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00:05the Holy Grail is one of the world's greatest mysteries a 2000 year old mystery this is the
00:14legendary cup from the Last Supper a cup used to collect the blood of Christ it's an object of
00:23power that people have searched for for centuries I want to explore the myths the mystery the history
00:31I'm going on my own Grail quest from Jerusalem to the Vatican there are a number of places that claim
00:43to have the Holy Grail but in Britain there's a long tradition that says it was brought here in
00:51in this series I'll be traveling across Britain from the chalk cliffs of the south coast to the
00:58hills of Scotland in search of the truth behind the legend these are fragments of the Church of
01:07the Holy Sepulchre really the objectives really were to recover the Holy Land Syria Lebanon Israel
01:15Palestine here we have the famous temple Coombe head believed to be Jesus Christ Radford did stumble
01:24upon something but he didn't realize he could have found the earliest church at last he could
01:29have well have done and he missed it and I'm meeting a man with an astonishing archaeological find I call
01:37it a grail bowl it certainly not an ordinary stonemasons drinking vessel it's containing something very
01:43holy whilst also radiating the power of those contents oh look at this this is fantastic it's like finding
01:51treasures within treasures
02:00so this is it Miles this is the bowl that has been found what do you think of it it's
02:05intriguing it's very intriguing
02:12last time I investigated the medieval order of the Knights Templar and their links to the Grail
02:18that's problem with the Templars you know they've become part of the Turin shroud story and they've
02:23become part of the Arthurian legend did they have the Holy Grail and now the Templar trail has led me
02:31to Scotland a land steeped in myth and legend I'm following a particular story about the Grail that it was
02:41brought here by the Knights Templar and buried under Roslyn Chapel a legend made popular by
02:48the best-selling book and film the da Vinci code but years before the da Vinci code was written a
02:57man
02:58called Andrew Sinclair set out to investigate this idea an author academic and filmmaker he directed
03:05under milk wood in 1972 with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton but Sinclair also had his own burning
03:14personal mission he wanted to find the Holy Grail in 1993 he led a private excavation beneath Roslyn Chapel
03:24hidden under its flagstones he claimed to have discovered a curious wooden bowl
03:32there are no knights of the Holy Grail down there in full armor but there was one thing
03:39a wooden bow left by some workmen of course if the Grail was in Roslyn Chapel it would be a
03:49wooden bow
03:50in his book the sword and the Grail he describes this bowl as a stonemason's drinking vessel
03:59Sinclair died in 2019 the bowl is now in the possession of his trusted friend Sean Williamson
04:07and he's agreed to show me this mysterious object
04:13Sean you've brought along this artifact for me to have a look at this has come from the Roslyn Chapel
04:19yes it certainly has 1993 it was discovered from the crypt I've been its custodian shall we say since
04:282019 when the last discoverer of this died my very good friend Dr. Andrew Sinclair do you want to have
04:38a look
04:38yes please yeah there we are okay I'm so excited to see this having heard about it
04:49having talked to you about it but it's a fairly basic object isn't it fairly crude what do you
04:56think it is I call it a grail bowl because it's certainly not an ordinary stonemason's drinking vessel it's
05:03not it's not really deep enough for that but it's it's had some kind of a purpose it's got holes
05:08drilled
05:09into it three holes yeah I think it's being used as a light or even perhaps to hold incense there's
05:16a
05:16patina on the surface here I don't know what that is as you say it does look like it's been
05:21suspended
05:21as a sensor maybe but is it usual to have a wooden sensor it's a curious object it's very curious
05:29and there
05:30was no more discovered down there it was out on its own so perhaps it's been part of some kind
05:36of a
05:37ritual you can imagine knights drinking from it or something like that so many possibilities from it
05:43being you know discarded by a stonemason who'd used it as a cup all the way through to it being
05:49something
05:49a little bit more mystical and mysterious but I do think that we can interrogate it and get it to
05:57yield
05:57up some of its secrets we can find out what the wood is we can find out the date of
06:03it and we might
06:04even be able to test some of these residues in it as well that would be great well I love
06:11a mystery
06:12and there's one sitting on the table in front of us absolutely
06:19this bowl is such an intriguing find it was apparently dug up from under Roslyn Chapel a
06:27place where legend says the holy grail could be buried it looks old certainly but how old
06:35there's never been any kind of analysis carried out on this artifact but I've enlisted the help of
06:41teams from Oxford University and Historic England using the latest scientific techniques I'm hoping
06:48that they'll help me to unravel this mystery legend has it that the Templars brought back holy relics
