The Massacre In The Cellar | Time Team (English Civil War Documentary) | Timeline

This is Hopton Castle, scene of one of the bloodiest and most notorious sieges of the English Civil War. Time Team have been asked to see if we can find out what it looked like during those dark days, and also to put some ghosts at rest. Because somewhere around here lie the castle's defenders, who after they surrendered were brutally murdered and thrown in a ditch. Or so the local story goes, and over the next three days we'll try and find out what really happened. The mysterious ruins of Hopton Castle still bear the scars of a tragic past. 400 years ago this fortress was torn apart by a Civil War siege. The small band of defenders inside, who were loyal to Parliament, gave their lives defending it against an army of King Charles I. Today only the tower survives as witness to their heroic last stand, and nobody's got any idea what the rest of this castle looked like. So that's where we come in. We've been invited here by the local preservation society to try to find out, and maybe to solve a little mystery along the way. Richard, you're our castle's expert, and you want us not only to sort out what the castle looked like during the Civil War, but to address the issue of a war crime. Indeed, yes, because not only is it a fantastic site, it's got a fantastic story with the Civil War siege and these brave garrison holding out against the Royalists for several weeks before finally surrendering, and then being rather brutally murdered. Helen, you're particularly excited about this site, aren't you? I am, because it's got this fantastic historical account. We've got a description of what went on, written by the garrison commander, the chap who was in charge of defending this place. And it gives lots of details of the buildings that were here, but it is rather one-sided, obviously, it's only his account. And it's a really fantastic opportunity for archaeology to find out how much of this is true. Neil, you're the boss over the next three days, how are we going to tackle this site? Very carefully. This is a very sensitive site, Tony. Not only is it a scheduled monument, a nationally important archaeological site, it's also potentially the site of a mass grave. Yeah, I understand we have to be sensitive, but that doesn't mean we're going to ignore the bodies, does it? No, but it's not a grave chase, Tony. What I want to do is actually use the archaeological evidence to see how reliable is this historical site? Can we get traces of the actual siege? How truthful is the history? Most of what we know about the siege of Hopton comes from a man called Colonel Samuel Moore, the garrison commander. He wrote it all down in his journal, and it reads like a novel. He says that the royalists attacked the outnumbered defenders three times, losing hundreds of men. It was only when the attackers had the parliamentarians cornered in the tower that they finally gave up. And instead of showing mercy, the royalist commander put everyone except Colonel Moore to the sword. But did it really happen the way he said it did? Well, first thing first, and that is to find out what this place looked like. So Geofiz get to work looking for buildings. Six then. Okay, thanks. And Stuart, our landscape investigator, starts hunting for the castle's ramparts. From its shape, we suspect our Civil War castle may be medieval in origin. It fits the classic model of a motton bailey, which is basically a big tower on a mound with a defensive ring below it. Suppose we start a trench somewhere about there. It means Phil and Bill, the local English heritage inspector, can make an educated guess where the outer wall might be. This wall, which we think might be part of the original medieval castle and might have been refurbished in the Civil War, down into what we think might have been part of the original backfield ditch, and then up onto this bank, which is probably going to be part of the defences or the assault in the Civil War. Yes? Yes. That's what you call a turf, that is. That's axe mixture, that is, Faye. Oh, he does love his dirt, doesn't he? So Phil's trench goes in looking for the moat and ramparts to help us work out the original shape of the castle. But it's also our first opportunity to test the accuracy of Colonel Moore's historical account of the siege. One of the most exciting things about this site is that it's a battlefield as well as a castle. If we can find the outer wall and signs of combat, can we identify where Moore said the Royalists first attacked? The Civil War divided communities between King and Parliament, and Hopton was right in the firing line. So what more do we know about the men who fought here? They were the only garrison, the only stronghold held for Parliament throughout the region. All the other strongholds, if you look at this map, there are more than 20 of them, were held for the King. You can see, here's Hopton, and it's Parliamentarian, and there's just Brampton Bryant to the south over the Herefordshire border that's Parliamentarian as well. And everywhere else is Royalist, so they were a very isolated group, and they probably felt very isolated and lonely. So there was