Tom Addyman of Addyman Archaeology looks ahead to the first modern detailed study of Cockermouth Castle, a major baronial castle near the Scottish borderwhich is starting this week.
With the generous support awarded by the Castle Studies Trust new survey work is to commence this week at Cockermouth Castle. Located in the extreme west of the historic county of Cumberland, Cockermouth is the caput of a major early landholding, the barony of Allerdale and Honour of Cockermouth. The castle is an extensively surviving baronial fortress that occupies a strong defensive site, a high spur of land at the confluence of the Rivers Derwent to the north and Cocker to the south and overlooking the medieval town extending to the south-east.
Outer Gatehouse of Cockermouth Castle looking North West, copyright Addyman Archaeology
Roughly triangular in plan, the complex’s major walls and defensive towers essentially survive intact, comprising a small inner ward at the point of the promontory and a larger outer ward facing level ground to the east, defended by a ditch, now infilled. The outer ward is accessed by a massively constructed gatehouse at the north angle of the east side. The gatehouse and later ranges built against the north, east and south perimeter walls of the enclosure are still in occupation. The now-ruinous inner ward, containing the principal domestic apartments, had been accessed by means of a second major gatehouse to the centre of its east side.
Cockermouth Castle gatehouse to the inner ward facing south west, copyright Addyman Archaeology
Following recent appraisal during the 2024 Chateau Gaillard conference there was considerable consensus as to both the importance of the site and its surviving architecture and in recognizing that its fabric has seen little study and was very notably lacking a reliable evidence-based analysis. It seems the most up-to-date published plan of the site is that of 1910 by John Curwen who also provided an account of the castle’s evolution. The only subsequent in-depth study that relates the detailed analysis of the physical development of the site to its ownership history is that of JB Bradbury (Bradbury’s History of Cockermouth, 1996); however this now requires comprehensive revision through scholarly review of the physical evidence. Other accounts, by Lord Leconfield (1959) and Pevsner, as revised by Hyde (2010), are more summary in nature. The understanding of the castle and its history has most recently been assessed by Dr Edward Impey in a draft paper (July 2024) that provides a firm basis upon which the more detailed assessment of the site will be built and its interpretation re-considered.
Cockermouth Castle inner ward with all and chamber block and the kitchen tower on the far left. copyright Addyman Archaeology
Led by a team from Addyman Archaeology, the project will focus upon developing a detailed understanding of the physical fabric of the structurally complex inner ward area. The major building periods will be defined and related to the site’s known history and occupancy, to early illustrative material, and in terms of the broader evolution of castle architecture. Particular focus will be the massive redevelopment of the site in the 14th century under the de Lucy and Percy families. Incorporating parts of a pre-existing masonry curtain, these works included the creation of chamber, hall and service arrangements, the magnificent kitchen tower (reminiscent of the work of Master John Lewyn), and the inner ward’s idiosyncratic gatehouse, a structure of defensive appearance though of limited capability and without close parallel. Together the gatehouse and the domestic ranges to either side occupy the site of an earlier defensive ditch; these structures present a specific interpretative challenge in that they incorporate the remains of vaulted cellarage of a predecessor range that may never have been completed.
Cockermouth Castle Kitchen Tower looking North West, copyright Addyman Archaeology
The present project prioritises the establishment of new base-line survey information. As far as existing vegetation and safe access permits the structures of the inner ward will be subject to a close and systematic visual assessment and non-invasive survey to be carried out primarily through photogrammetry. The latter will lead to the development of a record drawing set that will be overlain with comprehensive analytical and phasing data. The study will include a detailed component-by-component analysis and description, and a narrative account of the visible stratigraphic evidence. Working with the estate archivist and a local historical group the project will also involve scoping of historical materials relevant to the understanding of the castle fabric. The project will lead to the development of research questions and a possible scope of works for ongoing study of the site.
Project lead Dr Andy Moir (Chairman of the Gloucestershire Building Recording Group) takes a look at the project to see if we need to re-evaluate our existing understanding of the building history of Sudeley Castle.
Sudeley Castle is a grade I listed building (Historic England List No: 1154791). Although the castle has origins as a Saxon house, its history really began with Ralph Boteler who in 1441 became the Lord Admiral, and then Baron Sudeley and Lord Chamberlin of the Kings Household. Ralph Boteler set about buildings a castle to reflect his new found status and is reputed to have built the Portmare Tower, the Dungeon Tower, the banqueting Hall, and the Tithe barn. In 1547 Thomas Seymour married King Henry VIII widow Katherin Parr (who’s tomb is at the castle) and set about the refurbishment of the estate. Historical documents record that stonemasons and carpenters built a complete new suite of apartments. Queen Mary granted the castle to Sir John Brydges in 1554 creating him Lord Chandos and later the third Lord Chandos entertained Queen Elizabeth I three times at Sudeley.