06:57from Jerusalem and the Middle East during the Crusades to understand why these relics were so
07:04important I'm heading to the National Museum of Scotland to look at one of their most precious
07:09objects Alice this is one of the treasures of the National Museum what is it it's an object that we
07:17know today as the money musk reliquary so it's an early medieval box it's wooden inside it's gorgeous
07:23it is lovely it's so heavily decorated it's actually empty there are other similar boxes like this that do
07:30have fragments of bones that we can identify as relicaries it's protecting and containing something
07:35very holy whilst also radiating the power of those contents this part here would originally have been
07:43matched by a second over there and like a luggage tag yes it looks like a luggage tag now but
07:47what
07:47it is is the bottom of a strap or a chain that would have allowed it to be hung around
07:53the neck or
07:54carried so it's certainly a very portable object and do you know when it dates to you can you date
07:58an
07:58object like this so usually it's dated to around the 8th century AD and that's based on the style
08:03of the interlace and other features this is often identified as a reliquary of St Columba it's often
08:08also thought to have been taken to the Battle of Bannockburn tradition says the money musk reliquary was
08:15carried into battle with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314 where his troops defeated King Edward
08:25II's English army it was a major turning point in the war for Scottish independence carrying such a
08:38religiously powerful object into battle could have helped to rally the troops medieval monarchs sought help
08:48from the Saints in victory in battles and that's something that we see quite commonly we do hear of
08:57of powerful objects being taken onto the battlefield for that for that purpose I've been digging into
09:05Templar history and looking at the way that they were associated with with powerful relics as well some of
09:10them I think are just stories but some of them are not I mean they seem to have had something
09:14that they
09:14at least believed was part of the true cross for instance and then the power of that in in a
09:21military
09:22setting I think is fascinating this kind of object is simultaneously heaven and earth it's it's
09:28channeling the power of the divine so it is an incredibly rare an incredibly precious object and
09:34it's got its secrets that it's holding on to I want to know what it had inside it yeah so
09:40do I yeah maybe one day
09:46even before Bannockburn Robert the Bruce had been excommunicated by the Pope Scotland could have
09:52been an appealing safe haven for the Templars to escape French persecution a legend says that some
10:00Templars sailed to Scotland bringing with them holy relics including the true cross and rumors of the Ark of
10:06the Covenant and the Holy Grail how did you come to hear about this bowl from the Roslyn Chapel I
10:15first
10:16met Sean up in a place called Kilmartin Castle and we come back to the castle and Sean stuck this
10:24bag on
10:25the coffee table and said I've got something to show you and he pulled this fantastic item out and I
10:32just
10:32thought wow that's a story what do you think it is I think it's an oil lamp okay it's blackened
10:38yeah
10:39yeah it looks like it's sort of imbarbed with oils and it's it's it's got that patina tip and it's
10:46got
10:46holes it's got three holes which look like it's been suspended there is three holes in the equidistant
10:53support which to me suggested that there might have been three chains and it was suspended I've actually
11:01got one of my old oil lamps in my pocket which they were quite ubiquitous it made thousands of
11:07them it's only a little ceramic one I mean it's a lot smaller than Sean's and all you would have
11:13done is
11:13filled it with oil and dropped a wick in and that's definitely a lamp is it that's an oil lamp
11:17not just a
11:18little crucible no no it's a lamp very common when's that from 15 1600s okay around the same kind of
11:26area
11:26so you think it's the same kind of idea if it was an oil lamp was it down there to
11:32do work or was it
11:33just down there when they were bringing coffins in yeah what about you Sean what are you feeling about
11:38it now are you thinking that are you buying this theory that it might have been a lamp I think
11:43it
11:43was repurposed I mean I'm still holding to the symbolic romantic version of events because you really
11:51want it to be a grail I want it to be an emulation of a grail yeah which they you
11:56know they did lots
11:57of in the medieval times in the Middle Ages demand for relics was huge there were fakes souvenirs from
12:05the Middle East and some intentionally made replicas these were thought to possess their own power simply
12:10by association with the original so we've got Andrew Sinclair going into the the vault under the chapel yeah
12:18what else did he find do we know there's an account of it in his book which is soggy coffins
12:27copper handles things like that exactly what you'd expect to find in a burial vault in fact yeah well
12:33he didn't actually get directly into the vaults themselves he managed to get onto the top of it
12:39where he found the grail bone so how did you come to be in possession of this wooden bowl well
