- 13 minutes ago
By visiting communities across the country and learning about local history from residents—through vivid oral recollections—the narrative reveals how the British people, while contending with invasions and disasters, joined forces and embraced innovation and opportunity to navigate their long historical journey.
历史学家迈克尔·伍德（Michael Wood）透过普通人的视角，审视了英国过去1600年的历史。该节目从基层视角讲述英国的故事，将民众的生活经历置于维京人入侵、工业革命及两次世界大战等重大历史事件的背景下进行呈现。
历史学家迈克尔·伍德（Michael Wood）透过普通人的视角，审视了英国过去1600年的历史。该节目从基层视角讲述英国的故事，将民众的生活经历置于维京人入侵、工业革命及两次世界大战等重大历史事件的背景下进行呈现。
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TVTranscript
00:11The story of the British is one of the most astonishing tales in history.
00:20It's a tale of struggle and war, but also of huge achievement.
00:27From small beginnings, Britain became a great empire, workshop of the world, and the real
00:35makers of our history were the British people themselves.
00:41Resilient and creative, they built our society, they won our rights and freedoms.
00:51Today, we're many nations and countless tribes, but we are still British, and what unites
01:00us all is our history, the great British story.
01:26It was the Romans who first named us, and in a sense, defined us.
01:34How lucky you are, you Britons, wrote one Roman, more blessed than any other land, endowed
01:42by nature with every benefit of soil and climate.
01:46Your winters are not too cold, your summers are not too hot.
01:51And to make life even sweeter, your days are long and your nights are short, so that while
01:59to us Italians the sun may appear to go down, in Britain it just seems to go past.
02:19In the life of nations, just as in people's lives, anniversaries and celebrations are good
02:27times to look back.
02:28I was a big fan of Princess Diana, and I love William, I think his mum would be very proud
02:34of it.
02:35They're good moments to reflect on what has made us, for our history gives meaning
02:41and value to our present.
02:44It tells us where we've come from, who we are, maybe even gives a clue to where we're going.
02:51And ours is an extraordinary story.
03:00This is the story of the people of Britain over 1500 years.
03:05Welsh, Scots, English, Irish too have played a great role in the story of Britain.
03:11But it's also the story of the people who've come here to settle over the centuries, from
03:16the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, to the peoples of Asia and the Indian subcontinent, Africa
03:21and the Caribbean, who've come in the last few decades to help build modern British society.
03:29This small island off the shore of Europe has played a role in the history of the world,
03:34out of all proportion to its size.
03:41And the story will take us right across the British Isles, from Merseyside to Skye, from
04:04the Black Country to Cardiff and Antrim.
04:10But our tale begins in East Anglia, in the little town of Long Melford in Suffolk.
04:23Over the next few months, the people here, along with a host of other communities across
04:27the UK, will be sharing their knowledge, their documents, photos and memories.
04:32Look at these lovely seals on the bottom.
04:34Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:35Unique sources which will help build our story.
04:38Gold Tribble in Victoria on the rectory.
04:40He used to say that he had relatives.
04:43The gardening club, probably milked the ball up there.
04:46Oh, that is so wonderful, isn't it?
04:48These are amazing social documents, actually.
04:50Oh, yes, yes.
04:53But first, they're going to put their spades into the soil on a communal dig, led by Carenza
04:59Lewis and her team from Cambridge University.
05:02One metre square test pits in as many different places as possible.
05:08What we're hoping to find, first of all, is clues to the history of the community before
05:13the documents begin.
05:14Yeah, I think it's worth trying it here, don't you?
05:24So, what brought us here to Long Melford in Suffolk?
05:27Well, it's a classic English small town with very deep historical roots.
05:35The people of Melford have lived through the Industrial Revolution, the Civil Wars, the
05:40Black Death.
05:43Like most places in Britain, their history as a community goes back a very long way.
05:50But don't think this is just local history.
05:53For at the grassroots, you can also find the national story.
05:59We started yesterday and then we finished today and we filled the hole in.
06:03We're site number 17, isn't it?
06:05With 50 test pits, we soon began to expose the layers of Melford's past.
06:11There's a clay pipe.
06:13Where you are now is about 250, 300 years ago.
06:16Oh!
06:18Victorian China, Tudor jugs.
06:20It's sort of your classic sort of milk jug ware almost.
06:24I know.
06:24You can see where it's sort of...
06:25There was Anglo-Saxon tableware.
06:27So we've got this greyware right the way through the last half of the pit.
06:31The three trays there and that tray at the back are all medieval.
06:36And then we made an exciting discovery.
06:39It's a road.
06:40I'm almost certain it's a road.
06:42And I'm beginning to wonder if it actually might be the original Roman road.
06:44We sort of looked on a map and we were able to plot a line all the way through from
06:50the school.
06:51And we now feel that that's where the direction is.
06:54And we thought we'd put our pit here and it looks like we've struck gold.
06:59Rome at the centre.
07:01I shall probably head off east and you better head off west and I'll join you in a minute.
07:05And if you want to understand the British story, you have to start with the Romans.
07:09Oh, isn't it? It's almost like a London tube map or a GPS.
07:13Because it was they who brought civilisation to Britain for the first time.
07:17Athens?
07:18I'm heading into Iraq, Mesopotamia.
07:21This copy of a 4th century Roman map shows our place in their world.
07:27Hadrian's Wall.
07:29And here we are reaching the very end of their own world, the Pillars of Hercules.
07:32The Straits of Gibraltar.
07:33From the Atlantic Ocean in the west.
