River Hunters put their noses to the grindstone

This mighty lump is a grinding stone, found by TV’s River Hunters in York.

In episode two of the six-part series, to be broadcast on Sky History on Monday, US YouTube river detectorist Beau Ouimette, TV presenter and keen swimmer Rick Edwards and Durham’s own underwater archaeologist Gary Bankhead travel to York, hunting for evidence of Britain’s most notorious seafaring raiders, the Vikings.

The team discovered the grindstone, of the type used since the time of the Vikings, alongside crockery and a floor tile thought to originate from the late medieval or early post medieval time period.

For Gary, the pottery finds – although not from the Viking period – were the highlight of filming the episode.

Fragments of medieval crockery were recovered from the River Ouse in York by the River Hunters

The expert, used to finding such items in his home city of Durham, uncovered 56 shards, dating back to the 15th century.

To go to another city and find these shards from every century dating back to the 15th was unbelievable," he said.

"Those 56 shards tell the story of life on York for the last 500 years."

York has long been an archaeological mecca, but no-one had attempted a search of the river before, so the team delved through a thousand years’ worth of debris in an effort to find evidence of Viking life.

Using state-of-the-art underwater technology, live drone footage and accounts from the period, Beau, Rick and Gary performed the first underwater archeological digs in the dangerous and fast-flowing waters.

The team first visited the mighty River Ouse to search for evidence of the Vikings in York, then went on to search the site of an epic riverside battle between the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings.

Gary, right, and Beau on the banks of the River Ouse

The Battle of Fulford saw Norwegian King Harald Hardrada lead an army of ten thousand Vikings to claim a brutal and bloody victory over their enemies.

The river quest then took them on to the River Derwent, following the route of the Norse army to Stamford Bridge, site of the last Viking showdown in Britain: a fight that would see the defeated Viking army fleeing back to Scandinavia.

The team will return to North Yorkshire in the final hunt of the series to hunt for relics from some bloody and brutal 14th Century clashes between the English and the Scottish.

They will search the River Nidd, in the shadow of the mighty Knaresborough Castle, the site of an epic 1318 battle where hundreds of raging Scots raided and plundered the town, including the feared warrior known as ‘Black Douglas’.

The River Hunters will also venture to the River Swale, site of a bloody showdown in 1319.

* For more on the York finds, watch River Hunters on Sky History on Monday, April 12 at 9pm. Sky History is available on Sky 123, NOW TV, Virgin 270 and TalkTalk 327. Episodes will be available on catch up.