12:45Andrew was ill and he was kind of getting his business in order and he gave me a lot of
12:52his
12:52research and books just before he went and he said oh one more thing and passed me the bowl
12:58Andrew Sinclair was also a descendant of the Sinclair family who built and owned Roslyn Chapel and Castle
13:05perhaps one reason he was so keen to prove the grail connection
13:11the Roslyn legend claims that after fleeing to Scotland the Templars entrusted the Sinclair family with the Holy Grail and
13:19other relics
13:20treasure which was then hidden at Roslyn Chapel
13:24to find some answers I've headed to the National Library of Scotland to examine an early manuscript on the Sinclair
13:31family
13:35this is a really fantastic manuscript a book that was finished in 1700 and it contains a lot of history
13:45of Roslyn
13:47now Roslyn Chapel we know was founded in in 1446 by William Sinclair but all of the accounts from that
13:54period of time have been lost
13:56there was a fire apparently but this priest Father Richard Hay in the 17th century collected what he could
14:05find of the Roslyn manuscripts including genealogies and histories and copied it all down so this copy
14:12has come down to us in the present day it's like finding treasures within treasures this book
14:18oh look at this this is fantastic
14:23so we're seeing all the details of the architecture with this wonderful barrel vaulted roof of the chapel
14:30and the flying buttresses and the pinnacles on top of them and what we do see in this illustration
14:36is little statues in these niches on the outside and I don't think those are there today
14:46ah William Sinclair or Sinclair as it says here this is the person I've been searching for
14:52so we are now landing in the middle of the 15th century and it says after the death of Prince
14:58Henry
14:59Sinclair succeeded his son William Sinclair Prince of Orkney they were originally Normans who'd come over
15:07with William the Conqueror in 1066 and then several generations later they were granted land in
15:13Scotland it came in his mind to build a house for God's service this is Roslyn Chapel of most curious
15:21work the which that it might be done with greater glory and splendor in fact it says that for 34
15:28years
15:28before there were never so many people working on the site and the foundation of this rare work he
15:33calls to be laid in the year of our Lord 1446 fantastic so this is some really good hard
15:42historical evidence of the date of the foundation of Roslyn Chapel and this is a lot later than the
15:50Templars so we have actual evidence Roslyn Chapel was built in 1446 over 130 years after the Templars were
16:02dissolved and yet the association between Roslyn the Templars and the Holy Grail still persists
16:11I've come to the chapel itself to discover why well this is a bit tidier than the last time I
16:20was here
16:20when it was still shrouded in scaffolding and being renovated and it's wonderful to see it now it's quite
16:30crazy when you look at it everywhere it's possible to push in some more decoration they've done it all the
16:38ribs all the vaulting is ornately decorated with foliage with little people there's a little skull up there imagine how
16:51many people how many hours this took to create the thing is there's so much
16:58medieval medieval carving here that I imagine that if you wanted to you could find all sorts of messages hidden
17:04in it
17:05Roslyn Chapel shot to global fame following Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code it's a very entertaining work of
17:15fiction
17:15but it was inspired by the legend that the Grail was guarded by the Templars and buried beneath Roslyn
17:23that legend is surprisingly recent originating with a controversial book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
17:33it's been called the most notorious of all the Grail pseudo histories
17:39I'm meeting director of the Roslyn Chapel Trust Ian Gardner to help decipher the chapel's secrets
17:47so Ian it is much smaller than it was intended to be we would have been inside the church here
17:52yes yes but it was never finished so in 1484 the founder died and his son who inherited really just
17:59finished the part that his father had started
18:02it would have been a much bigger building yeah and and carvings like you see here were really intended to
18:09be on the inside
18:10so we would have been standing in the transept exactly that and I think these carvings the blocked up doorway
18:17beside us
18:18really give that impression that the building was going to be much bigger but wasn't completed
18:24it makes sense from the shape of it but has there been any archaeological investigation to see if there were
18:29any foundations laid
18:30yeah there have been digs carried out and we think that there are foundations built stretching right back some distance
18:37so it would have been cathedral style in its proportions with a big tower so that again people could see
18:44it from from far away
18:45Ian it's a bit of a medieval masterpiece isn't it it's so ornate
18:49it is there's so much to see everywhere you look you see different carvings there's lots of legends
18:55there's a nice letter again in the care of the National Library of Scotland which was written to the family
18:59by Mary of Guise so the mother of Mary Queen of Scots and she thanks the family for sharing with
19:05her