The castle was bombarded by cannon in 1644 during the Civil War and ordered ‘slighted’ (which is stated to have included the removal of the roofs) in 1649. After this the castle was left in ruins for the next 180 years and then extensively restored in the 19th century.
Figure 1: Outer Courtyard Ranges of Sudeley Castle, copyright Dr Andy Moir
Due to the slighting previously little of the earlier builds at Sudeley were thought to survive. However, in November 2025 the Outer Courtyard of Sudeley Castle was visited by the Gloucestershire Building Recording Group (GBRG) and a brief visual survey of the west, north and east range roofs undertaken (Figure 1).Some of stylistic features of timbers that survive in the roofs are useful to estimating their date of contraction, because date ranges of similar features have been identified in through the GBRG’s previous tree-ring dated projects on buildings in Gloucestershire. For instance, the use of queen struts (Figure 2) in the castle roofs are rarely used before the 1440s, and the use of clasped purlins are generally restricted to between the 1380s and 1500s. Diminished principal are present and these are rarely used before the 1440s and to date no examples have been found after the 1550s. Similarly the use of curved wind braces are typically restricted to before the 1570s, after which straight wind braces become more common used. Also in terms of carpentry, 80º saw marks are usually a reliable indicator that the timbers were pit-sawn, which generally comes into use from the 1540s. Overall, the stylistic features recorded suggest that the West and North Range roofs were likely constructed in the first half of the 16th century, some time between the 1500s and 1550s. This evidence suggests that the West and North ranges may be part of the new suite of apartments built by Thomas Seymour around 1547. However, precise dating of the timbers would be required to resolve this issue.
Figure 2: East range raking queen strut truss constructed using oak timbers, copyright Dr Andy MoirFigure 3: A core taken for tree-ring dating (top) and a pencil (bottom), copyright Dr Andy Moir
Through the taking of small pencil like cores from timbers (Figure 3), tree-ring analysis can often identify an exact year of felling of the timbers used in construction of a building. Most medieval woodworkers use green wood (as seasoned wood is much more difficult to work with) and so a year of felling is generally accepted to identify the year of construction. During the recording of the roof at Sudeley Castle the timbers were also assessed for their potential use in tree-ring dating. Oak timbers with more than 50 rings, traces of sapwood or bark, and accessibility were the main considerations. The oak timbers in the roofs of all three ranges contain sufficient rings and bark to indicate tree-ring dating would likely produced precise felling dates and so significantly advance the understanding of the development of Sudeley Castle. Thanks to funding from the Castle Studies Trust the roof will be recorded and samples for tree-ring dating taken near the end of February 2026 and the results of this project available near the end of March 2026. The GBRG would like to express their thanks to Lady Ashcombe for kindly granting access to Sudeley Castle for this project.
The Castle Studies Trust is delighted to announce the award of eight grants, totalling a record £44,500, to a wide range of projects involving a wide variety of research methods. This total means that, since our foundation, we will have given nearly £350,000 to castle research projects – a landmark to celebrate.
Cockermouth Kitchen Tower and Great Hall Range from river, copyright Richard Oram
Cockermouth, Cumbria: Cockermouth Castle is an extensively surviving major multi-phase northern fortress whose evolutionary history has never been subject to systematic or formal assessment. The building survey will focus upon developing a detailed understanding of the physical fabric of the castle’s inner ward structures with a view to mapping their evolution, and to provide contextualization by relating the major building periods to the site’s known history and occupancy, and in terms of the broader evolution of castle architecture. The survey will be carried out by Tom Addyman with the support of Edward Impey and Richard Oram.
Durham Castle’s twelfth century entrance way, copyright Dr Andrew Ferrara
Durham Castle, County Durham: Investigating the Twelfth-Century Entranceway of Durham Castle. The aim of the project is to utilise digital archaeological techniques to create high-resolution images and models of the twelfth-century archway into Durham Castle’s North Range, enabling detailed investigation of the architectural features. The Durham University team carrying out the work will be led by Andrew Ferrara and Giles Gasper.
Ellesmere Castle from the air, copyright Joe Bickerton
Ellesmere, Shropshire: Geophysical survey of the large motte and bailey castle in Shropshire which, prior to June 2024, had never been surveyed before when the large motte was surveyed by GPR which revealed possible buildings. The resistivity and magnetometry surveys would confirm that, as well as extend the survey to the rest of the site which played an active part in the Marcher disputes in the reign of Henry III. The survey, carried out by Heneb, will take place in the week starting 9 March, with the results ready in the early summer.
