The Real Knights of the Round Table: A Time Team Special

Digging up a piece of history
25 February 2008
The Newcastle Chronicle & Journal

The regular series of Time Team delights lovers of history with every episode, but occasionally something so marvellous comes to light it requires a spin-off programme.

The Real Knights of the Round Table: A Time Team Special is just such a show, and will have devoted fans jumping for joy.

In 2006, the team undertook one of their most ambitious live projects ever - a series of digs at three royal palaces, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Holyrood Palace. The event was timed to coincide with the Queen's 80th birthday celebrations, but no one could have guessed what fabulous gifts were waiting to be discovered.

At Windsor, the oldest inhabited royal residence in the world, the experts went in search of a fabled lost building - Edward III's Round Table.

As we discovered at the time, thanks to boffin Richard Barber, such buildings were places where entertainment took place, from jousting to music.

Steve Platt said: "Only the foundation trench of the Round Table building survives, but we can deduce what it was like from the detailed building accounts in the National Archives. We also have archaeological evidence the building was 200 feet in diameter - bigger than the Pantheon in Rome."

As if that wasn't staggering enough, the assembled experts firmly believed they had uncovered the remains of one of England's earliest theatres, constructed hundreds of years before Shakespeare and The Globe were even twinkles in history's eye.

Tony Robinson was disappointed not to have been on the lawn at Windsor as the evidence of the Round Table building's existence slowly emerged, but here, he has his chance to get up close and personal with the enigmatic structure.

He and the cameras are back to pick up the story and the questions are stacking up. How did Edward build it? Why did it only stand for 50 years? And what's it got to do with King Arthur?

In his quest to find answers to these and other riddles, Robinson investigates the Middle Ages, that much-romanticised era, where chivalry was king.

Edward III used that to his advantage, ensuring he had his knights' support by weaving together well-loved myths with his own culture.

He took the legend of Arthur and created his own order of men, who also sat at the fabled round table. He selected 300 soldiers, who were due to meet in 1344, but by that time, the English monarch was caught up in affairs with old enemy France.

After putting down that challenge, Edward abandoned plans for the massive table - but kept faith with the ideals behind it, and created the Order of the Garter, an elite group that still exists to this day.

Looking at the few piles of stone left behind in the ground, it all seems a bit far-fetched. But Edward's ambitions for this grand building went far beyond a simple place to gather.

The Time Team experts set out to recreate the atmosphere the place would have generated, as more than 300 people gathered to watch entertaining spectacles.