18/02/2013 Inside Out South West

Hello and welcome to Inside Out South West, stories and

investigations from where you live. Tonight, it has been 4,000 years

but Dartmoor is finally giving up its ancient secrets. Actually, I

think it is the most important find on Dartmoor full-stop.

Also tonight, the Devon victims of a legal wrangle over why their

homes are so cold. There is meant to be a sponge which stops the

actual moisture coming through but as you can see it is coming out as

dirty water. It is a marriage of spirit and

matter, if you like. And a first look at the giant cross which says,

"Welcome to Cornwall". Sort of being infused with the sky and the

spirit world. I am Sam Smith and this is Inside

First tonight, how a chance discovery is offering tantalising

new evidence about the lives our ancestors lived 4,000 years ago.

Mike Dilger has been to Dartmoor to uncover the story of what is being

described as the national park's most important archaeological find

The people who lived on Dartmoor thousands of years ago have left us

just glimpses of their lives. Come to the high moor and you will find

the essence of stone-age Britain, enigmatic stone rows and cosmically

aligned standing stones. But nearly 4,000 years ago there was a

technological and cultural revolution as our ancient ancestors

moved from the age of stone into the Bronze Age. These hut circles

date from that time. There are more than 5,000 on Dartmoor showing a

vibrant community living and working here. What is disappointing

and frustrating in equal measure is how few artefacts have actually

Objects from a Bronze Age burial found on the moor. Actually, I

think it is the most important find on Dartmoor full stop. What makes

this new discovery even more remarkable is that Dartmoor has

offered up so few of its ancient secrets. I am meeting English

Heritage archeologist Win Scutt to find out why. Obviously, I can

recognise a stone row here but this must be one of these prehistory

cists. It is indeed a burial chamber. This cist, or grave, is

made up of granite slabs put in place 4,500 years ago. How would

they have been buried in here? of them were really small so you

just have a cremation in them. But this one is big enough for a whole

body and would be something like crouched up like this. This is the

standard method for burial back at that time if they did not cremate

them. The great thing is you get close to their emotions. You're

getting close to individuals. This is about how they loved each other,

how they respected each other. rich landscape with 5000 remnants

of buildings, 200 burial cists but so few artefacts, why? A lot of it

is to do with robbing. Some people have robbed the stone. Some have

robbed the artefacts inside because they were looking for gold. But the

biggest loss is all the organic stuff. The bones have all been

dissolved by the acid soil up here. The gifts of flowers and drink and

food which would have gone in. Most of their life was organic. It was

stuff that would rot away. If we could get the perishable items, the

organic material, it would shine a big light into pre-history. That is

exactly what has happened. A chance discovery of a buried cist on White

Horse Hill, high in the peat bog on the northern moor. The cist had

been untouched for 4,000 years. Until 18 months ago archaeologists

from the National Park levered off What they found astonished them. An

intact burial of cremated remains wrapped in an as yet unidentified

animal pelt and containing a delicate bracelet studded with tin

beads. A textile fragment with detailed leather fringing and a

unique woven bag, scans of which So I am off to see the site of this

extraordinary find and I am with the national park's chief

archaeologist Jane Marchand. Half- an-hour in the car, half-an-hour

walk, one of the most remote places in England. It is not Stonehenge,

is it? I have to admit I am slightly underwhelmed. I'm sorry

about that. But what we have here is visibly maybe not as impressive

as Stonehenge but archaeologically it is just as important. It is what

is underneath. How did this come to be revealed then? One of those

stones fell out and somebody reported it to us that they thought

they had found this cist up here. They came to have a look, thinking

they were making it up. I could not believe it when we saw it. It still

had its lid on it. There was a chance it could have something

contained within it. The stones on top are nothing to do with it?

are nothing to do with it. They are just walkers' cairns. Is this the

first time organic remains have been found on Dartmoor? It is.

on, tell me how you were feeling when you discovered it. It must

have been astonishing. It was incredibly exciting. When we lifted

it up, very carefully a bead fell out. The thrill of realising,

actually, this is a proper burial. This is a bead that belonged to the

burial. No one knows who this person was, only that the remains

belonged to a young man or woman. To think of the scene that must

have been going on here, almost 4,000 years ago, and the most

exciting thing of all, the journey of discovery has only just begun.

