On an archaeological dig along the route of HS two,
archaeologists haven't covered signs of occupation from the
prehistoric from the nineteenth century. Early excavations
revealed signs of bronze age, iron age, and Roman people, but
what archaeologists didn't expect to find with the
well-preserved remains of an extensive Elizabeth and Garden.
With comparisons to Kenilworth Castle and even Hampton Court
Palace, our team of archaeologists led by Wessex
archaeology and revealed ornamental Elizabethan
Gardens of national significance. So John me as we
explore these tremendous gardens and the aristocratic
families who walked in them as we uncover the history of
Colehill's past.
Hi, Paul. Uh we're on the site now of Coleshill. Could you
tell me a little bit more about why we're here today? We're on
the site we now know of Coleshill Manor uh which uh stood a
great house stood until about eighteen hundred. But quite how
long there had been a house on the site. We're only now
discovering. Uh Wessex archaeology came here 6 months
ago or so because on air photographs we could see what
appeared to be an eight-sided moat. But we've got nothing
like that anywhere else in England. So quite what it
represented was anybody's guess. But when we got into the
site what we found was that that moat was dug around the
site of Coleshill Manor where the Lord of the Manor lived at
Coles Hill in about 1,600 uh and it surrounded his house and
it was a big site the the interior of the moat is about
100 meters from side to side big eight-sided moat around it
um and within that apart from the house Wessex found the
remains a very very well preserved formal gardens and
did we know that these gardens were even gonna be here not at
all not at all it's a remarkably poorly documented
site and that's one of the great frustrations actually
we've got three or four illustrations from about 1,800
right at the end of the site's life showing the house from a
couple of sides and we get a glimpse of a part of the garden
with two garden pavilions um but otherwise there are no
written accounts nobody that said I came to see Mister
Digby's wonderful gardens near Coles Hill yesterday. We
haven't got financial accounts for the garden's construction.
We haven't got maps and plans which so often you get for
great gardens like this absolutely nothing. So the
answers have had to come from the archaeology itself. So just
how special is the archaeology on this site? Because it looks
absolutely fantastic. It's quite exceptional. I've been
involved in archaeology for almost 50 years now and I've
never known a site like it. Why is that? Two reasons. Firstly,
we've got this this phase, this period with the construction of
an eight-sided moat around a house, about 1,600 the the the
family records the genealogy suggests that the money for the
construction of that great site and the enormous gardens
associated with it came from the marriage of Sir Robert
Digby who was then the head of the family with one of the
wealthiest women in Ireland. A lady called Letis uh and we
suspect that it was the the dowry the money that she
brought to the family that uh enabled the construction of the
octagonal moat, the Great Gardens, presumably a new house
within. Um something that proclaimed Sir Robert Digby's
new status in the West Midlands. Garden excavations of
this scale in England and where we've had this quality of
preservation. I can only think of three other examples that
compares with Coleshill, Northampton Court Palace, North
Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire and North Kettleworth Castle in
Warwickshire. Not so very far away. This is as big as any of
those and frankly the quality of preservation here is
actually better. That says how special these excavations are.