[SunkenCiv]

How do you turn a 120-year-old oak tree into part of a Saxon hall -- entirely by hand? 

In Part 1, we follow Butser Ancient Farm's highly skilled treewright as he hand-converts a huge oak log into the timbers for the front wall of a reconstructed Saxon hall, using traditional tools, techniques and skills that bring us as close as possible to the world of the Saxon craftsman. 

The reconstruction is based on archaeological evidence from a Saxon hall excavated at Chalton Down in the 1970s by archaeologist Barry Cunliffe. At Butser Ancient Farm, that evidence is being brought back to life through experimental archaeology -- not simply asking what Saxon buildings looked like, but discovering what it actually takes to build one. 

From Oak Tree to Saxon Hall 
Archaeology Brought to Life | 11:12 
Butser Ancient Farm | 10.1K subscribers | 221,632 views | September 24, 2026

 

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YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.

[mass55th]

Thanks for posting this video. I absolutely love Phil Harding. I've missed him on Time Team since it came back, but watched a YouTube video this summer of Time Team's Podcast when Helen Geek interviewed Phil about his recent dig at Salisbury Plain.

I tried to find the link to the video, but had no luck, but here's an article on that dig:

Archaeologists uncover site 500 years older than Stonehenge