a lot of tension going on here even before the massacre started? Yes, huge amounts of tension, and we have to remember that people were just terrified of neighbours that they'd lived side by side with for years. Because of the issue of religion, which became a kind of emergent theme in the war, people were just terrified that a Catholic Royalist army was about to attack. So my bet is these guys were probably in the castle because they thought it was the safest place to be. So Hopton was the Civil War equivalent of the Alamo. Alone and with no sign of relief, for three weeks the 30-odd men behind these walls held out against hundreds of Royalist soldiers. And over in his trench, Phil thinks he may have found the first evidence of fighting. We've got a musket ball. It's a bit splattered, but it's definitely a musket ball. But is it Civil War? I don't know, but given the site that we're on, I bet it is. So we're in the right period, but are we going to find the bloke who was on the other end of this? We'll know later. Welcome back to Hopton in Shropshire, where we're trying to uncover the secrets of the Civil War siege, which practically destroyed the castle behind me, and perhaps even find the remains of the murdered garrison, who we think lie somewhere down here. The story of Hopton's destruction and the brutal massacre of the garrison became famous, well notorious, during the Civil War. But 400 years on, nobody knows how truthful our surviving account of the battle is, or even what the castle looked like. Phil, how are you getting on? We're not doing too badly, Neil. Phil's looking for the old castle wall and the moat, where we think we might find traces of the first attack. This bank here was what we thought originally might be part of the medieval castle defences. Well, we've gone down through it and we're getting masses and masses of brick, but more importantly, we're beginning to get pottery too. You see here, I mean, here's the base of a pot, and here's another piece of pot, little tiny handle. But I mean, this stuff is clearly not medieval. And when you say bank, are we actually uncovering the foundations of a wall? Is that where that big stone is? Ah, but there's no other stones around it sort of keyed into it to make it into a wall. Now what it seems to be is literally a bank, just muck that's been thrown up, mixed up with rubble and dirt. That's the sort of thing you can really throw up in a hurry if you knew it could be undersea. Well, exactly. I mean, it may in the end make us have to rethink about what a lot of these banks are around here. It looks as though this one might not be medieval. Phil's already got his suspicions that the shape of this castle might be slightly different to what we anticipated. Still, if his rampart is from the Civil War, does it fit into the history? 26th of February is the first attack. Over the next few days, Field Marshal Helen Geek is going to do a spot of war gaming. Now there's a body of foot who approached the out wall. Along with Richard, our castle's expert, she's going to compare Colonel Moore's account of the battle with what we find in our trenches. Let's put some more on. Okay. But it's what happened after the siege that really intrigues me. So the guys from the garrison who died could be over there where they're geophysing, or they could be somewhere completely different. It's just pot luck whether we find them or not. Yes. From the first account of Colonel Moore, we really don't have any idea. I don't think he knows where they were put. He just says that they were all killed. But then we've got another account from this chap called Primus Davis. Now he was part of the garrison at Brampton Castle, not far away, so it's possible that he would have known. And he says that they were driven into a cellar unfinished wherein was stinking water, the house being on fire over them, when every man of them presently massacred. And he implies that that's where they're left. How trustworthy do you think that is, or could it just be a bit of propaganda? Well I don't know. It certainly makes its way into propaganda because a few weeks later, it only takes a few weeks, we get propaganda, definite propaganda, in these newspapers. Now I've got one here. Here we are. They caused a deep pit to be digged, and throwing them in all together they buried some alive. Is there anything that you've read in any of the documents that could narrow down the search for us? Yeah I think so. I mean the first one says it's a cellar. Now we ought to be able to find a cellar with geophysics and it would be very recognisable if we do encounter it. That's one good hypothesis that we can test, that they might be in a cellar. The second one is that all the sources concur in saying that they're somewhere near water, mud or water, and so I think that we could go for anywhere that's waterlogged or withstanding water and have a look around there and see what we can find. So if we can trust the documents, the murdered men could be buried in one of two places, a damp cellar or a muddy ditch. Well John's been busy doing geophys and he thinks he might have picked up a good candidate for a cellar not far from the tower. John, you've done it