Tag: civil war

Tree-ring dating of previously unidentified Elizabethan roofs at Sudeley Castle

Dr Andy Moir of Gloucestershire Historic Buildings Group takes a look at the results from their attempts to date the outer ward of Sudeley Castle

Tree-ring dating at Sudeley Castle has established that the outer courtyard roofs were constructed over three years between 1569 and 1572. This result overturns the previous history which indicated that the castle roofs were destroyed during the Civil war and identifies that the roofs were likely built by Edmund Brydges (the 2nd Lord Chandos).

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Sudeley Castle Outer Courtyard looking north, copyright Dr Andy Moir

Sudeley Castle has Saxon origins, but its history really developed from 1441 with Ralph Boteler (Baron Sudeley and Lord Chamberlain of the King’s Household) who set about developing a castle to reflect his new-found status. In later Tudor times, Thomas Seymour was granted the castle by Henry VIII and after marrying the king’s widow, Katherine Parr he set about refurbishment of the Sudeley Estate. Katherine became pregnant at a relatively late age and unfortunately died a few days after childbirth. Following her death and Seymour’s arrest for treason following his desperate attempt to grab power at the expense of his brother Edward Seymour, the castle was then gifted to John Brydges, the Constable of the Tower of London. This gift by Queen Mary I was followed with the title of Lord Chandos being granted to the family.  John’s successor, Edmund Brydges seems to have been further developing the castle, enhancing the work of Boteler and Seymour and the family contributed to Winchcombe with the building of Almshouses by Edmund’s wife Dorothy. The Brydges family maintained the castle throughout the rest of the Tudor times and supported the Royalist cause following the start of the Civil War.

Besieging Sudeley Castle in 1643, during the Civil War

Sudeley had been used as the base by both Prince Rupert and Charles I from where they had launched attacks on Cirencester and preparations had been made to attack Gloucester. Following these failed attempts, Parliamentary troops had successfully besieged the castle on two occasions, bombarding the castle with cannon and after the second siege, the order was given for a systematic slighting (made un-inhabitable). Roofs were taken off and many walls were razed to the ground. Details of the destruction became clear when Lady Jane Brydges widow of George Chandos tried to sue for recompense. This was shown by depositions in the archives taken from five craftsmen stating that the castle had been fully destroyed and this had been signed off by two judges from Gloucester, Edward Slaughter and Robert Megge, but as the dendrochronology report went onto show, the slighting was not as comprehensive as claimed and roofs to the East, West and part of the North range of the outer courtyard were still intact.

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 It had previously been thought that the castle had been left in ruins for the next 180 years, and few of the original structures at Sudeley Castle were thought to have survived before extensive restoration in the 19th century funded by the Dent brothers and their heir John Coucher Dent and his wife Emma.

In 2025 castle archivist Derek Maddock invited the Gloucestershire Building Recording Group (GBRG) to survey the outer courtyard roofs. Unexpectedly, the survey identified that east, west and north range roofs of the outer courtyard contained mainly oak timbers that were likely to be Elizabethan. As this finding completely changed understanding of the castle’s history, a project to precisely tree-ring date the roofs was conceived. This project was supported by the Castle’s owner, Lady Ashcombe, and funded by the Castle Studies Trust (www.castlestudistrust.org).

Dr Andy Moir of GHBG taking one of the 30 core samples from the roof.

The 2026 project saw 30 pencil-like core samples drilled from the castle roofs. Tree-ring series from twenty of these timbers matched together to form a 159-year mean chronology that was dated to span 1413 to 1571. The oldest tree used in construction of the roof started growing in 1413 and the trees were all felled between the spring of 1569 and the winter of 1571/2.  As it was common medieval practice to convert the tree into timbers before they seasoned, construction of the east, north and west range roofs of the outer courtyard likely occurred between 1569 and 1572. To give some idea of the scale of the construction, the west, north and east range roofs are around 36m, 38m and 46m in length, respectively. Yet still the carpenters of the day likely managed to complete this huge construction over just three years. This result therefore overturns the previous history which indicated that the castle roofs were destroyed during the Civil war and identifies that the roofs were likely built by Edmund Brydges (the 2nd Lord Chandos). A fantastic development in the history of Sudeley Castle.

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Transforming our understanding of Shrewsbury Castle

With the excavation report on the third and final season of excavation which the CST has funded now published on our website, project lead Dr Nigel Baker looks at what has been achieved since the first work in 2019 to now.

Just over a century ago Shrewsbury Castle began a new phase in its long life. In 1925 its principal surviving building, having been in use as a private dwelling since the castle was finally de-munitioned in 1686, became the meeting hall of Shrewsbury Borough Council, set in extensive landscaped gardens covering the remains of the motte and inner bailey, the outer bailey having (mostly) disappeared beneath the growing town by c.1300. Shrewsbury Castle remained more or less untouched by archaeology for the remainder of the 20th century. This changed in 2019 with the award by the Castle Studies Trust of a grant for a season of geophysical survey and excavation in the inner bailey. Following permission from Shropshire Council, the site owners, and Historic England, its legal guardians, the work took place in May and July 2019, the geophysics by contractors Tiger Geo and the excavation team made up of experienced local volunteers and staff and students of University Centre Shrewsbury. The results were unexpected.