December of last year marked a major milestone along that journey.

Jane has come to the Wiltshire Conservation Lab where they are

hoping to reveal the secrets of the woven bag. That might be the

remains of mineralised thread. see the way it goes through the

perforation. Today, it is conservator Helen Williams' job to

delicately remove the contents for the first time in nearly 4,000

years. The level of preservation we have got is amazing. To find an

object like this with contents intact is fantastic. It is a very

exciting day and hopefully it will all go well. Let's look to see what

we have got. It is painstaking work looking for and removing bead after

bead. Just eight beads have been found on Dartmoor in the last 100

years. It is getting better by the minute, certainly! But then,

something altogether more unusual. It is a round object about that

size. It has two slightly domed surfaces. It almost looks like a

small yo-yo. It would have been worn in the ear. Amazing. I don't

remember studs being recorded in any other excavation from this

period. And then, a glint of orange. Wow. That one is amber. You can see

the surface. It is in amazing condition. It is the first time we

have seen or handled that material in 4,000 years so it does blow your

mind sometimes when you think about that. I have worked on Dartmoor for

over 20 years and never would have anticipated getting anything like

Now some of the objects have been cleaned, we can start to appreciate

just how delicate and beautiful they really are. So, what have we

learnt? Time to meet Jane again back on Dartmoor. Here we are in

this wonderful reconstruction of a Bronze Age hut circle. What more do

we know about the lives of people up on Dartmoor 3,500, 4,000 years

ago? It is amazing. It brings them all to life. Their standard of

technology, that they could actually achieve things like this,

certainly the bag, they could make things like that. They were in a

position to trade and bring in amber beads. It is a level of

sophistication I don't think we probably appreciated. Now, whenever

I am out on the moor, my eye gets drawn to that ridge. You think, if

only I could go back 4,000 years to see what was happening. Have we any

idea why these people were buried high up on the hills because they

may have lived down in the valleys? They are buried there because they

are closer to the skies. It told them when they should plant their

crops, when to gather them in. When it was the shortest day and the

longest day. So much more still to discover from these artefacts?

Absolutely. We are only at the beginning of a very long journey.

The plan is to display the White Horse Hill artefacts in a major

exhibition next year at Plymouth Museum. Until then, we can only

speculate about what other treasures lie buried on the high

The cost of living has been out stripping pay for three years now.

Tough times if you are already on the breadline. What if you also

rely on a landlord for some of life's bare necessities? Jenny

Walrond has been to meet tenants in Devon who are caught up in a legal

wrangle over something as basic as Alex Grey's flat in Sidwell House,

Exeter. So cold it has been condemned as unfit to live in. For

the last nine winters, he has struggled to pay the heating and

hot water bills, as well as provide for his 16-year-old daughter, Alice.

He treats the mould regularly, but it keeps coming back. Anyway, Jenny,

this bathroom in here. They tiled all the back wall. They said it

would be easier to clean. But there is still black mould coming through.

He says the cost of keeping warm has put him in serious debt.

never gets any heat or sun. I am spending �45 a week now on heating,

on electric. Since September, I have now used almost �600. Alex

says he began asking his landlord for help in 2006. He was given

another heater. But the real problem, the building's poor

insulation hasn't been tackled. They offered more heaters, it costs

more money. They offered to get us debt management. We are already in

debt. We have already been down the debt. We have already been down the

debt. We have already been down the debt management line. Just before

Christmas last year Alex got some bad news. His landlord began court

action to evict him for rent arrears. My daughter is in the

middle of her GCSEs. She does not need the stress. I don't need the

stress. And it could all have been solved years ago. Poor-quality

rented accommodation isn't unusual. But this block of flats is managed

by Britain's biggest social housing charity, Sanctuary. The Sanctuary

group has more than 80,000 homes in its portfolio. More than 8,000 of

them in the South West. Business is booming. In the tax year to 2012,

Sanctuary made a surplus of nearly �24 million, paying its chief

executive 300,000. It's charitable status allows it to pay no tax.