in a bailey, what's it show? It's pretty good, we've done mag and res and I think we're starting to see clear buildings inside. Look at the magnetics to start with, so the white line is showing what I think is a big structure there and the black on the inside it's either midden deposits, areas of burning. In the resistance you can also see that the shadow outline of buildings. Now what I think we've got in front of us here, you can see it clearly in the earthworks as well, but we've got a wall going underneath that hawthorn bush. I think it actually turns through a right angle and comes back underneath our feet. So we've got to put a trench in here haven't we? Absolutely, I would have thought perhaps on this side, if we can dig down here, try and expose the wall on this side, see if it matches the wall on that side. Is it a single structure? And of course the key thing is what date is it? Our second trench goes in to see if we've got a cellar. So that's one possibility for the mass grave, but what about the muddy ditch? I'd assumed that our whole team were over here trying to sort out the castle until I saw this little head bobbing up and down behind these rather nasty nettles. Henry what are you doing? I am coring the bottom of the moat stitch. Which means? Well basically, although we're stood right in this big ditch here, it was once, we assume, much much deeper. Once I get to the bottom with the auger, when I look at the soil down there, I will be able to tell whether it's flowing water through there or whether it's still water or whether it's just a muddy hole. Some of the documents say the dead bodies were found in a muddy pit. Right. You could be giving us some evidence couldn't you? Yeah, this should tell part of that story yeah. But we're not all chasing bodies. Phil's doggedly digging away trying to work out the shape of the castle. He's changed his tune from this morning, he now reckons we do have a wall, it's just underneath the earth bank he found earlier. But he's also got signs of serious destruction which, fingers crossed, might match our account of the battle. The thing is that this bank sits on top of this incredible burning layer. It's actually on top of the burning layer? Well look at it, look at it, look at that. Yeah. The burning is running underneath, so the construction of that bank is later than that burning. You know, I just, I do wonder what the hell all this burning is though. Well we know the buildings were burnt during the siege. Oh exactly, you see, it does make you wonder. End of day one and as you can see our trenches are really coming along now. We've got quite a lot of evidence of structures, we've got some really interesting stones, for instance down there, but are we in the Civil War? Yeah we are Tony, look, we've got this lovely 17th century token which has been in use exactly at the right time for the Civil War, and even better than that we've got this piece of lead, doesn't look much does it, but this is actually a musket ball that's been fired at such velocity that it's hit a structure and it's splattered flat, so it's clear evidence of warfare and fighting in this area. And what can we tell about these structures? Well we've got a stone wall over there and probably another one coming through here, so I guess we've got a sort of medieval building, but where's Faye's digging? Layers are diving down and down and we haven't found the floor yet. Could that be a cellar? I think it has to be because we're just so far below the ground level. Helen's documents say that the bodies of the garrison were found either in a muddy ditch or in a cellar. Could that be the cellar? We'll find out tomorrow. Beginning of day two here at Hopton Castle in Shropshire where we're looking for evidence of the English Civil War and in particular of the garrison that was slaughtered here. I thought the archaeology would be pretty straightforward, but the more we dig the more and more confusing it appears to be. Gentlemen, I assumed that what we were going to get was a big moat all the way around it and then a solid wall to protect the castle. You told me you thought there would be a big empty cellar. We don't seem to have any of those things. I absolutely agree. I thought there was going to be a large wall around the outside because how else could this place have withstood siege for a couple of weeks? So we put a trench in here and we asked people to look for two things, the stone curtain wall and the large moat ditch. And then I've ridden them. That is where you went profoundly wrong, Tony. You assumed. You assumed far too much. When we get down to the archaeology, the archaeology is different but it is just as exciting. In here we don't actually have a massive curtain wall but we do have a building and that building must have had a wall that faced out over here which would have acted as a defensive curtain. Look, I'm lashed by your criticism about my assumptions. Nevertheless, surely it would have to be a wall that was more solid than one that had got little houses all the way around it. I tell you what, if you've got a pack of defenders with muskets behind that wall peppering you with musket shots, that is a defensive wall. Okay, that's