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Shrewsbury Castle Excavation 2019 showing the width of the ditch around the motte using deckchairs (copyright Dr Nigel Baker)
Arrow heads found in Shrewsbury Castle Motte Ditch (copyright Dr Nigel Baker)

Immediately under the turf was natural glacial gravel: the top of the hill on which the castle had been built; the ground surface had been lowered sometime in the past, removing nearly all archaeological remains. This was almost certainly the work of the young Thomas Telford who, from 1786 to 1790, lived in and ‘restored’ the castle for its owner, Sir William Pulteney, M.P. for Shrewsbury. However, archaeological strata were found to have survived within cuts into the natural gravel, and two of these were of major significance. The first was the edge of a previously-unknown ditch around the base of the motte. Medieval cooking-pot sherds of late 11th-13th-century date were found in its lowest excavated layers, along with two armour-piercing crossbow quarrel heads. The second significant find was of a pit containing in its fill a piece of decorated bone and two types of pre-Conquest (Saxon) pottery: Stafford-type ware, distributed widely across the emerging towns of the region and already well represented in Shrewsbury; and a limestone-tempered fabric, TF41a, never before seen in Shrewsbury, which had been made in the Gloucester area and probably imported up the Severn. This confirms that there was pre-Conquest activity on the site of the castle, and, along with the Domesday evidence that there was a church of St Michael there by 1086, may point in the direction of a high-status pre-Norman presence on this tactically-significant site controlling access to the ancient borough.

Shrewsbury Castle Excavation 2020 (copyright Dr Nigel Baker)

Excavation resumed in the autumn of 2020 with a trench seeking a sample profile through the west rampart of the inner bailey. This turned out not to be medieval in date. Both the west and the north rampart were probably created as part of Thomas Telford’s landscaping work in 1786-90. But, intriguingly, below the west rampart there was no sign within the trench of the natural hilltop gravel found close by in 2019 at a depth of just a few centimetres. The explanation may be that the bailey was enlarged westwards between the Norman period and the later medieval period, by dumping soil and levelling-up behind a new curtain wall.

Shrewsbury Castle Excavation 2022 on the motte top (copyright Dr Nigel Baker

The final season of excavations took place in 2022 on the top of the motte, and outside the north curtain wall. Telford is known to have demolished ruined medieval buildings on the top of the motte and replaced them with the surviving two-storey Gothic summerhouse there. Excavation showed that Telford’s activities had, again, removed most of the archaeology but that the foundations of early medieval timber buildings (beam slots, a post pad, post holes) survived where they had been cut into the motte material. No definite trace was seen of the ‘great wooden tower’ which is documented on the motte top until its collapse in 1269-71.

New light was also shed on the motte by vegetation clearance on its south side, revealing for the first time remains of buildings incorporated in the masonry of the retaining walls. This work was undertaken on behalf of Shropshire Council for a new conservation-management plan, currently at consultation stage, which includes photogrammetric surveying of all the castle structures. This permanent stone-by-stone record not only forms the basis for the next vital stage of work – identifying and specifying long-needed repairs – it also offers new archaeological insights, including the identification of the probable primary sandstone rubble fabric of the curtain walls. This was in turn followed by some research carried out by Jason Hurst on Civil War musketry damage in 2023 (Potential shot damage at Shrewsbury Castle – Castle Studies Trust Blog) . And now, the process of publishing this body of new archaeological, architectural and historical information is just beginning…

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Potential shot damage at Shrewsbury Castle

Jason Hurst from the University of Leicester’s School of Ancient History and Archaeology and expert on civil war damage to castles looks at the damage at Shrewsbury Castle.

In June this year I went with Dr Nigel Baker, and Dr Morn Capper of University Centre Shrewsbury, to examine suspected musket/weapon projectile damage inflicted on the Castle, possibly during the Parliamentarian assault of February 1645.

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Dr Morn Capper showing the damage to Shrewsbury Castle’s main gate

When inspecting the marks on the main castle gate I concluded that these were from musket/pistol ball strikes with some indication of possible fragments of these projectiles still embedded in the woodwork, along with possible residues.

Shrewsbury Castle Postern Gate Gun Shot Damage

On the outside of the Postern Gate the identification of some of the marks could not be positively made because of weathering, but intriguing larger impact marks seem to be from a small calibre artillery piece, possible a Robinet or similar sized calibre gun.

At the north end of the hall, facing the railway station, are marks that look like weapon projectile strikes but their trajectory is problematic. Some appear to have come in at a level trajectory towards the wall and some from a downward trajectory, so these need to be looked at in more detail to determine what has caused them.

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