07:36Mountains of southern India.
07:38To India, 7,000 miles to the east.
07:40What is Elefanti Nascuntur?
07:43The place where elephants come from, isn't that fantastic?
07:46This marks the moment we Britons became part of global civilisation.
07:51Europe, Africa and Asia.
07:53That's it.
07:53And, um, Alta Orbis.
07:56That's right.
07:56It is the Romans' new world, effectively.
07:58What were they looking for?
07:59And what were the riches of Britain that attracted them?
08:04Well, the sources mentioned things like hides and dogs.
08:08And they know there's a bit of precious metal over here.
08:12But the riches they're really looking for, I think, are the riches of glory, of conquest.
08:17New land, new revenues, some new place to tax, new people to extract money from, which is what empires are
08:22often about.
08:23But as much as anything else, it's about an individual emperor.
08:26In this case, Claudius, who's the emperor, the Roman emperor, that begins the definitive conquest of Britain.
08:32Showing that he's a real Roman emperor by taking a new piece of the world and making it Roman.
08:39Brilliant.
08:42Lovely.
08:43Little Samian web.
08:44Everywhere we dug in Long Melford, we found evidence for the Britons adopting Roman lifestyles.
08:51More and more and more Roman.
08:52Oh, right, now that, that is really interesting.
08:56That is a bit of hyper-course flutile, is the Roman central heating systems.
09:01We Britons then enjoyed a standard of living that we didn't get back till the 17th century.
09:08Yes, it could be, actually. The emperor Vespasian.
09:12Under the Romans, the population thrived and grew to maybe four million people.
09:19I mean, that's quite an impressive pile of pottery, isn't it?
09:22We could probably say there's probably Romans in the vicinity somewhere.
09:31So over the four Roman centuries, the ideals of Roman civilisation became ingrained in us.
09:38And not just in the south-east.
09:42Here at Caerleon in South Wales, there was a huge military and civil complex with all the amenities of Roman
09:49civilisation.
09:50Markets, baths, sports arenas.
09:53And more than that, local government, law, civic order.
10:00And a huge dig here is uncovering new evidence about Roman Britain's second biggest port.
10:10It was a miserable day when I woke up pouring with rain,
10:14but it's not dampened the enthusiasm of the archaeologists.
10:22What they're finding here is nothing less than the Roman roots of South Wales.
10:28It's a part of Roman Britain which is almost forgotten about in some sense.
10:33People think of Wales as an op-land country, as our Iron Age culture continuing through.
10:39But the south-east is really, we should view it as part of the west country.
10:44It's more in keeping with Somerset and Dorset and Gloucestershire.
10:48It's highly Romanised. We have villas, we've got Roman towns, Roman fortresses, Roman roads.
10:53It's a fascinating part of the country.
10:56A dig on this scale can only happen with an army of volunteers.
11:02It's really exciting starting up a new project.
11:04A lot of people are unaware that the Roman heritage in South Wales is so rich.
11:09Yeah, well I think we didn't know the site was so big, I don't think.
11:12I think it was just, you know, sort of amphitheatre and then, you know, it stops and, you know, a
11:15humpy bumpy field.
11:17I enjoyed the pot washing best of all.
11:19I'd have these big white trays and then this beautiful Samian way glowing in my hands after a good wash.
11:25It's actually all over the white trays. Really fantastic feeling and holding and touching and thinking, you know, who held
11:31this last.
11:31The thrill of finding something is fun.
11:34And the mud. It gets us out.
11:35The mud is good. The mud is good? Are you serious? What do you mean?
11:38That's brilliant. You get to be five years old again.
11:43The Kerleyan dig is guided by a huge geophysical survey.
11:48We know from the geophys there should be four walls going this way through this section.
11:53Right. Where's the wall cast there?
11:55It shows the plaster underneath and the paint's been taken off.
11:58But there's some red there.
12:01So Kerleyan, Iska, was a big military town and port.
12:06This is like revolutionary.
12:09A whole new area of Romans.
12:11There's always something new to find.
12:12Yeah, it's just so diverse.
12:15Next door was the civil capital at Kerwent, Wenta, which gave its name to modern Gwent.
12:22The whole conurbation, a predecessor to today's capital, Cardiff.
12:31Britain very quickly becomes part of this international Roman world of wealth and style.
12:40It's a thought that's hard for us to encompass but, you know, in the Roman period, if you're living in
12:44Britain and if you're living in Syria, you're part of the same world.
12:51So don't imagine the Romans in Britain as Italians in Tokas.
12:57The Britons were the Romans.
13:01And theirs was a cosmopolitan and multicultural world, a bit like ours.
13:07Up on Tyneside, near Hadrian's Wall, stood the Roman fort of Arbea, the fort of the Arabs.
13:18And excavations here have found evidence of Roman Britons from an amazing variety of backgrounds and cultures.
13:33He's a Moor from North Africa.
13:35He's a black man.
13:37Don't forget, there were black people in Britain before they were English.
13:4320 years old, a freedman of Numerianus, who's a cavalry officer for a Spanish regiment up here on Hadrian's Wall.
13:56And Numerianus says,
13:58Piantissime Prosecutus Est.
14:01He devotedly conducted the funeral of his former slave.
14:08Very intimate relationship between the two men.
14:11Gay, perhaps.
14:14Beautifully carved.
14:16Next to them, one of the most wonderful tombstones from Roman Britain, of a woman called Regina.
14:25She's the wife of a man called Berates, where he's a nice dress.