put me in my place. The shape of this castle is turning out to be rather different from the simple one we imagined. Sorry, I imagined. It looks like by the time of the Civil War, the inner bailey was surrounded by a small and rather unimpressive wall and instead of a moat, it had earthworks and at the centre of it could be a very large building. It looks like we're coming on to a sort of different level here. We've been through this incredibly loose compacted brick deposit which I guess is what, do you think the walls of the building? Neil and Bill are digging a deep cellar which we hope might contain the bodies of the garrison but instead they've got loads of rubble. We're just coming on to these which I guess what, are they roofing slates? They look like roof don't they? So if you've got roofing deposit, if the building was going to collapse in, first of all I guess the roof would fall in and then the walls coming over the top of it. So that would suggest that we're not too far off the bottom of the cellar, potentially the floor level. The brick and the roof tiles clearly belong to a high status building. It might match something called the brick dwelling house in the sources. Still it's a little frustrating that we haven't found anything from the massacre itself and Henry's survey of the moat hasn't got any signs of a mass grave there either. So it's probably time to ask the question I perhaps should have asked yesterday. Can we be sure that the bodies are still here? Wouldn't the relatives of the people who've been killed creep here afterwards, take the bodies away and give them a proper burial which would mean that we wouldn't be able to find them here all these hundred years later? Well not really because actually if you look at the list which we're lucky enough to have of the defenders of Hopton Castle you'll notice an enormous number of very Welsh sounding names like Evans, Thomas, Jones and some of them actually have this W after their name which probably designates that they actually were from Wales and not local Welsh people. I think all of that suggests that the family would find it pretty difficult to get here from Wales to rebury their dead. It's never occurred to us until now that many of the defenders like David Evans and Richard Jones might not be local. Under attack and a long way from home it makes you realise how isolated and afraid they must have been and over in his trench Phil thinks he can now tell the first part of their story. I think in 1644 in this spot there was a wall. This is the wall and I mean whether or not there was a complete building there I don't know or whether that building was ruinous I don't know but there was certainly a wall here and now I think in the early part of the campaign the initial onslaught there was a serious fight here and I think that it was it was very very hard fought and I think there was much burning and devastation because you see we've got masses of areas of intense burning you see all that black that charcoal that's lying directly on this wall then this comes right the way across and we can actually pick it up on this side here. I think it was a pretty vicious fight because we actually have the first possible evidence of conflict our human tooth and I sort of kind of imagine that there was this vicious fight between the cavaliers and the roundheads and that maybe it got hand to hand and that maybe somebody took a musket and took a swing at some bloke and knocked his tooth out and I think once the the the royalists had gone away to restock and replenish their forces the parliamentarians thought what are we going to do about it let's strengthen our defences and so they'd have got their picks and shovels and they would have stood where I am and they'd have done that and they would have been building the bank there the bank there and the bank there and I think these three banks are very clearly situated to fill the gap between the main ditch of the castle there and the stream. Isn't it ironic that for the last day and a half you've been doing exactly what those blokes were doing all those years ago? I know but thankfully I wasn't expecting anybody to come through that field aiming to get me. So that's great news our first direct link with the In his journal Colonel Moore says that after the initial assault his men raced to build works temporary defences and our earthworks also give us a better idea of the shape of the castle it's much bigger and more complicated than we thought and it means we need to make a few changes to our battle map we need a lot more soggy paper because we've got lots of other banks to to build up as well. General Stuart Ainsworth has identified more earthworks-like fills all around the site and he's looking for where the second attack happened when the royalists actually got into the castle. Moore says hundreds of invaders broke through a burnt-out building only to find themselves trapped and shot to pieces but can we take his word for it? Is it possible that so few defenders could kill so many men? Having wrapped up early Phil's going to find out. Randy? Hello. I've got you a recruit. Oh well done. Your piece of string's on fire by the way. It's meant