Complaints about Sanctuary Housing are not confined to Exeter. In 2010,

the Audit Commission inspected Sanctuary Midlands and found it was

Inside Out have spoken to people from around the country in Torbay,

Essex, Sussex and Scarborough. They told us of feelings similar to

those found in the Midlands. Repairs delayed for weeks or months.

Sanctuary's boss said that the complaints are minuscule. 92 % of

our tenants and the South West are satisfied with what we do. The

number of complaints are very small in comparison to the number of

properties that we have. But our approach is simple. If someone says

they are not happy with the service, we get it resolved quickly. Another

tenant in the block, Warren Bridges, says that he has complained more

than 20 times about the conditions in his flat. After being homeless

for six months, he was believed to be offered Qatar for years ago, but

he soon got into debt trying to keep warm. -- Sidwell House. I was

so relieved. I was so happy. Within less than 10 days, I realised how

much it was causing for a heater, which back then was just every �3 a

day. -- costing. This is supposed to be a sponge that stops the

moisture. Last year, Sanctuary installed a layer of foam

insualtion, but the gap keeps coming. It's just coming out as

dirty water. If floorboard was lifted, revealing why the prices

were so high. -- a floorboard. is what we found it, no insulation,

and dead, and ventilated air, which is why the floors are so freezing

cold all of the time. To two years ago, Alex told Sanctuary that he

thought his home was failing to the Decent Homes Standard. A survey

last spring confirmed his flat was eight Class 1 excess cold hazard.

The what am I supposed to do, pay the same as someone with a

beautiful property with controlled heating systems? No, sorry. I am in

breach on rent arrears but I have had to survive. I have had to

survive for my daughter. What would any father do? He went to his MP,

Ben Bradshaw, who asked to meet Simon Clark at Westminster last

month. Exeter City Council officially designated this flat to

have a severe cold hazard, and therefore did not meet the Home

standard. They said it was uninhabitable and no action was

taken. I think that is quite shocking and it surprises me that

an organisation that has the reputation that Sanctuary has on a

national level would allow its reputation to be damaged by such a

case as this. I think it needs to think very carefully about its

procedures and responsibility. People are defined as in fuel

poverty if they spent 10 % of their income on heating. Warren, who has

a long-term comas, has spent half of his benefit on heating. -- long-

term illness. He has to take out emergency loans to pay for them. A

have had to ask for help from a foodbank because everything has

gone on paying the interest. -- I have had. I have had no money left

to buy any food so I have had to get a support worker and ask them

if it was possible to me -- for me to have another voucher for the

food bent or I would not have had any food. The tenants say they have

been caught in a legal row between Sanctuary and a London firm, Class

1 excess cold hazard. Both organisations -- Prime Esates. Alex

says, as he pays rent to Sanctuary, it is up to Sanctuary to sort it

out. There they are vulnerable people and do not have the means to

go fighting big companies. Why did you put so much -- why did you not

put pressure on them years ago? have to support the residents and

we are now getting an improvement notice on Prime Esates to do the

work. You have to remember, this is not a building that Sanctuary Evans.

Exeter City Council says it is now considering taking enforcement

actions against Prime Esates, but Prime Esates says it believes it

will not be issued with such a notice. It told Inside Out that

Sanctuary first raised the issue Sanctuary says that it has been in

frequent contact with Prime Esates and believes Prime Esates is

responsible. As the legal battle goes on, Alex has had some good

news. His eviction proceedings have been dropped. We used to call

ourselves the forgotten ones. That was our nickname. No matter how

hard we would try, nothing ever got done. But now it is. The residents

have been told that work should begin on improvements soon, making

Alex's home fit to live in for the first time in years.