14:31She's opening, what's this, a box of treasures.
14:35You see the keyhole, a little half-moon underneath.
14:39Well-to-do Roman society up here in South Shields.
14:43But here's the really great bit.
14:46Her husband is Palmyrenus Natione.
14:52He's from Palmyra in Syria.
14:55Famous trading city at the other end of the Mediterranean.
14:59An Arab, if you like.
15:00And underneath, to underline that, carved in Aramaic, the old language of Syria.
15:06Regina, the freed woman of Berates.
15:09Alas.
15:14Roman letters found on Hadrian's wall give us the voices of ordinary Britons.
15:19We ask today's timesiders to read them.
15:23Dear Lucius, just a quick note to make sure you're in robust health.
15:28A friend has just sent me 50 oysters from the coast, so why not get over here tonight?
15:36I want to be clear with you that I refuse to withdraw my membership of the mess or of the
15:40club.
15:41Maybe he saw me at the goldsmiths and that's how the story started.
15:49I have sent to you by post two pairs of socks from Satua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs
15:55of woolen underpants.
15:56All the best to you and your messmates from Elpis.
16:04For the party on the 19th of June, we need three glasses of British beer and a couple of cases
16:08of Italian wine.
16:10And vinegar, fish sauce, chicken, extra barley for the beer.
16:19My dearest flavours, I wonder if you could send me a few more things for my boys.
16:23I need six cloaks and five jericans.
16:27I really need to smarten off now.
16:29I'm the commissariat officer and on the point of getting my own wheels.
16:33Farewell.
16:36So across lowland Britain, the people enjoyed all the benefits of being Roman citizens.
16:45In their minds and in their imaginations, Rome was in their hearts.
16:50Britons are Romans.
16:52New diet, new luxuries, new stuff coming in, new things to drink and eat and new things to eat and
16:57drink them, I thought.
16:58You'll even find olive oil and wine in Hadrian's Wall.
17:02Come from Birkenhead, you couldn't get olive oil in a shop in Birkenhead until 1980, you know.
17:09And whether in Cairlion, Long Melford or South Shields, as one Roman writer put it,
17:15how fortunate the Britons were to live in such a delightful land.
17:24The Roman Empire.
17:24Over the four Roman centuries, the people lived under the umbrella of Romanitas,
17:30safe in the knowledge that Rome would always protect them.
17:36But towards the year 400, the Roman world went into steep decline.
17:43The Roman Empire found itself increasingly stretched by barbarian attacks and separatist movements.
17:50And the new emperor, Honorius, moved the capital from Rome to Ravenna in the marshes on the Adriatic coast, which
17:57is easier to defend.
17:59And out on the edge of the Roman world, the town councils in Britain were worried.
18:04Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Have we got any apologies for absence?
18:08They faced mounting raids by Angles and Saxons from Germany.
18:12Three of the reports are breakings to garden ships, so obviously that's something the police are asking.
18:16Their big fear was that to protect Italy, Rome would withdraw its garrison.
18:21On the 24th of August, 410, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths.
18:28First time in nearly 800 years that the city had fallen.
18:31And it's at that electric moment in history that the emperor sends a famous letter to the citizens of Britain.
18:39The contents of the letter were recorded in the 500s by the Welsh historian Gildas.
18:46It is with regret that we have to inform you that we can no longer commit precious and overstretched military
18:55resources.
18:56To continue to fight off pirates and bandits who cannot be pinned down by conventional warfare.
19:06The Roman garrison was pulled out. The Britons were told to set up coastal defences and a home guard.
19:14The Romans even sent them pattern books showing how to make Roman weapons.
19:20It's very nearly 2,000 years old.
19:23That would have been either ivory or nor wall.
19:28This is not a gladius, this is a spatha.
19:33He would be a horseman holding his sword on the right-hand side, which is unusual.
19:40So he could get at it.
19:42So he could get at it and just poke people.
19:47People of Britain, the emperor concluded,
19:50you're on your own now. Fight bravely and defend your lives and liberty.
19:55It's your homeland. You must fight for it now.
20:09And so they said goodbye, meaning never to return.
20:14It's a wonderful symbolic moment in the story of Britain, isn't it? The fall of Rome.
20:18This is a great place to imagine it.
20:23And in the next few decades, as great swathes of the cities fall derelict and the people revert to the
20:30old ways.
20:31They come back to these old Iron Age hillforts to take shelter behind their huge ramparts as if battening down
20:39for the dark age that will follow.
20:43But as their world fragmented, new worlds began to coalesce.
20:49And out of them, our modern identities as Britons will emerge.
20:56Here on Borough Hill in Leicestershire, a team of archaeologists, volunteers and school children are trying to find out what
21:03happened at the end of Roman Britain when city life broke down.
21:09It's really, really difficult to know what does happen because all the things that we rely on in archaeology disappear
21:15in that early 5th century period.
21:18The coins, the pottery.
21:21As archaeologists, we're left really in the dark.
21:24If we're looking for a dark age from an archaeological point of view, it is the 5th century.
21:28It's a century of make, do and mend.
21:32We're trying to find out where the entrance of the roundhouse is.
21:35So when we're trying to define the edges, you want to find this edge here and hopefully it will come
21:41through over here.
21:43History is kind of focused on famous people, you know, like the kings and queens, but no one actually looks
21:49at the working class of people.
21:51They're not represented, I don't think.
21:57And as always in great crises in history, the ordinary people are left to carry on with their lives in
22:03the face of harsh new realities.