to be. Oh sorry. It's called slow match. This is a matchlock musket otherwise it doesn't go off bang. Oh I said we need this. So are you gonna get him to fire a gun? That's the idea. Bring it down. Firing and reloading a musket was a complicated and time-consuming business. Little bit of gunpowder in there. I'm gonna close the pan, blow off and clear off the loose poles. Which means you don't get sparks landing when you're loading and the gun can't go off early. That's the idea. Phil don't get your face quite so close. Then I'm gonna cock the match. I'll present. I'll open the pan and I'll squeeze the trigger. Right Phil show us how it's done properly. I think I'll leave him to it for a bit. Lunchtime on day two and with the layout of the castle changing we're now having a long hard think about our brick building in the middle of it. I know you don't usually like dating these things. I don't know. So what am I going to be able to press you to say about it? Surprisingly I think I could be quite happy in dating this particular brick. Oh really? Nothing happened at this castle site after the civil war as far as we can tell. That's true. This is a typical 17th century handmade brick so we can put it into the first half of the 17th century. Can't be after 1644. Can't be after 1644. Also in Shropshire we've got plenty of timber framed and stone buildings. Brick is a very late arrival. It's not until the middle of the 17th century where they become common in the highest status building. So I'd be quite happy to date that between about 1600 and 1640. Oddly it's starting to look like we've got a really rather grand 17th century house slap bang in the most strategic part of the castle and it seems to have been destroyed in the civil war siege. Can you see that really intense charcoal area there? I always wonder if that's like a burnt beam that's perhaps collapsed down. The burning also means we haven't given up hope of finding a mass grave here. We know that one account says the men were executed in the cellar of a burning building. This is beginning to be more like one of those crime scene investigation shows than a time team. Bit of gold. But then as is always the case on Time Team, something turns up which you don't expect. I heard some bleeping and the words gold. We've got a gold hammered coin. Oh wow. And that came out from here? Literally out the spoil from the bottom of this trench. It's the extraordinary thing about gold that when it does come out it just shines straight away doesn't it? Yes it was put there yesterday. Look at your face. You're quite pleased aren't you? Helen, could you come and have a look at this gold coin? Oh my goodness how extraordinary. That says Jacob, that's James and well I think that that is James V of Scotland. And when was James V of Scotland? Well he's around Flodden isn't he? So that's like the beginning of the 16th century. The intriguing thing is what's a gold coin doing in the bottom of our cellar? Is that where it came from? Yeah. That is fantastic. We've got to find out how long this circulated for. Yeah. That is just just amazing. Helen's got to double check the date but could this gold coin have been dropped by one of the garrison or even by their killers? It's easy to imagine losing the odd coin in the heat of the battle, especially if you're a bumbling musketeer like Phil Harding. We're going to cast off and we're going to blow off. Right. Bring it up. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Still blowing. Right yeah. Professional soldiers could fire up to three shots per minute. How will Phil do? We blow on the match. Right. Nothing's much happening. Right. Present. Open your fan. Give. Fire. Cool. Stone of crows. How was that? How was it? Well it was a bit of a surprise when it all went bang you know. I'll tell you what, if it had taken the round heads that long to load the siege would never have ended. Ah yeah but I would have been behind the wall you see. I'm in a safer position behind the wall. That's where I'd have been. It does show you how exposed those soldiers were though doesn't it? Absolutely but actually it's a very common sense sort of pattern of movements. You could do it. You would get there eventually. Even a common old agricultural type like me perhaps. Yeah I think it might take you some time. In the hands of trained soldiers and at close quarters muskets were deadly. It makes Moore's claim to have shot and killed hundreds of royalists at the breach sound much more plausible. But where did this happen? Our armchair generals are playing toy soldiers to find out. So they're through the breach. Most of the 200 so it's at least 100. They're within the breach but not within our works but as in a pinfold in the circumference of the burnt lodging. What is a pinfold? It's basically a very large sheep pen. It's for sorting out sheep. So they're caught in a trap. Yeah they can't move. Yeah so do you know where that first breach in the wall happens? I have very strong suspicions Helen it's in this area down here. Anybody coming through this narrow gap in the breach will be trapped. They can be fired down from there from there. They're literally trapped like sheep in a sheep pen. If Stuart's