Secrets brought to the surface at Warwickshire site

A CGI recreation of the manor/Wessex Archaeology

SOMETIMES you get the very best view at ground level, if not three or four metres beneath it...

It's a summery Sunday morning and I'm stood in a muddy trench where centuries of soil have been stripped back to expose what remains of the ancient building.

Hundreds of years ago the curve in the river near Coleshill had been chosen as the site for an ambitious Elizabethan estate.

And generations later, after the walls had fallen in and fields had enveloped the ruins, the same spot found itself slap-bang in the centre of the HS2 rail route.

This already feels like disputed turf - a crossing place between the old and new. Turn one way and you can see the imposing spire of the Medieval church, while on another horizon stand the tower blocks of not so distant North Solihull.

But the looming arrival of tracks and pylons and 200mph trains means an urgent need to catalogue the site before it is swallowed by development.

Surveys started with the historical equivalent of ultrasound scans, intending to expose what lies beneath the soil ahead of the crews in high-viz jackets moving in.

But it was only when they started to roll back the farmland that teams became aware of just how busy the history of the site was.

This land was old even when the foundations I'm now facing were new; here once there were Iron Age roundhouses, then a Roman marching camp and later still a Medieval manor. 

Maxstoke Castle, elsewhere in Warwickshire

Local landowners who wanted a larger, more imposing property - stamping their status on the surrounding area - were just the latest to make their home here.

I've previously seen CGIs of what the building may have looked like and today a photo is shown of the still-standing Maxstoke Castle, another aide to imagining the property in its pomp.

That said it's the exposed stones, expertly stacked and red as Mars, which help the most in reconstructing the past.  

Some of the sandstone blocks which serve as the foundations are so large and smooth they're more reminiscent of something from Minecraft than a moated manor.

Other sections are rather rougher; the facing stones having been prised away by penny-pinching builders eager to reuse them in other nearby structures.

Some found their way into the crumbling remains of a barn a few yards away, while others were hauled off to incorporate into the village's parish church.

Among what survives, somewhat ironically, is the exit chute for the manor's garderobe - which took toilet waste from the upper floors to the moat which encircled the property.

One imagines that for all the grandeur of the Tudor gardens - with their box hedges and perfumed borders - the spot where I'm standing may have smelt somewhat ripe on a July day such as this!

The manor's derelict barn building.

But for the beaming archaeologist talking us through the history, the fact is that the primitive facilities are something of a treasure trove.

Other than the obvious, plenty of other detritus disappeared into the water hundreds of years ago and is now being pulled, sometimes in almost pristine condition, from the newly excavated ditch.

The anaerobic earth - starved of the oxygen which causes many items to rot away - means that leather shoes and other artefacts have emerged from the dirt in immaculate condition.
Leaves which fell thousands of sunsets ago are uncovered fresh - green even - as if they dropped just yesterday.

But what do the building and its legacy actually tell us about the lives of the men and women who lived and worked there. 

In the case of the craftsmen who built the walls there are the small, almost arcane "mason's marks" carved into the blocks; the signatures of the men who built this place, lingering long after their names have been lost.

The names of the rich and powerful families who paid their wages have, perhaps unsurprisingly, survived in more prominent places.

The Mountfords, who once held sway here, lent their name to a pub just down the road Kingshurst.

After Lord Simon Mountford's part in an unsuccessful rebellion in the late 1400s - for which he was executed - the riverside site passed into the hands of another Simon, Lord Digby, whose name many will know from a former secondary school in Chelmsley Wood.

It is interesting that one-time aristocrats continued to exert influence on the very different types of estates built on former farmland from the 1950s onwards.

Although the wheel of history continues to turn and both the hostelry and the school have themselves been pulled down in the past 15 years or so.

As for the future, it's a sad fact that what has come to surface after the years beneath the turf is about to disappear. Names will continue to be recycled, drawings and photos will be sent to the archive, but the sandstone blocks back in the sunshine after an age underground will vanish once again.

• Artefacts and information from the dig will be on show at a drop-in session held at Coleshill Town Hall on July 19, part of a wider programme of events for Britain's Festival of Archaeology.