22:11In the early 400s, coins stopped being used, they can't pay the town councils, jobs go, rubbish piles up.
22:19The cities are abandoned.
22:23And then in the 500s, catastrophe.
22:27A huge environmental crisis followed by famine and plague.
22:37It was a perfect storm.
22:40Britain's population was probably halved, maybe worse.
22:46It's when you see what happens to our lovely Roman town at the end of the Roman period, it is
22:51not good news.
22:53You remember in the late Roman period, we had that town thriving settlement.
22:57When we go into the Anglo-Saxon period, complete Armageddon.
23:01Nothing.
23:02Absolutely nothing.
23:03Not a single piece of pottery that could possibly predate 850.
23:10There's nothing like the level of occupation we've got in the Roman period for hundreds of years afterwards.
23:18We know the sub-Roman period is a period of population decline.
23:21There's outbreaks of plague that we hear about hazily in historical records.
23:28It's one thing after another going wrong.
23:30Central law and order breaks down.
23:32And it's a fascinating thought, really.
23:33Even what would we do today, you know, if suddenly no one's enforcing law and order?
23:38How long does it take for people to realise they've got to sort of defend their goods themselves?
23:44And all of that sort of civilisation to collapse.
23:48We think we're so insulated today in the Roman period, clearly even more so.
23:53And you just look at that map, it's just empty.
23:58And now for a time in British history, there's no one clear narrative but many regional and local histories.
24:07But certain threads run through the tale.
24:14Out in Western Britain, Romanitas continues.
24:18The Roman world didn't end all at one time, or in every place.
24:25The so-called Dark Ages are not dark here.
24:28The coast went back 400 metres only about 200 years ago,
24:34so an immense amount of erosion had taken place.
24:37And perhaps 5,000 objects had been found along this piece of shoreline.
24:42They've been found about half a dozen Byzantine coins.
24:46These are 6th century, too.
24:47This is Justinian I, and there's Justin.
24:50Just too much. I can't believe this. Look at this.
24:54If you turn it over, you can see the mint mark at the bottom.
25:01Con for Constantinople.
25:03My God.
25:05Yeah, the far eastern end of the Mediterranean.
25:07But what you're saying is here in Western Britain, the ancient connections are still alive.
25:14And they still thought of themselves as Roman.
25:16You have these Latin inscriptions still continuing in North Wales.
25:20In Anglesey.
25:21In Anglesey, yes, which you can see from here.
25:24So it's not a surprise, really, that in some ways we shouldn't be surprised that these things are here.
25:30What's been missing, really, in north-western England is the archaeological evidence, but that's beginning to come to light.
25:39Tremendous.
25:40This is continuity of people speaking Latin.
25:44It's continuity of people thinking of themselves as Roman, well beyond the conventional end of the Roman period.
25:55So at the fall of Rome, the Roman army went, but the people carried on.
26:02In South Wales, behind its Roman walls,
26:05the old capital of Caerwent remained the centre of local power
26:09into the Middle Ages.
26:11The late Roman world does come to an end.
26:14There is economic crisis, political instability,
26:17but the Western Roman Empire does fall.
26:20But the people stay put.
26:22In 410 AD, people don't just throw down the Roman pots and run away.
26:27Life continues.
26:29In fact, parts of Wales were the last bits of the Roman Empire to survive anywhere.
26:38In the 5th century, here in South Wales,
26:41a new order rose under Christian, Welsh-speaking kings,
26:46still loyal to the memory of Rome.
26:51This has to be one of the most atmospheric buildings in the whole of the British Isles.
26:57Medieval wall paintings,
27:00dark-aged carvings and sculptures.
27:09Samson posuit Hank Cruchem.
27:14Samson erected this cross pro anima aeus for his soul.
27:33In Latin, it's a bit scruffy, not classical,
27:39but they still feel connected with it.
27:55Great changes in history often happen like this,
28:00slowly and imperceptibly.
28:07One world becomes another.
28:20And among the bringers of change were the saints.
28:27Columba, David, Mungo, and the most famous of all.
28:32My name is Patrick.
28:35I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers.
28:39My father was Calpurnius. He was a deacon.
28:43My grandfather was a priest who lived in Bannavon, Tybonia.
28:47His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner.
28:52I was about 16 at the time.
28:55St Patrick was British, born on Hadrian's Wall,
28:59one of the remarkable men and women who saved what could be saved
29:03of Latin learning and Christianity.
29:06He spent some time up around the Slimish Mountain.
29:10He shepherded or herded.
29:13It says pigs or swine, or as they call them,
29:16and nowadays it would be sheep, you know.
29:25Where is the house?
29:26It's on the Cairnstone Road there,
29:28down near number 30-something, 33, I think it is, maybe.
29:34How long he spent there, I don't know, you know.
29:37Irish tradition says St Patrick worked for a while
29:40here at Slimish, in County Antrim.
29:43That would be sort of an enclosure for bringing them in at pigs at night,
29:47to keep them safe.
29:48Is it still there?
29:49They could probably see it, you know.
29:53It seems to be near Han, for it says on the map here.
29:57A Christian Briton, Patrick spoke and wrote Latin.
30:00It fell down a bit, you know, and it's covered over with soil and things.
30:05And he left the Irish an abiding respect for Latin civilisation.
30:09A bit of a pair, you know.
30:12Patrick brought Christianity to the north of Ireland,
30:15and his disciple, St Columba, took it back into Northern Britain.
