Time Team S12E09 - Lost Centuries of St Osyth - St. Osyth, Essex

In the 7th century Viking pirates sailed up a muddy Essex creek. Legend has it they captured a lonely nun who when offered her 'modesty or her mortality', chose to die. The nun then carried her severed head up the hill to her church where she collapsed. Where she lay a spring bubbled up. The nun was St Osyth, the wife of the Saxon King of Essex, who chose the veil rather than consummating her marriage. The site of her death became a shrine and a busy settlement grew up. In the 12th century Richard de Belmais, Bishop of London, founded a large Augustinian Priory in the middle of the village. This became a powerful establishment, which by the Dissolution in 1539 was one of the wealthiest Augustinian Monasteries in Europe. A few years ago a local boatbuilder noticed some decayed timbers sticking out of the mud in St Osyth Creek. The tides gradually revealed more of these timbers, which are on a significant bend in the channel. These timbers could be the remains of a medieval wharf which served the town in its early days, but they could also be the key to a much bigger mystery. The present town seems to date to the 15th century but the famous Priory is much older. There must have been a busy settlement servicing it - so where was the original town of St Osyth? Time Team have three days to redraw the map of this picturesque town on the Essex coast.