Nelson's Hospital

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History Documentary hosted by Tony Robinson, published by Channel 4 broadcasted as part of CH4 Time Team series in 2010 - English narration

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In the 18th century the Royal Navy was the most successful fighting force in the world. To maintain this status it desperately needed better ways of looking after its sick and wounded, so in 1746 it decided to build the best hospital the country had ever seen, near the Portsmouth dockyard at Haslar. Costing £100,000, it was the biggest construction project in the country, and for over 250 years Haslar treated sailors from The Battle of Trafalgar to the Gulf War, until in 2009 the hospital closed its doors on the sick for the last time. Between 1757 and 1826, thousands of seamen and marines of the Royal Navy are believed to have been buried in a Navy-designed cemetery in a field beside the hospital. Exactly how and where they were buried is not known and, as part of the closure programme, the cemetery has to be excavated, to find out where the burials are and how many there might be. Time Team followed the archaeologists as they uncovered multiple burials and carefully analysed the remains, providing extraordinary insight into what life was like in the Georgian Navy. There were no headstones and no records, but painstaking research built a picture of how and why the men ended up anonymously buried at Nelson's hospital.