30:20This group of dairy sailors built a dark-aged currer
30:24to follow the path of Columba, or Columkill,
30:28who sailed to Iona to begin the conversion of Scotland.
30:34He's a modern version of the sort of boat that Columkill would have used.
30:38Yeah.
30:39And a very seaworthy boat.
30:41So back in 1987, we made the voyage from Derry up through to Iona.
30:51Rowing by day, and then coming ashore at night.
30:55And I'm sure that's the way we sort of followed what we believe was a similar route
31:01that Columkill would have used when he was banished from Ireland.
31:04Right.
31:05If he had to pay Iona.
31:06Right, right, right.
31:07Yeah.
31:08Coasting.
31:09Just going by the islands and the promontories.
31:11Yep.
31:12The journey was no great challenge in a way, you know.
31:18Yeah, yeah.
31:19It was quite a natural thing for them to do, and for us.
31:22Of course, yeah, yeah.
31:24And what was the inspiration behind it?
31:26We were celebrating the 1400th anniversary of the death of Columkill.
31:31Yeah.
31:31So he died in 597, so in 1997, we made the journey up through.
31:40It's a very natural way.
31:44We're down near Derry here, where his monastery was.
31:48It's quite a simple journey, if the wind is in the right direction,
31:52to go up to Iona, just in the southwest corner of Mull.
31:56There's a lot of the archaeology from the time of the Saints.
31:59There's a lovely cross at Kildalton, just down in the southeast corner.
32:03Yeah.
32:04There's an old monastic settlement in Texa Island.
32:07The monk sailors were there.
32:11This is such an extraordinary age, isn't it?
32:13This so-called dark age.
32:16And doing it in such a practical way
32:18must give you a great insight into what went on then.
32:21We shared the same blisters on hands
32:24and other parts of the anatomy
32:26that Columkill and his crew would have experienced.
32:29For me, the boat is about being out there on the sea,
32:32experiencing the nature, the wonder of where you are.
32:35It's basically 5th century technology,
32:37and we're all involved in modern sailing boats
32:41and modern boats as well with our jobs.
32:43And it's amazing just what this boat's capable of.
32:49We're not a crew anymore, we're a family.
32:55And wherever the Saints built their churches, settlements followed.
33:03Glasgow itself was founded in the Age of Saints
33:06by St Mungo in the 6th century.
33:11With all its later histories,
33:14Glasgow too came out of this crystallising of identities
33:18in the dark ages.
33:20And you, too can say...
33:24This is Brian here, broadcasting very loudly
33:29from the centre and heart of Glasgow.
33:35Oh, this is how archaeology should be.
33:42The government is one of the oldest continually inhabited places
33:47in the world.
33:53When the Romans arrived in the governor in AD 81,
33:56the inhabitants were Britonic-speaking Celts
33:59who, according to Colony,
34:02practised redic rites
34:03and called themselves the Damned Noni.
34:06Later on, they were recognised
34:08as the Britons of the Kingdom of Strathclyde.
34:17This is Dumbarton Rock on the River Clyde,
34:20Alt-Clut, the Rock of the Clyde,
34:22the royal citadel of the Strathclyde Welsh.
34:26It was here at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire.
34:30You come to a place like this
34:31and you see how history is geography
34:35and geography is history.
34:38The seas along the western shores of Britain
34:41with their islands and archipelagos
34:43and their deep-cut estuaries
34:44have been places of contact and exchange
34:48for thousands of years.
34:55Govan was potent in a number of ways.
34:58First, the monolithic stones
35:01that once surrounded the site of Govan Old Church
35:04tell us that this place was sacred
35:06to the people who lived there
35:08and had been for a very long time.
35:15Govan Old Church was built
35:17for the Clydeside shipyard workers in 1888
35:20but on Dark Age foundations.
35:26My excavations found foundations
35:28of probably a timber building
35:30with dry stone footings
35:32and some burials which have radiocarbon dates
35:36which take you back to the 6th century.
35:38The 6th century.
35:396th century.
35:39So very early.
35:41Here in the middle of Govan.
35:43Govan's secret
35:44is a collection of Dark Age stones
35:46that once stood among the graves in the churchyard.
35:49There's a drawing
35:50made from a 19th century survey
35:53of the churchyard.
35:55It's fantastic.
35:56Just fantastic, isn't it?
35:57You can see all the different burial plots
36:00or all the layers are marked out here
36:02and the names of these people
36:05are ancient names
36:06that govern Rowan, Anderson.
36:08It's a real social history, isn't it?
36:10Weavers of Govan, weavers, Dalgleish.
36:13I can't believe it, can you really?
36:15Oh, that is too much, isn't it?
36:17The thing that's so good about it
36:18is it shows you the location
36:20of the old recumbent stones.
36:22So these kind of pale brown rectangles.
36:26We know where at the end of the 19th century
36:28all the sculpture was located in the churchyard.
36:31The stuff was never lost
36:33to be discovered, if you like.
36:35It's always been known.
36:43It's cathedral-like in proportion.
36:46It is, isn't it?
36:46The cathedral of Govan.
36:49These are Christian monuments,
36:51but their interlace and animal ornament
36:53come from much older artistic traditions
36:56of North Britain.
36:58They're all different.
36:59And most of them have evidence being used.
37:06In the sanctuary,
37:07they've placed their most precious object,
37:10which is this sarcophagus.
37:13It's carved all over.
37:16And nothing really prepares you
37:18for this idea of the interlace treatment,
37:20and then there's this kind of figurative sculpture
37:22that the hunting scene.
37:23It's unique in Scotland.