The Tamar Bridge, unmistakable and impressive, but there could soon be

a new icon apparently in Europe arrival into Cornwall. -- hero Dick

Muir arrival into Cornwall. We have been speaking to the artist hoping

to make this dream a reality. thing like this is going to change

my life. Opportunities like this do not come up that often. I have put

everything into it. In it has taken Simon Thomas 13 years and many

setbacks, but his daring design for a Celtic cross sculpture is finally

coming to life. The biggest challenge in creating a sculpture,

really, is taking it from my initial blue-sky thinking design

and anchoring it in the real world. And once it goes up, if you are

coming into Cornwall across the Tamar Bridge, you're not going to

miss it. For Simon, the anticipation is building. We will

be getting quite an eyeful of it before we come through this bit.

Celtic crosses were traditional the wayside and boundary markers.

is fitting that Simon's sculpture is going to be here. The cost side

of the Cross is that it is -- the concept of the Cross is that it is

a marriage of spirit and matter. The matter starts here. We are

standing on matter. This is the world. From there, as it is going

up, it is held together by blocks, and they start parting and

levitating away from each other. It is sort of being infused with the

sky and the spirit world. Being so tall and in such an exposed

location, it will need to withstand a battering from higher winds. So

Simon has had to entrust his design to the experts at Gate Guards.

Based in Newquay, they are more used to building a replica aircraft.

The these blocks are made out of a glass fibre and they are incredibly

strong. You would more likely see them on a racing yacht than

anything else. You will have somewhere in the region of about 55

different boxes within boxes, because it has to have massive in

structural integrity. It is the structures and forms that occur in

the natural world that inspire Simon. I am looking for exciting

formulations for the structures, which I see in nature. I find the

countryside and being part of it does feed your soul. It is just a

nice to be able to wake up and look at the sea. It does go in and

somehow it comes out. This soaking up of his Cornish surroundings led

Simon to his concept, and there is one cross in particular that has

caught his eye. This is just outside Bodmin. I know it is a

strange location to have a Celtic cross. Ironically, it is in the

middle of a roundabout, but it was built in the 11th century. I used

to pass this twice a-day, and it has kind of burnt itself into my

brain. I must say, it is probably my favourite one, funnily enough.

For wayside markers, you could not The sculpture is costing �650,000

of lottery and local authority money, so there is a lot riding on

it being a success. Today is the first time they will see whether

all of the pieces they have made so far are going to fit together.

has been months of bits and pieces sitting around, stacked up in a

corner. Today, it is really starting to look like something for

Just leave it in the middle to give Working on this project led Simon

to explore the history and landscape of Cornwall. Carnbane Red

Rood has particular significance. They wanted to include the

reference to the cultural heritage of Cornwall, and part of that would

The cross is, basically it has got a copper service -- surface. It has

got silver rays coming out of it. Those minerals are very important

in the mining history of Cornwall. Like Simon's sculpture, this

monument is a modern interpretation of a Celtic cross. It is a tribute

to Francis Bassett, who owned most of the mines in this area. The only

other cross in Cornwall that is of a similar scale to the one that we

are putting up is actually sitting on top of a site which is so

relevant to the history of Cornwall's Mining Heritage.

Although, to be perfectly honest, I think ours might look a bit better.

But as his design years completion, will it be everything Simon has

dreamed of? We are going to put your beautiful rays on. Then we

This is the most important bit, especially with ours. It is the

last bit. It is a bit like getting a photograph in focus or slightly

blurred. We are looking for a good Seeing it coming together, you get

a sense of its presence. A sculpture lives and dies on the

present. If it does not have peasants, it will die. -- presence.

We should be finished in the next month. It will have been a lot of

years of waiting for that, so very exciting times.