right then somewhere here should be a range of buildings which resemble a sheep pen. As well as giving us a direct link to the history if we do have structures here they'd make this castle far larger than we first thought. We're going to have to ponder this one over a few beers tonight. But before we can down tools and raise glasses. Whoa my goodness. We've got our hands full with yet another remarkable find from the cellar. I think that's a cannonball. In fact I'd put even money on that being a cannonball and that's about a nine pounder. Isn't that fantastic? Further analysis reveals that cannonball does indeed weigh nine pounds. The size of ammunition fired by a gun called a demikulverin. Moore's account says at least one of these was used by the royalists to pound the castle in their third most deadly attack. So could this mean we're close to the end of the siege? Do you feel how heavy that is Tony? Just that little bit of it is some weight isn't it? Imagine that coming crashing in through the walls and landing right in the bottom of the cellar. I'm in no doubt now that this is the brick dwelling house referred to in the siege accounts and what we know is that the defenders set fire to it to stop the royalists using it. So I guess what we've got here is evidence of burnt timbers being fired on with ordnance. Surely this now locks us in the history and the archaeology together. But there's such a little bit of it that's what's so frustrating. Yeah I really love to see some more of this. I think we should open up the trench a bit further. What I'd like to see is more the base of the cellar because it's got these cannonballs, got nice finds, pottery. Also how big is this house? Is it just a cellar or are the rooms on either side? So really you know with a day to go all the effort in here I would think tomorrow. It's been a really exciting day too for us particularly as far as the finds are concerned including our wonderful gold coin which we now know was called a quarter laurel. It was worth two weeks wages for an ordinary soldier and we've got a very precise date for it now. It's 1623 to 1624. But tomorrow we come to the really exciting part of the story. The final attack on the castle which led to the supposed massacre of the people inside it. Let's hope tomorrow we can really find out what actually happened. Although Phil already knows how the cavaliers got into the castle. Don't you Phil? Too right I do. Beginning of day three here at Hopton Castle in Shropshire where we're investigating the bloody siege that took place right here during the English Civil War and throughout our final day we're going to be concentrating on this area here particularly this trench where yesterday we got all those lovely finds including the beautiful gold coin and the cannonball. But just because we got a lot of lovely stuff out of here yesterday Neil, does that really justify us using so much of our labour on this one little spot? It's not just this one spot Tony. We're looking at this large and impressive building. We've got several trenches open. Ian's looking at the other side of the cellar over there and rooms beyond that. Open the new trench there looking for rooms that side of the cellar and Matt's opened up one behind us. Except that on the very first day your brief to us Richard was nothing to do with this specific building. It was what does the castle look like throughout the English Civil War? Have we got anywhere near approaching that? I think we already have. We've already investigated not just this building but a lot of the other lumps and bumps around the site so we know where other buildings were. The landscape now makes more sense to put the whole thing into its context so I'm quite happy we know a heck of a lot more of this place now than we did on day one. Trust me Tony, this trench here will give us the best evidence for the siege. Trust me Tony. Now where have I heard that one before? Neil's convinced that our brick dwelling house with its cellar can tell us a lot of what we set out to discover and another link with the history books. But even though we've got less than a day left we're still doing geophys. Yesterday Stuart wanted us to look at the other end of our site. Not only does he think there could be more buildings here, he thinks it could be where the royalists first broke into the castle. What a beautiful spot you've brought me to get a lovely view of the castle here but there's nothing here. Ah there is something here though because if you look in this area over here Phil there are lots of lumps and bumps that suggest there might have been buildings here and walls that there were things blocking this end up here. And for once I agree with Stuart. I'll make note of that. Look at the resistance results. The black, the high resistance showing brick built structures, maybe stone built structures, more ephemeral responses, maybe timber and we've got a possible courtyard here with buildings set round and that one in particular interests me because it's got really strong magnetic responses. Well we've got to put in a trench and have a look. Stuart thinks this could be the spot where the attacking royalists were trapped losing hundreds