37:25There's only one other in Britain
37:26that's even close to it.
37:29We have burials, Christian burials,
37:32from the late 5th or early 6th centuries,
37:35which were really the beginnings
37:36of Christianity in Scotland.
37:37This wasn't meant to go underground.
37:39This was meant to be on display.
37:41It's a shrine.
37:42It's a shrine.
37:42It's a shrine, absolutely.
37:43Yeah, yeah.
37:44No question.
37:44A great, dark-aged, sacred place.
37:47It is an amazing fact
37:49about Govan's history, isn't it?
37:51Well, it's very poorly appreciated
37:53even by many people in Govan.
37:55That, you know, they are at a place
37:57where Christianity's been practiced
37:59for 1,500 years.
38:04So the ancestors of the Scots
38:06and Welsh and the Cornish, too,
38:08were the people of Roman Britain and Ireland.
38:11But who were the English?
38:14Well, their ancestors weren't British,
38:16and they'd never been Roman.
38:18They were immigrants from Jutland, Denmark and Germany.
38:22And they were the Anglo-Saxons.
38:26This is the Wash.
38:28Lincolnshire on the horizon,
38:30and we're here on the Norfolk side.
38:33You can see why this stretch of water
38:35was so attractive
38:36to those first Anglo-Saxon immigrants.
38:39It gave them sheltered anchorage
38:41after the gales of the North Sea.
38:43And some of the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlements
38:46are found here
38:47on this stretch of the Norfolk coast.
38:49This is one of them.
38:52Snettisham.
38:54First clues in the place name.
38:56The Ham or the village of Snettie.
39:01Maybe that's the name
39:02of the first Anglo-Saxon
39:04who settled just here,
39:06under that great hill over there.
39:10That's where those first Anglo-Saxons
39:13put down their roots.
39:14They came here, one imagines,
39:17with all the optimism of immigrants
39:20anywhere and at any time,
39:23thrown up on strange shores.
39:25But these were the ancestors of the English.
39:40To the native Britons,
39:42the Anglo-Saxon immigrants
39:43were the lowest of the low,
39:45fit only for the most menial jobs.
39:49In the 400s,
39:51they made their way across
39:52to the beaches of Eastern Britain.
39:54In the 500s,
39:56they kept on coming.
39:58Only ever a minority,
40:00they maybe added just 10%
40:02to the population of Britain.
40:04But they brought with them
40:05a new culture
40:06and, above all,
40:08a new language.
40:10And when we first picked them up
40:12in written records
40:13in the 600s,
40:15two things marked them out.
40:17Their poetry
40:18and their sense of humour.
40:23I am a wondrous thing,
40:27a great hope
40:28or expectation
40:28for women,
40:29something that women
40:30look forward to.
40:36Rooted, I stand on a high bed.
40:40I'm shaggy down below.
40:58And the answer to the riddle
41:00is an onion.
41:01An onion.
41:02An onion, an onion.
41:03What else could it be?
41:06That's yes!
41:09We still find amusing today,
41:11don't we?
41:11There's this long tradition
41:12of slightly saucy humour.
41:15Yeah, and riddles can
41:18almost undermine
41:19or subvert
41:21conventional views of things,
41:23can't they?
41:23There is something more
41:24to a riddle than just a joke.
41:26They certainly liked
41:27to explore
41:28the idea
41:29of expressing
41:30an idea
41:31in completely
41:34different terms.
41:35The sun
41:36is God's candle.
41:38The sea
41:39is the gannet's bath.
41:46And words
41:47carry not just meanings
41:49but values
41:50and ways of seeing.
41:52Even now,
41:53our key words
41:54in English
41:55for feelings
41:56and relationships
41:57are Anglo-Saxon.
42:03It may be
42:04the greatest legacy
42:05of the English
42:06to the world.
42:09But they're not English yet.
42:12There'd been
42:13Angles and Saxons
42:14in Britain
42:15before the end of Rome
42:16doing the menial jobs,
42:18security guards,
42:19labourers,
42:20cleaners.
42:21Their first settlements
42:22were just inland
42:23from the coast
42:24and one of the biggest
42:26yet found
42:26is here at Sedgford
42:27in Norfolk.
42:29We approached here
42:30really with two questions
42:31to answer
42:31what is the size
42:33of the settlement
42:33and also
42:34what's the status
42:34and we are now
42:36getting insights
42:37that we have got
42:38something very large
42:40that's going on here.
42:42This is becoming
42:43a very significant
42:44sight indeed.
42:47What's so wonderful
42:48about this
42:48is that the community
42:50itself is providing
42:52us with all this
42:52new information
42:53about our past.
42:54Well, that's important
42:55to the project.
42:56Part of the founding
42:57ethos of the project
42:58was to have
42:59community engagement
43:00and, you know,
43:01it's their heritage.
43:03A lot of the people
43:04that you see
43:05working on the trench,
43:06they may have
43:06very strong linkages
43:07indeed to what
43:08they're uncovering.
43:09They probably do.
43:11Yeah, they probably do.
43:12They out with the family.
43:14Oh, fantastic.
43:15So where have you come from?
43:16Are you local?
43:17Snetsham.
43:17Oh, Snetsham.
43:18Oh, right,
43:19so you are local.
43:19Yeah, very local.
43:20This is all part of your part.
43:21Right of this bit here, yeah.
43:24To them, it would have been,
43:26where can they get a food source?
43:28Where can they survive it,
43:29isn't it?