19:06the secrets of Roslyn but we don't know what she was shown what we do know is that under the
19:12chapel
19:12there are knights laid out some of the early barons of Roslyn
19:16right Walter Scott wrote in the lay of the last minstrel about some of the early barons being
19:21laid out in their armour and he knew the chapel he knew the family well is there any link with
19:28the
19:28Knights Templar I mean I think this is built after the Knights Templar were disbanded so the the Scottish
19:33base of the Templars was in a village not far from here the village of of Temple so it's probable
19:41that
19:41the Templars there knew this part of the the country but I think it comes back to that thing about
19:48different ways to interpret different carvings so there's a carving which most people would
19:55interpret as the Lamb of God which is a very typical Christian symbol and in a church others
20:01they will see it's the burning at stake of Jacques de Molay from the Templars we're headed down into
20:08the crypt a space which the da Vinci code suggested was where the grail itself could have been hidden
20:19there's such a small chapel it's a very large crypt yes it's known as the crypt or the sacristy we
20:25think it's had a variety of uses in its lifetime we think originally it could have been a chapel in
20:32its
20:32own right it's sometimes described as the lower chapel yeah yeah I can see why because I mean
20:37it's quite it is quite ornate again it is ornate we think the way at one stage it was possibly
20:42a
20:42workshop and then the wall here cut into the wall you can see almost very early architectural drawings
20:50which we think are then represented in some of the carvings upstairs in the main chapel really much
20:59speculation about the Templars and the Grail derives from Roslyn's stone carvings but are we interpreting
21:07them correctly Lizzie when we look at these incredible stone carvings inside the chapel are
21:16they are they mainly 15th century yeah absolutely so the majority of them are so we know that Roslyn was
21:22being built um in 1447 he's listed as building a sumptuous structure it is very sumptuous but there
21:30are three major restorations very invasive so the first of them was by John Baxter in the 18th century
21:37and his was kind of so bad that the then Lord Sinclair wrote in his papers I wish to God
21:44I had never
21:45meddled with it and then it was restored twice in the 19th century and the last one of those by
21:51David
21:51Bryce was really controversial so people accused him of having kind of destroyed the beautiful kind
21:58of mythical wonder that was Roslyn Chapel because he kind of cleaned it up spruced it up too much but
22:04he recut loads of sculptures there's one which is sometimes alleged to be an image of the Templar seal
22:10of two knights riding on the same horse yeah I mean that's 19th century that sculpture and if you look
22:16at it carefully it's clearly one person standing behind a guy on a horse yeah I've seen this but
22:22that's not even original 15th century no that's also that's a 19th century one and the guy on the
22:27horse is jabbing his lance downwards and the bottom of the block ends in this kind of indeterminate way
22:32thankfully there's a guy who described Roslyn in the 18th century and he fairly confidently describes
22:39this as St George and you can really imagine that this could just be St George and the dragon
22:44which has been slightly lost in translation when it's been when it's been recut in the 80s and 90s
22:51Roslyn wasn't kind of structured the way it was now and people were doing all sorts of kind of ad
22:56hoc
22:57investigations we know that there are post-medieval burials there's all sorts of things going on in
23:02there conservation works in 2015 uncovered two skeletons under the chapel which were radiocarbon
23:10dated back to the 15th century and it's possible there were even later burials added under the
23:16flagstones there is this sense that there might be some kind of buried treasure at Roslyn and this
23:22is something goes back to this 18th century freemasonic birth of Templarism that within all of that there
23:29was always the idea that there was somehow there was treasure to be found and treasure potentially
23:34to be found in Scotland and that really has kind of massively added to the mystique of it
23:42are there any carvings that remain really intriguing to you there's so many I mean partly because some of
23:49the sculptures are really worn that it's just not possible anymore to to work out their original intent
23:54one of my favorites is the fact that a lot of the upper parts of the church are built
23:59built to house bees when they did the conservation work they took apart the pinnacles that were on
24:03top of the buttresses yeah and they found that each one had a perfectly carved cylinder inside they found
24:10remnants of honeycomb there are all of these little bits at Roslyn which are genuinely genuinely unusual
24:21brilliant
24:22now I love a good story but I also want to find out the truth I want to find out
24:30the facts I think the myths
24:32and the legends are fascinating in their own right I've really enjoyed digging into those and finding out
24:39how they've evolved over time but what I do find quite intriguing is the need for those stories to keep
24:51going and