of men as the defenders fired from both sides. The records talk of a range of buildings which they described rather curiously as looking like a sheep pen but take a closer look at the c-shape on the geophys. Could this be it? One thing's for sure this is no longer your typical castle. We've always assumed Hopton is a medieval modern bailey style fortress thanks to the 14th century tower but is this crumbling and frankly rather dangerous structure all that it appears to be? Richard is it going to fall down? It would have done if it's just left as it is at the moment. It does look in a terrible state though doesn't it? It's awful inside. You know what strikes me about it is that it looks very old-fashioned because it looks almost like one of those old Norman castles from 100 or even 200 years previously. It's one of a handful of castles in this area that look far older than they actually are. All built after the end of the worst of the Welsh wars around 1300 and there's a possibility that it's a deliberate ploy if you like. They're saying to the Welsh look my great-granddad upset your great-granddad by building these Norman keeps we could do the same but at the same time they wanted their luxury so these are quite nicely appointed tower apartments if you like. But does that mean they weren't that good at defense? They're not that defendable because although they look great big thick walled things the actual walls are honeycomb with chambers and window apertures and that sort of thing so they're not that strong. So if Hopton wasn't much of a war machine when it was built in the medieval period it's now clear it was even less suited for battle by the time of the civil war. What's that there? Here yeah that's my wall. Matt's found the far end of our brick building and it isn't just a house it's a mansion. In fact it was so big the builders had to fill in the moat around the tower just to squeeze it into the bailey. By the time of the civil war the castle had expanded far beyond its medieval walls. To me this is looking more and more like a country house than a castle. We've got these huge great big roof slates coming up as well. And that's confirmed by Stuart's trench where Faye's picking up a range of timber buildings around a central courtyard. Stuart can we tell you some of the historical sources? Yeah and this matches exactly what we're anticipating here. There's a range of buildings possibly something called Richard Stuart's house which was burnt down during the civil war. There's a whole complex probably stables and other buildings in this area. But if you say it's burnt in the civil war Faye can we see any evidence of that? Ah well actually yes we can and that's where it gets really interesting. Over there on that surface we've actually got evidence of burning in the stones but we've also got some musket balls coming up which is just what we want. I mean this is terrific because this is the area within which the first siege the attackers actually got in and then got trapped and they literally got massacred against these buildings here and so this amongst all the excitement of the dirt and the archaeology it's kind of really poignant isn't it? This must be the spot where the garrison trapped and killed the first royalists to get into the castle and it's easy to see why. Stuck in no man's land with only smoking ruins around the courtyard for cover they would have been cut down just like Colonel Moore claims they were. The journal says that after their disaster in the courtyard the royalists changed tactics. They returned with more men, gave the garrison one last chance to surrender and this time they meant business. They bombard the outer wall of this castle with heavy cannon to try and make a breach in the wall. They're shooting at the outside wall from nine o'clock in the morning till five o'clock in the evening and they hit it with 96 shots by my maths that is one shot every five minutes which is an incredible amount of firepower. I mean in the end it was successful that they did make a breach in that wall and of course the defenders rushed up and tried to stop them getting through. It's at that point that the hand-to-hand fighting starts with the pikes and the muskets and the clubs and and they're doing that for two hours it must be absolutely horrendous. Stuart thinks the royalists bombarded the castle from the high ground breaking down the defences in the south and our analysis of the musket balls does suggest they were fired from some distance away raining down on the men cowering inside the brick building. Look what we've just found this is a lead musket ball which can be embedded into the brick. It's fantastic. It's flattened as it's hit the brick wall. It's actually still got bits of brick embedded in that side which is incredible. Our archaeology has now built up a terrifying picture of the final 48 hours of the defenders lives and it backs up Colonel Moore's journal in every detail. After being bombarded by constant fire with the attackers through the breach the defenders set the brick mansion on fire before fleeing to the tower. A terrifying sequence of events which we found in both the archaeology and the documents. They were