43:29Whereas we kind of pick
43:30where the nearest posh school is
43:32or whatever.
43:34Those would have been like,
43:35how can we survive?
43:37Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:39A first clue to the early
43:41Anglo-Saxons is their diet.
43:43Well, we've got so many now.
43:45What we do is we count them
43:46and weigh them
43:47and we can't actually archive them
43:48all because there's so many.
43:50They lived a bare subsistence life.
43:54The oysters we eat now
43:56are really small and tender,
43:58but these would have been
43:59really meaty
43:59and actually quite disgusting,
44:01so I'm not too sure
44:02why they were eating them,
44:03in my opinion,
44:04just from a modern point of view.
44:06Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:08So while the Christian Britons
44:09were still writing Latin
44:11and importing goods
44:12from the Mediterranean,
44:13the pagan Saxon immigrants
44:15survived on oysters
44:16cooked in crude pots.
44:22It's complete.
44:23It's only a fragment
44:24out of the rim.
44:25It's hand-fired,
44:27but also you can see
44:28it's very, very crudely made,
44:30very handmade.
44:32Characteristic shape
44:33for an early migration period
44:36Anglo-Saxon pot.
44:38It's a very rough and ready fabric
44:40made and fired
44:41in the same sort of way
44:42as Iron Age pottery.
44:43And this is one of the things
44:44that makes early Anglo-Saxon pottery
44:46really difficult to date.
44:47You really need
44:48a good big chunk,
44:49especially if you've got
44:51something that's plain like this
44:53to be able to work out
44:54the actual vessel shape of it.
44:56And a rough guess at the date,
44:58we won't hold you to it,
45:00of course, but...
45:00A rough guess,
45:02I would say
45:02this is probably
45:035th century
45:04rather than 6th.
45:05Are we talking about
45:07a small migration?
45:09Oh, don't give me that.
45:10This is the eternal question,
45:12is it?
45:13Are a few people coming over
45:14or are there a lot of people coming over?
45:15Where do things stand at present
45:17among you experts?
45:18I mean...
45:20I think we're perhaps
45:21veering back to more people
45:22coming over,
45:23but it's still
45:25exceptionally difficult to tell
45:26and I think there is still
45:27a big amount of an elite takeover
45:30followed up by
45:31large-scale migration under them.
45:36But large-scale migration
45:38brought conflict,
45:40fights over land.
45:45The Anglo-Saxon poets
45:47remembered one savage battle
45:48with the Britons,
45:50the Welsh as they called them,
45:51here at Stoke Wood
45:53in Oxfordshire,
45:54behind the Charwell Valley
45:56services on the M40.
45:59It was fought with great fury
46:01and heavy losses
46:02on both sides,
46:03said the Anglo-Saxon chronicle
46:05later.
46:07But the Saxons won
46:09and took many villages
46:10and great booty.
46:13They pushed on westwards
46:15into the lands
46:16of the Britons.
46:30And in the end,
46:32says the British historian
46:33Gildas,
46:34the Saxon fire licked Britain
46:36from sea to sea.
46:41But what of the Britons,
46:43or the Cymru as they called themselves?
46:45Well, they never forgot
46:46the loss of lowland Britain
46:48to the Anglo-Saxons.
46:52The earliest Welsh poetry
46:54also tells of wars
46:56with the English,
46:57what the Welsh later called
46:58the matter of Britain.
47:01The matter of Britain.
47:27The language, it defines us, is that which makes you special or different.
47:35Our children criticised myself and my wife for being born in Shrewsbury, in England.
47:42And they said, why didn't you move to Welshpool or Newtown for our birth?
47:46I said, just a minute.
47:48And I put an old map of West Mercia out on the table and I said, look, Shrewsbury and Shropshire
47:54used to be part of Penguern.
47:57Welsh territory, we've loaned it to England for the time being.
48:01They were satisfied that they were born on a piece of Welsh land in Britain, Pradine.
48:11It would take a long time to learn to live together.
48:15In truth, we're still learning.
48:27But from around the year 600, the Anglo-Saxon tribes began to be converted to Christianity by missionaries from Rome
48:35and saints from Ireland from the West.
48:38And now small English kingdoms arose, Mercians and East Angles.
48:43And up here in the North-East, the Northumbrians.
48:48This is a great place to sense that mysterious process by which part of Roman Britain became Anglo-Saxon England
48:56and the lowland Britons became the English.
49:03The mouth of the Tyne, after the Romans, became the heartland of a small Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian kingdom.
49:12You can see the ruins of the Priory on the promontory.
49:15There, inside the ruins of the Roman settlement, a stone church became the burial ground of the early Northumbrian kings.
49:22And their royal residence stood on this promontory.
49:27The Roman fort of Arbea, the fort of the Arabs, had new masters.
49:38I suppose for early Anglo-Saxon rulers, a great defended stone-walled centre like this was a very useful place.
49:48Yes, and also just the prestige of stone buildings,
49:52especially with the church coming in,
49:54that they're re-importing Roman methods of construction, way of life and so on.
50:01We've got a mixture of different objects here.
50:06This is a gaming piece, which has been made out of antler, but this one's been dyed green.
50:12Gosh.
50:15An Anglo-Saxon, you think?
50:17Yes, for a sixth century or later.
50:19God, how intriguing.
50:21Then this, this is possibly Anglo-Saxon.
50:24I would like it to be that.
50:25Anglo-Saxon is a bone stylus for when they sort of reintroduce the writing on tablets with the church.
50:34Gosh.
50:35What a beautiful artefact that is, isn't it?