24:53especially here at Roslyn Chapel where we've got the most stunning medieval chapel it feels to me as though it
25:04does it a disservice to have to lay on all these other myths and the
25:08legends and legends on top of that do we have to believe that there might be something more to it
25:12that the holy grail might be here but still some people really want it to be true and if I'm
25:19honest with myself
25:21there's a tiny bit of me that would like it to be
25:34I've taken some time out to do a bit of research on the 1993 dig at Roslyn
25:42so I first saw a snippet of this documentary on YouTube and then I've tracked down the whole documentary
25:50and I must say it raises so many questions and it's also just got these jaw-dropping moments in it
25:57where workers are drilling into the floor of Roslyn Chapel and then Andrew Sinclair is producing this object
26:07I actually need to go and talk to somebody about this and I know exactly who will be able to
26:13help
26:16there's nothing more mysterious or alluring than an unfinished story
26:21from Atlantis to the holy grail
26:23I'm meeting archaeologist and podcaster Flint Dibble
26:29getting to the kind of the the quest that I'm on at the moment so I'm I'm trying to I'm
26:35trying to
26:35understand why various myths have grown up around the grail
26:41you're on the right track you're treating it like a journey
26:43and so you know because that's what makes it so compelling to us as humans
26:47is this story of adventure and travel and and almost a journey without end is how I think of myths
26:54because they're constantly evolving and constantly changing what I find so weird is these stories are
27:00so old and they keep getting recycled right so you know the grail comes about what a little less than
27:05a thousand years ago we get the first story of the grail it was an unfinished story and then it
27:10just
27:10kept morphing and morphing into different ways and different traditions there's always another cup that
27:15we could call the grail yeah you know so that what that means is there's always room for another take
27:19on it
27:19I can see how the grail myth keeps evolving but what I'm really interested in is the 1993 dig at
27:27Roslyn Chapel after passing through six feet of rubble we drilled six feet of rubble and we met no
27:35resistance okay so they found something if they met no resistance so this is when it gets very
27:40interesting because this is where Andrew Sinclair is going to bring an object out bring an artifact out
27:45okay there are no knights of the holy grail down there in full armor but there was one thing
27:51a wooden bow of course if the grail was in Roslyn Chapel it would be a wooden bow this isn't
28:00the grail
28:01it is a grail it's very clever there's there's so much that's wrapped into that he's also saying
28:07this isn't the grail but if the grail existed it would look like this which by the way is a
28:13clear
28:13reference to a movie that just came out not too long before this documentary it is a bit isn't it
28:18Indiana Jones specifically chose the wooden grail absolutely instead of the jeweled grail and then
28:25he says of course it would be a wooden one though there's this wooden bowl like object that's come
28:30out of that dig that seems to be the only object that's come out of that dig maybe it could
28:36have
28:36been preserved for for centuries down there I mean looking at that I I don't focus on such recent stuff
28:42but I am someone who's done a lot of excavation on Roman sites and you know the road the wooden
28:47bowls that have been published oftentimes resemble the ceramic bowls that we have and that one looks
28:53nothing like the terra sigillata type Roman bowls that exist and so that would tell me that it's not
29:00from you know zero BC most likely but maybe I'm wrong and I'm gonna have to eat my hat when
29:07you tell me
29:07the radiocarbon date but I agree with you that maybe it was suspended maybe as a relic I've just had
29:12a
29:12message to say our bowl results are ready so I'm heading to the Oxford radiocarbon accelerator unit
29:27a small fragment from the rim of the bowl had previously broken off and it's that fragment that's
29:33been radiocarbon dated I'm meeting director Dr Rachel Wood to hear what she's discovered
29:44Rachel you know why I'm here and I'm so excited to find out what you've discovered I have been on
29:51tenterhooks to find out this result today but I think just to manage my expectations and
29:58understand a little bit more about the process that you've that you've gone through here would
30:02you easily be able to discern whether something came from say 30 years ago versus 300 years ago versus
30:092000 years ago yeah so those kind of differences are quite straightforward for us really from like
30:151650 onwards if we calibrate anything here we get an age distribution that could be 1650 to 1950 yeah
30:23so not great so that's really hard that's really hard are you very sure about this result as much as
30:30we can be within science so everything comes with a probability estimate so this is your 95% probability
30:36so I think there's a range of possibilities here I think we have to entertain the possibility that
30:43this could be a very ancient object I think it's much more likely that it is going to be
30:49late middle ages into Tudor period and perhaps even later I know that the last individuals of the