Fyvie Castle, copyright National Trust of Scotland
Fyvie, Aberdeenshire: The project aims to create new interpretation drawings to showcase key stages in the architectural development of the castle, which dates to the thirteenth century, and share these as part of outreach and engagement. The drawings by Jan Dunbar will be commissioned by Annie Robertson of the National Trust and are expected to start in April.
Kilkenny Castle, copyright of the Discovery Programme
Kilkenny, Leinster, Republic of Ireland: This project proposes the use of geophysical survey to locate and map the lost Flemingstown of Kilkenny Castle – a unique example of a purpose-built Flemish colonial suburb. While some of the outer ward has already been investigated, the one area missing has been around the site of the township’s tower. The geophysical survey will be carried out by The Discovery Programme and will take place in early to mid March, led by David Stone with the support of Susan Currant and Coilin O Drisceoil.
Newcastle Keep, copyright Peter Purton
Newcastle, Northumberland: To co-fund the publication of the report of the excavations of Newcastle Castle, one of the major royal castles in the North East of England, which took place over 20 years between 1974-95. The funds will be for synthesising all the different excavations, updating specialist reports and preparing relevant reports. We are only part funding £2,000 of the £8,000 asked for, as we lacked the means to fund any more. . The grant from the CST will allow him to commission the illustration work for the building interpretation and the excavation illustrations. The part funding has also spurred on other funders to cover the remaining part of the grant. The project will be led by Don O’Meara of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle with the support of John Nolan and Richard Pears.
Ruthin Castle great gatehouse, copyright Ruthin Castle Preservation Trust
Ruthin, Denbighshire: Co-funding a structural survey and analysis of the great gatehouse of this formidable thirteenth century baronial castle that was a key part of Edward I’s strategy to secure the conquest of Wales. The project is led by Fiona Gale, chair of the Ruthin Castle Preservation Trust who will commission Mann Williams to do the survey with add context provided by Will Davies from Cadw.
Sudeley Castle outer courtyard, copyright Andy Moir
Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire: Tree-ring dating and recording with 3D imaging the original roofs of Sudeley Castles Outer Courtyard Ranges. The castle site dates to the anarchy but the castle was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by Lord Sudeley. The sampling and photography will take place on 25 and 26 February. The project will be led by Andy Moir of the Gloucestershire Building Recording Group.
In their latest update Drs Paul Pattinson and Esther van Raamsdonk look at how far they have progressed with the transcription and translation of the Seventeenth Century survey of fortifications in southern England, revealing some pleasant surprises that have awaited them.
In our last update on Transcribing and Translating SP9/99: A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Survey of 22 English Castles and Fortifications, we concentrated on just that, the challenging process of transcription and translation of a difficult Dutch manuscript that uses unorthodox words (whose meaning is sometimes unknown), a note-like format, and a complete lack of punctuation. That process is now essentially complete, bar a few words that may be technical terms, and about which we are consulting with fortification experts in the Netherlands. However, we can now begin to interpret the manuscript and what it can tell us about the coastal artillery castles and bulwarks along the south-east and south coasts of England in the early seventeenth century.
After looking briefly at the whole manuscript of 23 folios (46 pages), we can now say that there are details of at least 29 fortifications, not just 23, and that may not be the final number. In due course we hope to establish a complete list. For the time being, the work for which we were generously grant-aided by the CST focussed on 9 folios covering 6 artillery castles, all of which were built or modified during the early stages of the ‘device’ programme of Henry VIII, between 1539 and 1541. We selected these as a suitable sample of the manuscript because historically they formed a discrete group in the jurisdiction of and under the command of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports: they are the castles at Sandown, Deal, Walmer, Dover, Sandgate and Camber.
Plan of Sandgate from one of the folios of the document. Courtesy of Paul Pattison
Even though our unknown Dutch engineer was clearly in a hurry with his survey, as we reported last time, his work is accurate. For most sites there is usually a main plan taking up one face of a folio – a detailed and well-proportioned sketch with copious annotations that include measurements and notes on features of interest, sometimes including room use, and often pointing out defects requiring attention. In rare cases a room is named, notably ‘The Queen’s Room’ at Sandgate, a lovely, early reference to a tradition recording Elizabeth I’s stay at the castle in 1572. Sometimes, room functions are specified e.g. the porter’s lodge at Camber, giving valuable insight to the daily workings of a castle.
