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I'll put more up later hopefully but I thought I'd post this just in case I don't get time to.

Excerpt from Transcript of “The History Boys”
Series 14, Episode 4


Host Wulfric Baeker is walking down the side of a hill. Steep mountains can be seen in the background. He’s wearing a fleecy coat and rubberised boots

WB: Now, I know we said that when we came to the western side of the Hrybeorgs we were looking for sixteenth century finds, mostly relating to the constant battles between competing lords of that time but Athelstan has found something a lot lot earlier.

He stops at a trench dug in the side of the hill. A man is in the bottom of it, his hair is long but receding, hidden under a wide brimmed hat, he’s wearing a thick fleecy jacket and toughened fabric shorts. His boots are caked in mud. Unlike the formal pronunciation of Baeker, Hardin speaks in a thickened Wessex accent. He stands up in the trench, though his head barely reaches Baeker’s knee, so Baeker crouches down

Athelstan Hardin: Yeah Wulf, what we’ve found here is human remains, buried in a shallow grave and although over time earth has shifted, regular rainfall has slowly made what would normally be much deeper down compared to where we were looking, actually be near the surface. Shows you never know whats under your feet I guess

He laughs and holds up a length of severely rusted metal and moves it over in his hand

AH: It’d seem he was a soldier judging by this, and the remains of the boss from the center of what would’ve been a shield. Which suggests it's not from the period we came up this hill to study as they were mostly using metal shields at that time, but not impossible. The sheer amount of decay and damage to the sword suggests its much older however. Then we found this

He puts the sword down carefully and holds up a coin.

AH: I’ve asked some of the others and what we have here is a Scilling, believe it or not and on it we can see, on one side, In old Anglish, Dunholm, so its from the far side of the mountains at least.

The screen changes as Athelstan continues. It brings up the image of the damaged coin next to what it would’ve originally looked like and effects highlight what is written on

AH (Continued): We have two figures holding hands, both with crowns on. I’ll admit I wasn’t familiar with this, but Esma was and she tells me it is a represenation of Queen Aethfelflaed and her King-Consort Oswiu.

Cut back to AH and WB

AH: They’ve found a fair few of these when digging in the royal gardens in Dunholm.

WB: While Digging up the King’s rosebushes. Gosh, hope she didn’t get in trouble!

AH: Turns out the king’s love for horticulture is just about trumped by ‘is love for his family history.

WB: Oh thank the heavens,

They both share a laugh

WB: So this is Aethelflaed The first queen of Angland. She of the chariot, spear and other romantic notions,

AH: Exactly. An’er husband Oswiu of Eorforwic who also served as her main general.

WB: So this is from what, the 8th century?

AH: Exactly. What’s interesting here is coinage wasn’t massively widely used, especially Anglish coinage in what was for much of a century, a Brittonic area and so what’s probably the case is this soldier was paid either by the Anglish Nobility and or perhaps or, he comes from further east, perhaps modern day Burmecia, Deira or Eorforwic.

Based on this, we’ve got an idea. We’ll have to date the bones and perhaps dig some more before we can confirm this. This soldier may have been from the army of Oswiu that crossed these mountains in 742 to conquer Rheged, the Brittonic Kingdom that stretched from the Hryborgs to the coast. As they marched through this area its easy to imagine them being ambushed and perhaps he fell to Britons and was buried before they continued their march into Rheged. We shall see.

WB: That’s fantastic! So we came looking for Black powder weapons or big cavalry battles and found an eighth century soldier from the earliest days of Angland.