now at the mercy of the royalist commander Sir Michael Woodhouse and Richard thinks he's worked out how he forced them to surrender. All I had to do is run up the bank and attack that. That looks like a door but it's actually a window opening. Now they're trapped on the top floor they can't do anything about people attacking the bottom of the castle. So this is another example of this building not really doing its job as a defence because it had a vulnerable window close to the ground. Yes because the window either side of the window the wall is only about that thick so it's dead easy to actually bash through. I think what we can see there is what was done during the civil war and that's what makes them give up because they think that they're going to lay explosives and they say it's better to surrender than to be blown up. Extraordinary isn't it to see something so vulnerable from all those years ago that led to such a terrifying end. It's ironic that the strongest looking part of the castle the tower was actually the weakest and everything we found over the past few days suggests that in both medieval times and during the civil war Hopton was more of a country house than a castle. It's turned our knowledge of this place on its head and explains why the defenders failed to hold on to it. But it also begs the question why did Moore and his men defend a hopeless cause? Why did Moore refuse to surrender when he had three opportunities to do so? It's difficult to explain. We can only think that he must have been inspired by religious fanaticism or by the belief that God would come to his aid or because he was terribly afraid of the Royalist army. He'd possibly been reading the newspapers as well and hearing these stories about the massacre of helpless prisoners and he possibly didn't trust the Royalist offer of quarter. What about the other side? Why did Woodhouse allow such a terrible atrocity to take place? Well that's the really difficult question to answer. Somehow we were off the map of chivalry and chivalry and honour did operate in most of these civil war encounters. There were rules that you could follow like table manners. The fact that the first offers of quarter were refused may have made him feel that they were off the map. But I suspect one of the accounts of the massacre says that Woodhouse left his men to themselves for three hours. It was normal Royalist behaviour but in this case they seem to have been particularly violently inspired and that might be the cause of the massacre. But evidence of that massacre continues to elude us. With no signs of a mass grave anywhere else we were praying that we'd find one at the bottom of the cellar. But alas as the day draws to a close we've got to admit defeat. You're kind of performing the last rites on this trench then aren't you Phil? So you're completely convinced that's natural are you? Well look here's the bottom of the wall. Yeah built right on top. Absolutely. I know I think this is a deposit that not even a parliamentarian or a Royalist ever saw. But while we haven't found any bodies we're pretty confident our cellar does match one description of where the men were said to have been killed. It's unfinished without any plaster and it's also at the bottom of a burning building. And what about it being full of stinking water? Well most intriguingly of all computer modelling suggests that our cellar was liable to flooding as well. Who knows perhaps this was their place of execution after all. After the battle was over Hopton was left a smoking ruin. The tower was badly damaged and fell into disrepair. For several weeks a small band of men had turned this country house into a small fortress and held out against overwhelming and terrifying odds. 400 years on we've pieced together their last stand and discovered the magnificent 17th century chamber block where they fought and may have died. This morning Neil you said to me Tony the excavation of this trench will unveil the story of this castle. Has it done that? Oh it has. The archaeology has worked out so well. What we've now found is this huge post-medieval cellar. It's about 20 metres long and above that you've got to imagine a two or three storey brick house and it's placed here to deliberately to replace that. That was old-fashioned old news. If you had money this is how you lived. Imagine chimneys, fancy windows, plastered ceilings. This was all mod cons. It is ironic that the new building should have been burnt down and the garrison retreat to the old one. Absolutely. At the time of the war forget the word castle. Hopton was a house and it was fighting was taking place in all sorts of places during the civil war not just on set piece battlefields not just stormy castles but everyday houses were being attacked and bloody murder was taking place at close quarters. It is frustrating isn't it that we didn't manage to find any evidence of the guys who died. It is but I guess it was always a long shot. We've only dug a tiny little fraction of the cellar. They're here somewhere. They'll stay there for generations to come. And in the meantime the story of their death remains a little bit of a mystery and maybe that's no bad thing. I think so.