50:38Beautiful, isn't it?
50:39Board games and writing in the Anglo-Saxon period might suggest a high status place.
50:46Yeah, exactly, yes, yeah, definitely, yes.
50:49Tantalising.
50:50Yes.
50:50Yeah.
50:57And here in the 600s, the first Christian English civilisation developed, especially in two places famous in the British story,
51:07Jarrow and Wearmouth.
51:10It's just a lovely church, you know, and it's just so full of history.
51:14Actually, I know a lot of churches are full of history, but you've got to remember, this dates back to
51:20the 7th century.
51:22But this was one of the first stone churches built.
51:25Yeah.
51:26It would have only been up to the pillars, so it would have been a long, narrow church when it
51:31was built.
51:32Victorians came along later and added that side on.
51:36This gives you a wonderful idea of what a 7th century church looked like.
51:42You see the great long, tall, narrow buildings, modelled after those early Roman basilicas that you can still see in
51:48Rome.
51:49Small windows, not these huge ones that the Victorians liked.
51:53And to do it, they brought in architects, masons, I suppose that's what they mean by cementarii, craftsmen of all
52:01kinds.
52:04And the men and women who made that first English golden age, like Chealfrith, Biscop and the historian Bede, are
52:11still local heroes here.
52:13And the one who does the donkey work, Chobrith, who builds the churches.
52:20I'm a little bit in awe of Biscop. He was a wonderful man.
52:25And he had a vision. There would have been no Bede without Biscop.
52:29And Bede was a thunderling man.
52:31Yes, he was.
52:31Bede came to this church at the age of 7, stopped when he was 13, and he spent the rest
52:36of his life at Jarrow.
52:36So, really, who does he belong to? You know, really, he belongs to two of us.
52:41We had the wonderful discovery that the plaster, the original plaster, was on the monastery walls of Wermath Jarrow, was
52:46red and white stripes.
52:47Yes, it was. Yes.
52:49Well, there you are, you see. These local, tribal identities are still so strong.
52:57A few miles up the coast from Wermath is its sister church of Jarrow, where Bede was buried.
53:04The dedication of the Church of St Paul, 15th year of King Egfrid, and the 4th year of Chalfrith the
53:11Abbot,
53:12and founder under God's name of the same church, one monastery and two halves.
53:18My story is, he's still here.
53:23He lived here, and he's buried here.
53:27He died on the steps there, didn't he?
53:29And I think he said, no, I think he's still here.
53:33So, really, what I'm looking forward to, whether I'm still alive or not,
53:38they're talking about lifting up this floor.
53:41And I think he said, yes, you've got that fall, and I'll bet you he's still here.
53:47And that's my story.
53:54And, of course, Bede is still here.
53:57For he's one of the people who made us who we are.
54:02And we still carry him with us.
54:05That's how history works.
54:11From Bede's time, right down to the shipyards and collieries of Tyne and Weir,
54:17and the memories of the Jarrow March,
54:20that's why this is one of the key places in the British story.
54:26For it was here that Bede wrote the first great book on British history and identity.
54:33And this is it.
54:35It's no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important books in the story of Britain.
54:43It's one of the two earliest manuscripts of Bede's history,
54:47maybe the earliest even, around 737.
54:51And Bede calls his book a Historia Ecclesiastica of the Gens Anglorum,
55:00an ecclesiastical history of the English nation or people.
55:07Bede uses this word, the Angli, for English, all the way through the book.
55:13And it comes to include all the people living within roughly what we now call England.
55:20It's a very, very important idea.
55:22The idea that there was a single Gens Anglorum, an English people.
55:29It's going to be a defining idea in English history.
55:32But it's really much more than that.
55:34As you can see, when you turn to the opening, the first word of the book,
55:43it's not England, but Britain.
55:46Britain.
55:47Britain is an island in the ocean, formerly known as Albion.
56:04And then, lying off the shores of Europe, across from Germany and France and Spain and the greater
56:14part of Europe, gives a length of 800 miles, width of 200, not including the deep promontories
56:24and bays that stick out into the ocean.
56:30Oceano infinito faces out to the boundless ocean, where the Orkney Islands are situated.
56:41Bede then gives us a description of Britain, a land rich in forests and fields and natural
56:49resources, in rivers full of fish.
56:51The model for this description is in the late Roman historians, but the real model is the
56:58Bible, the book of Genesis.
57:01Britain is an earthly paradise.
57:14At this time, he says, five languages are spoken in the island of Britain.
57:21Anglorum, English, British, by which he means Welsh, Scottish, by which he means Irish, Pictish,
57:31French, and Latin, which is the language that links us in communis.
57:42At the very end, he describes the book simply as the history of our island and its people.
57:55We found the floor, which was mainly flint and clay.
58:02Really, really good.
58:03No, it's a real achievement.
58:06A little river, the same in the way, a goblet or something like that.
58:092,000 years old.
58:10Did you find any interesting things?
58:13Lots of interesting things.
58:15Lots.
58:16We found masses of pottery of the Romans.
58:19A Stafford work.
58:20Oh, wow!
58:21LAUGHTER
58:25Thanks very, very much.
58:26You were great.
58:27And we'll be back, I'm afraid.
58:30APPLAUSE
58:30And we'll go over the rainbow, way up high.
58:40And love, dreams that you dare do.
58:46Say now love, but bye, bye.
58:51Bye.
58:52Bye.
58:54Bye.
58:54Bye.
58:54Bye.
58:55Bye.
58:56Bye.
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