, what he was perhaps planning to do was to get rid of this outdated, it was now 200 years or more old, and build an even grander east end. And so what he was doing was building a new foundation, which we've uncovered here, for a completely new building, and then for some reason, we don't know why, they stopped. And packed it in and said, OK, we don't want this any more, we're just going to have my Chancery Chapel on the spot. And this is the first indication we've ever had... Exactly. ..that this ever could have happened. Yeah, this is something completely new, and it adds another dimension to the architectural history of the cathedral. This is really incredible, an historic discovery. In the mid-1440s, a huge chalk raft was laid out across this whole area. It would seem this was the first stage of an ambitious and expensive plan by Bishop Beecham to build an entire new east end, probably to honour St Osmond, Salisbury's patron saint. It's a grand plan that would have transformed this famous aspect of the cathedral, although we can only guess how, but for some reason it never happened, and Beecham instead used the space for his own private chapel. Even then he didn't skimp and built a spectacular memorial to himself, with his tomb taking centre stage in a highly Gothic and intricately designed interior. And over at the bell tower trench, we've also at last cracked the increasingly complex archaeology. If you were a bell ringer in the Middle Ages, you would have come in through a big door here, you would have walked across this floor here, it would have been higher than it is now, but all the stones have been robbed out. Until you came to another wooden doorway here, which you open, probably in like that, you come into a lobby, you can see the ghost of it on the ground still, although all the stones of the wall have been robbed out. You then come to a stair, once again that's been robbed away, you walk along it like that, and then you get to the first step of the spiral staircase to take you up to the bell. You can see how the masons have drawn some lines here to line up the staircase, and off you go, round and round, right up as far as you want to. So that is simple, but this half of the trench has been a complete pig, hasn't it, mate? Yeah, it has been. I think we understand it now. Come on then, tell me the story. Well, you saw this wall earlier that's underneath the tower. Yeah. There are two possibilities for this, we think. One is, although we talk about this as a greenfield site, that doesn't mean that people aren't using it, aren't living round here, so it might be something to do with the settlements around here. But much more likely, Tim, is that this is something to do with a huge cathedral building project, isn't it? Absolutely, and I think it's very clear that's what it is now, because it's quite a narrow wall, it's a rough building, and it's very thin, so it probably had a wooden sill beam on top of it. As I say, it's almost certainly timber frame. Exactly. We probably ought to be thinking of a timber shed, you know. Do we know which is the outside and which is the inside? Well, we think we might, don't we? Yes, because what we seem to have here are large numbers of fragments of Purbeck marble. It is all right if I come in here, is it? Yeah, yeah. So this is the marble, is it? That's right. Quite a lot of these pieces here are broken-off bits of Purbeck marble which were being worked in vast quantities for this cathedral. So you think that this was some kind of workman's workshop... Yeah. ..which was used during the building of that, then when that was finished, they demolished it... That's right. Absolutely. This is a fantastic find. Actual evidence of the craftsmen who would have toiled for decades in workshops like this one to build the grand monument that still stands today. And yet we still haven't finished with this trench. What about over in this little sondage? We've got a couple of stones here too. Do you think they're also debris from the original building of the cathedral? As well as the big building project here, they're dismantling the Norman cathedral up at Old Sarum and they're bringing material down from it and reusing it in this building project. Yeah. And that has been there since the 10th century. Ah! So that could explain why we've got such old markings on it. They could be early Norman. They could even be before 1066. Probably Norman. I'll go for Norman. OK, but the real reason that we put this sondage in in the first place before we were distracted by this earlier wall was because we wanted to find out how they had built these foundations because that might give us a clue to how they built the foundations here. Have we learnt anything? We've learnt a great deal. We can now see very clearly indeed how this foundation goes right down onto that wonderful gravel bed. The bottom of the foundation is there, sitting on the gravel, and the water table is there as well. So it's exactly the bottom of everything here. Richard, are you convinced that they could have used exactly the technique that we can see in this trench in order to build that massive building? Perfectly happy. It's bearing in mind that this thing's 200ft in total but the first 80ft or so is masonry, the same height roughly as the cathedral. So in relative terms, this is taking as much weight as over there. So the medieval architects knew that this flood plain contained a natural gravel island. It was sturdy enough to support the bell tower and cathedral, even though the depth and size of their foundations were a mere fraction of the colossal structures they held up. But I just can't help feeling slightly hacked off with the 1780s redevelopment that robbed Salisbury of this fantastic example of their craft. It would look breathtaking today. But even now, at the end of a monumental dig, there's still one final question to answer. Well, we know now, don't we, where Bishop Beecham was buried. He was buried here and then was disinterred and laid to rest in the cathedral. But that begs the question, who is this? I know, we had such a problem, because we were looking for somebody of relatively low status. He had no monument, he had no elaborate coffin fittings, he had no grave lining, nothing like that, and yet he was buried in the Beecham's Chantry Chapel, so he must have been one of the family. The thing is, though, that when we went back to the family trees, we found that line after line of the Beecham family went extinct, so we had a real problem. Yes, we were looking at them, and as a line would go extinct, they would say, died without issue, died without any children, died without issue. And then we got to Bishop Beecham's brother's son, so, in other words, his nephew, who died without legitimate issue. Now, that means, that suggests, that this might just very possibly be Bishop Beecham's great nephew. And so our best guess is that this is the last resting place of Anthony, illegitimate son of Lord Richard Beecham. The cathedral will now recover and preserve this burial here, with the newly found knowledge of his link to one of Salisbury Cathedral's most ambitious and powerful bishops. So this chap is the last of the Beechams.