Introduction

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In 2002 battlefield archaeologist, Tim Sutherland and metal detectorist, Simon Richardson were invited to investigate the accepted battlefield site for Granada Television as guests of the Centre Historique Médiéval d'Azincourt. The Agincourt Battlefield Archaeology Project was thus initiated. Sutherland and Richardson had already carried out successful archaeological research on the battlefield at Towton, North Yorkshire (1461), locating over 1,000 artefacts from the battle, including hundreds of medieval arrowheads. in addition to many graves of former combatants. It was therefore considered likely that similar prospection techniques could locate evidence of the battle of Agincourt. During the initial Agincourt fieldwork, several of the fields still contained crops and were therefore not accessible to be surveyed, but enough fields were available for a reasonable archaeological sample of the battlefield to be undertaken using metal detectors. This was carried out by walking up and down the field under investigation in a systematic manner using the lines of crops or soil marks as a guide.

 

Around 100 diagnostic artefacts were recorded from a total of many hundreds of modern and insignificant artefacts recovered over a period of several days. These included 32 coins, ranging in date from the Roman period to the twentieth century. However, even though a silver Roman coin was found, suggesting that very early artefacts still survived in the soil, no medieval coins were recovered. Projectiles discovered consisted almost entirely of examples of ballistic ammunition, comprising three small lead round shot and several cylindrical heads of bullets and cases, obviously deriving from later periods. Examples of post-medieval silver and copper-alloy military and civilian buttons were also located, as well as evidence of prehistoric surface finds, such as a flint tool core. Additionally, there were many sherds of pottery dating from the Roman period to the twentieth century. However, there was a significant dearth of medieval pottery across the area searched. This is unusual given that this is an agricultural landscape lying between two medieval villages. A possible interpretation is that this land was not cultivated in the medieval period. The abundance of artefacts from many different periods, other than medieval, suggests that if medieval artefacts had been present on the site, then the survey should have located at least some of them.

 

Only one artefact was located that, at the time, might possibly have derived from the medieval battle. This looked at first like an arrowhead but after being radiographed by the Royal Armouries, Leeds, this was considered unlikely as it lacked a socket. It is remarkably similar to an artefact found during Woodford’s excavations of the graves from the battle which he described as an arrowhead in his first letter. A question must therefore be raised as to the correct interpretation of the Woodford arrowhead. Unfortunately its whereabouts is unknown, if indeed it still exists.

 

It is important to state that the metal detecting survey did not find any evidence of medieval conflict. In fact, although the results of this very brief survey should not be seen as conclusive, it did not find any artefact that could definitely be dated to the medieval period.

 

During the same visit in 2002, two geophysical surveys were also undertaken along three sides of the modern enclosure surrounding the Calvaire. These comprised an area earth resistivity survey and an area magnetic survey. These areas were made up of fourteen 20 x 20 metre grid squares for each survey.

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In 2002, a resistivity survey identified several features, including what appeared to be a large rectilinear enclosure or building in the field outside the enclosure to the north. The magnetic survey also identified a very large buried magnetic anomaly in the same area.

 

In 2007 the inside of the enclosure was also investigated with geophysical surveys and several small excavations undertaken.

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In 2007 the ‘structure’ like anomaly was investigated but no obvious evidence remained other than very compacted soil in the same location. The magnetic anomaly was also investigated revealing a large and broken pipe from a vertical bore drill which lay more than one metre below the surface. The pipe, which had obviously fractured off, had been left in the ground and reburied. Conversations with local inhabitants subsequently revealed that this had been the location of a drilling rig set up in the 1960s to apparently ‘search for oil’. The ‘structure’ comprised intensely compressed earth in the region of the anomaly which suggested that some former structure once existed in the location. It is possible that this might have been a compressed earthen bank associated with the drilling rig.

 

As Woodford’s 1818 map had indicated the area, later to be the enclosure of the Calvaire as the site of mass graves from the battle, excavations within the enclosure obviously expected to find evidence either of human remains or of large pits which had once held them. All of the test pits and augur holes, made to check for changes within the sub-soils, revealed relatively clean and apparently undisturbed material. The soil just below the surface revealed significant quantities of small brick fragments. No evidence of either skeletal remains or any buried features of artefacts were discovered. At the present entrance to the enclosure a few large stone protruding from the surface prompted an excavation of the topsoil. The stones were set in a row of eighteenth or nineteenth-century bricks and had holes cut into them and filled with molten lead in order to serve as supports for iron rods. An early photograph of the Calvaire shows a metal fence in this precise location. It is possible that these fragments represent the remains of the chapel that once stood on the site. 

 

Other very brief metal detector surveys, one on the Ruisseauville-Azincourt border and another in the field behind the church in the village of Azincourt, recorded very similar and generally negative results. An augur survey within the field behind the church found evidence of large deep pits, some of which contained sherds of medieval pottery. Although this might be expected within a medieval village it confirmed that, given the correct circumstances, an augur survey could find evidence of disturbances within the buried subsoil.

 

Many artefacts were recovered from all of the excavations and the metal detector surveys around Azincourt, but the majority were either older than the time of the battle or were relatively modern. Only those discovered through the augur survey behind the church could be identified as being definitely medieval. The dearth of medieval artefacts from what is supposed to be the location of a medieval battlefield is disturbing. It had been possible, however, to confirm that the enclosure of the Calvaire marked the site of a chapel, built in 1734 but demolished in 1793. This was signified by the small fragments of brick found during the excavation of the enclosure. This chapel is noted on the eighteenth-century Cassini map and on the plan cadastre of 1825. Neither map indicates the location of mass graves.

 

It is feasible that the 2007 archaeological excavations had missed evidence both of the graves and of Woodford’s work. They had been very limited shallow sub-surface investigations and were far from extensive, given the conditional and restricted permission to excavate on each occasion. Another explanation might be the depth of the hidden features. Woodford stated in one of his letters that he had excavated to a depth of three and a half feet although Leroi’s letter gives the depth as ‘two and a half feet’. It is also possible that Woodford removed all traces of one grave and backfilled his excavations with relatively clean, sieved soil, making the grave difficult to determine now without a large open area excavation.

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In 2014 the team visited Azincourt in order to film an episode of the television documentary series, Medieval Dead. A photogrametric landscape survey was undertaken in the field which formerly contained Azincourt Castle. A photographic record was also undertaken on the vaulted celler that stands below one of the barns in the nearby farm.