30:57Sinclair family to be interred in Roslyn Chapel were in the 17th century so I think it's most likely
31:03that it's going to fall into that range but I do have to bear in mind the possibility that actually
31:11this could have been a hoax and that it might be much much more recent so I'm really excited to
31:18okay know the results
31:22so this is the radiocarbon result I'm typing in and then I'm going to run it now
31:26tell me when I can look okay and then you can look now
31:32so it is somewhere after 1666 so it falls in that flat period between 1666 and 1950 somewhere
31:43so it's possibly the worst the worst one that you could want because it's in that difficult period
31:50where we can't really pin down so it's full of precision right in the middle of your difficult
31:55period but this is really interesting so that difficult period goes from the 1660s through to
32:02when's the end of it 1950 1950 yeah so I think the last members of the Sinclair family to be
32:10interred
32:11in that vault were going in in the 1650s so this is too late for that but it could actually
32:16push us back
32:17to the last individuals that were interred in that vault or it could have been any time during
32:23the Victorian period into the 20th century so I think in the Victorian period there was an attempt
32:29to open up the vault again to maybe put more burials in there so it means that actually that object
32:37could have ended up in underneath the floor of Roslyn Chapel at that point so what we can absolutely say
32:44from this is that it doesn't go back to the building of Roslyn Chapel it does not go back to
32:50the first burials that were placed in there no in the 1400s that's out that's gone isn't it that's no
32:56possibility yes it isn't either Andrew Sinclair taking a 20th century object into that context and saying
33:05look I found something it seems he actually did genuinely find something under the floor of
33:10Roslyn Chapel unless he's brought in an old object yeah but it's certainly not a late 20th early
33:1921st century object we can rule that out that's yeah that's the easiest one to rule out yeah um is
33:24it also very easy to rule out that this is 2000 years old yes oh this is this is absolutely
33:29brilliant
33:30Rachel thank you so much I've still got questions about it because I don't know what it is thank you
33:35very much no science to the rescue a part of me would have liked it to have been 2000 years
33:43old
33:43but it's still an object that has survived potentially for centuries historic England have
33:51also now completed their tests they tested residues from the bowl but can their findings reveal what this
33:58curious object actually is Jill and Irene thank you very much for joining me so I wonder if you've got
34:06any results that you can share with me at this stage we do have some results yes I think uh
34:12the shape of it
34:13it doesn't really look like a bowl it's more like it might be a stand for something else so we've
34:19been
34:19able to identify the word to probably a particular species so um it's walnut or probably walnut so
34:29that's really interesting because it means then that it was likely to be a wooden object which was
34:35to be on show somehow it was going to be seen that it isn't something like I don't know a
34:40crude bowl that
34:41a workman has left behind in that crypt it's it's something a bit different the fact that it's made of
34:46walnut suggests to me that somebody has deliberately chosen that particularly nice wood something which
34:51you might have on show and so this is making it even more mysterious to me now have you managed
34:56to
34:56find out anything else about it we observed that the bowl seemed to contain a varnish on the top
35:02from the results that we obtained we think that the main component of the varnish is a wax are you
35:08able
35:08to tell me whether that wax is beeswax or a synthetic wax it's a complex mixture because the varnish
35:15is composed by different components and also it's highly degraded we cannot really identify the
35:21specific source of the material while we can't identify the type of wax applied to our object
35:28we do know it's made from walnut a wood commonly used for carving objects and furniture from the
35:35medieval period onwards can you say from the samples that you tested whether or not it looked like it
35:40had been burned because one of the things we thought it potentially could have been was some kind
35:45of lamp or a component of a sensor maybe something like that the wood itself doesn't appear to have
35:50been burnt okay it is dark but that seems to be more to do with um the coating on it
35:56this is all
35:57really useful though because it's allowing us to exclude certain things and it's certainly allowing us
36:03to exclude that it's likely to have ever been something to do with food because you wouldn't have covered
36:08that with wax in the same way i presume am i am i right in saying that yeah i think
36:13you can probably
36:14say that it wasn't for food use it's not really the right shape for food isn't it so irene did
36:19you
36:19perform any other analyses looking at other materials on the bowl we performed xrf analysis that allowed us
36:26to analyze the organic components of the sample and highly surprisingly we found that especially in
36:33some area of the fragment that we receive arsenic was present arsenic what could the arsenic have
