Extraodinary find during excavation dig in Sussex

Excavation of the historic site in Priory Park, Chichester on Saturday 1st June '24

Transcript

00:00Okay, so my name's James Kenny and I'm Chichester District Council's Archaeology Officer and I'm

00:05here with a team from Chichester District Archaeology Society on the seventh season of a

00:12series of excavations in Priory Park in Chichester and this year we're investigating the

00:18the buildings that were associated with the Franciscan friary that

00:22occupy the park of which the Guildhall is the last remaining bit and some very exciting

00:31Norman period structures that are appearing to the to its east. So we've got the end wall

00:40of a building which is part of the Franciscan friary

00:46and then beyond that we have walls which are crossing the ditch of the Norman Mott which stood

00:54in the corner of Priory Park prior to the arrival of the friars. So Norman Mott and Bailey Castle

01:00built by Roger Montgomery who also built Arundel which survives as now as a rather denuded reduced

01:09mound a grassy mound in the corner of the park would have been about four or five times bigger

01:15with an enormous ditch around it from which they got the material to build the mound.

01:21The real excitement this year is that we started to find very exciting structures associated with

01:26the Norman crossing of that ditch. We have a limestone wall which we think is riveting a

01:33causeway at some crossing and we have even as we speak we are finding the remains of a bridge

01:42across the ditch. Stupendous architecture, lovely enormous tight-fitting stones on the corner

01:51almost certainly carved stone from Normandy and within the last half an hour we started

01:58discovering the arch lies within and underneath the bridge. Really a tremendous discovery.