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Rory and Paul begin their pub dig journey at the Command House pub in Chatham, Kent, digging through 400 years of naval history in search of Henry VIII’s lost Tudor docks and relics from the time of Nelson and the British Empire.
The team are in Alfriston, East Sussex, hunting for vintage contraband. Today Alfriston is a picture postcard pretty village, but it was once the centre of the infamous Sussex badlands. Our pair’s journey back in time takes in some unexpected finds along the way, among them butcher’s bones, ossified poo and artefacts dating from before Stonehenge. As they dig down below the 20th-century concrete in the beer garden, the team begin to turn up piece after piece of Victorian junk, revealing the life of the 19th-century inhabitants. There are farmed oyster shells, simple pottery and sawn bone – evidence of butchery, the day job of a famous local smuggler, Stanton Collins. However, there is no smuggler’s loot. So they turn to examining the building itself. Tales of custom-built escape routes for smugglers to evade customs officers abound, so the team scour the architecture for evidence.
The team uncover the world of medieval pilgrimages and a recipe for nettle beer along the way.
Rory and Paul head to Ye Olde Reine Deer Inn, Banbury, Oxfordshire. The town was razed to the ground in some of the most devastating fighting of the Civil War of the 1640s, and the pub - Oliver Cromwell's headquarters - is the only pre-Civil War building left standing.
