Time Team S10E11 - Not a Blot on the Landscape - Castle Howard, Yorkshire

Time Team travels to Castle Howard to look for the lost village of Henderskelf, which was demolished around 1700 to make way for the new castle constructed on the estate and its formal gardens. But the exact placement of the village proves difficult to pin down. As the geophysical survey is unable to help much, the team has to rely on a map from 1694 and visible lumps and bumps. However, geophysics comes up with better results regarding their search for the lost village church of Henderskelf. Stewart advances their investigation significantly when he discovers a more detailed sketch of the village on the back of another old map from c. 1700 in the archives of Castle Howard, but the process of scaling it onto a modern map proves challenging. When this is done, the team realizes that some of their trenches have missed target buildings altogether. Armed with all this evidence, the archaeologists finally get to grips with the elusive Henderskelf – which seems to have been utterly removed between 1700 and 1720 when the new castle was erected. Archaeological or historical period(s): Stuart period