36:40been used for it's a wood preservative wood preservative okay could it be a contaminant from the burial
36:46environment though it's more probably to be a contamination with another object that contained arsenic
36:53arsenic the arsenic was detected on the small fragment from the rim of the bowl but there were
36:59no traces found on the rest of the object from the 1700s onwards arsenic was used in wood preservatives
37:06but also commonly in medicines and embalming right into the early 20th century
37:19so many questions and layers of it so we know that arsenic is present it could have been contamination
37:23from another object that was sitting next to it at some point it could be that it was part of
37:28a
37:28treatment preserved to the wood but that may not go back to the original use of that object that might
37:33be when it was already an antique um so so even if even if we were to say oh well
37:38arsenic treatments
37:39came in later that doesn't mean the object is later it just means that it's been subjected
37:43to that treatment at some point it's all fascinating thank you very much and i think
37:47that what it does tell us is that we should be a little bit careful about handling it
37:56so what is this object i think with all these scientific investigations in hand the most likely
38:04thing is that it's a church ornament of some kind that it was probably locally made out of locally
38:10grown walnut that it's been looked after it's been it's been waxed and preserved it dates to between
38:16the 17th and the 20th centuries we can say that with certainty it's absolutely not the grail how could
38:25it have ever been the grail but it's still a little bit mysterious
38:31it seems our bowl is still holding on to its secrets once again the holy grail is eluding me
38:42with the myths and legends at roslin showing no sign of fading soon there's one more place i want
38:50to visit where i hope to find some real templar history it's a place called temple
39:02oh stiff gate so that's it it's tiny compared with rosalyn i know it's really um far more subtle
39:11beast in a way than the glitz and glamour of rosalyn chapel yeah yeah but this was built by
39:17the temple yes so it's earlier than rosalyn much earlier so all the people flocking to rosalyn
39:22in search of the templars should really be coming here i know it does make me laugh slightly yeah
39:28is they should come to this sort of slightly dilapidated but you know beautiful church which
39:33is genuinely full of your actual history rather than your fudged history someone needs to write
39:40a novel which ends up ends up here at this church yeah
39:50like most churches um it has a bit of a checkered history so there was a templar church and then
39:55in
39:56the 15th century so around the time rosalyn was being built it was converted into a parish church
40:02it really was a kind of very high quality building it's a bit difficult to see based on
40:06what we've got now but you have this lovely tracery intersecting tracery with the kind of
40:11squished roundels up there we've got a lovely canopy for a tomb there so there would have been an
40:16effigy down below yeah and then over here uh we have a sedilia so that's where the priests would
40:22sit during mass during services a special ornate chair to kind of mark them out as being especially
40:28important and holy oh this is fantastic you're starting to really kind of paint the picture here
40:33and allow me to imagine a bit about what it would have looked like it's incredible to think that this
40:38was the headquarters of the templars yeah yeah
40:44this whole area of temple old kirk is rich in history
40:52hello hi do you live here yeah yeah we live in the uh in the mill house down here so
40:58are there
40:58some particularly old parts of the mill then the only thing that's left is the uh the gable end
41:03lovely look at this lizzie oh wow okay so it's much more significant than i thought it was going
41:08to be actually well this is amazing it is really really astonishing not everybody's got a bit of uh
41:1416th century archaeology down the bottom of the garden i know and this beautiful village of temple
41:21has its own local legend regarding hidden treasure
41:27twixt the oak and the elm tree you will find buried the millions free
41:34perhaps we should have been looking for the grail here instead when i started out on my grail quest i
41:43didn't really know what i was looking for and that's because the grail has been so many different things
41:49to different people through time for some it's been a very tangible object for others an intangible idea
42:00now i knew i wanted to get into the mystery to understand the myths and legends how they evolved
42:07how they flourished they're wonderful stories but i also knew that i wanted to
42:15clearly see the picture to find some real history real archaeology my journey started in the south
42:25tracking down stories of the templars and joseph of arimathea and the grail
42:31and king arthur and his knights and then i've come all the way north to scotland
42:38and i think it's here nestled in this glen
42:46that i've i've found the truth i've found some real history and archaeology
42:56that illuminates this wonderful period of time in the middle ages and i've reached the end of my quest
43:07so
43:21so
43:22so
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