As well as a main drawing, the engineer also made smaller sketch plans and elevations to show details e.g. an elevation of the cupola at the centre of the roof at Deal Castle, noting also its use as both a gunpowder store and a sea mark; or a plan of a double-splayed gun embrasure at Walmer Castle. Typically, the particulars of each site are further noted in a separate block of text taking up another side of a folio, sometimes also incorporating small sketches. This text tends to summarise defects and requirements, so does not provide a full picture of the castle, but rather concentrates on repairs needed and remedies.
However, there is one atypical folio that mentions two known individuals. One is the relatively well-known master gunner at Dover Castle, William Eldred, notable for his authorship of The Gunners Glasse, a treatise on gunnery published in 1646. The other was a Mr Griffiths, secretary to Edward, Lord Zouche, who was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports between 1615 and 1625. We are presently exploring them both in the State Papers at the National Archives and in other documents at the British Library and we are confident – and excited – that we will be able to tie down the date of the survey to the year.
The translation of three other folios for Dover Castle represents a real step forward in understanding that castle during this otherwise hazy period in its history. The manuscript names and provides details of eight mural towers, two gates and three other buildings explored by the engineer, most of which we can relate to those surviving today, possibly the earliest evidence we have for named towers in the castle: a few of the names are previously unknown. There are three sketches of tower plans, which should enable their identification: one is certainly Fitzwilliam Gate. Many of the Dover Castle towers needed significant repairs, for which the engineer estimated costs. The Dover folios also record two forts defending the harbour and anchorage. The first is Moats Bulwark, the battery at the base of the cliff below the castle, just above the beach, and the small angle-bastioned fort guarding the western harbour, Archcliffe Fort.
Only recently, we have begun to look closely at another survey, long thought to be broadly contemporary, carried out in 1623 by the Board of Ordnance at the request of James I and his Privy Council. Our initial work on this, comparing entries for the same sites, suggests that the two surveys may be closely related and we look forward to providing another update here, when we have fully explored that intriguing possibility.
Project lead of the Canterbury Castle Visualisation project, Dr Katie McGown, gives an update on how the project is progressing.
The Visualising Canterbury Castle project is in the process of producing a new digital reconstruction of Canterbury Castle’s Norman keep. In our last post we discussed the first of a series of co-design sessions we have organised to allow a range of expertise and stakeholders to help us develop and interrogate the model we are producing. However, this is not the only way we are collating information to inform our understanding of the built structure.
Canterbury Castle has been closed to the public since 2018, and as it is currently being refurbished, the walls are obscured by scaffolding. Because of this, initially we drew heavily on Excavations at Canterbury Castle (Bennet et al, 1982) published by CAT, which features elevation and plan drawings. This helped us map out the size and shape of the building for the early stages of the model. However, over the course of the development of the project, questions have arisen about areas of the building which are no longer extant, and we’ve had to piece together information from other sources, and crucially, by visiting other castles.
After the first co-design session our student interns, Ethan Serfontein and Joseph Seare, and Technical Lead, Mike Farrant, were invited to Rochester Castle by Dr Jeremy Ashbee, Head Properties Curator, English Heritage. Through visiting a similar structure, the team gained greater understanding of both the defining features of a Norman keep, and how we can draw evidence from the building to inform our reconstruction.
Joseph (l) and Ethan (r) from the project team visiting Rochester Castle (copyright Dr Katie McGown)
As we continued to develop the digital reconstruction, questions began to emerge about the structure of the outer staircase and how this would look. This is a difficult question to answer given that the structure no longer exists. However, the team were able to develop a better understanding of how the space might have worked by comparing their observations in Rochester with a visit to Dover Castle. Professor Alan Meades, Dr Cat Cooper, Mike, Joseph and Ethan went down to Dover and spent time discussing the differences between the three Royal Norman castles in Kent, and documenting features like the staircase. Dover Castle also gave the team the opportunity to appreciate the lovely Norman interiors.
Dover Castle Keep copyright Dr Katie McGownChristchurch, Canterbury visualising team visiting Dover Castle, copyright Dr Katie McGown
Recently, we were able to visit Canterbury Castle, courtesy of Lian Harter from Purcell and Alison Hargreaves from Canterbury City Council. Dr Katie McGown and Cat donned high vis, hard hats, and steelies to climb the scaffolding. This visit allowed them to think about sight lines around the city, but also observe important details such as this stunning herringbone brickwork in the fireplace. The tour also gave us incredible insight into the refurbishment of the keep, and how that process might be incorporated into the eventual curriculum resource that accompanies the project.
Dr Katie McGown visiting Canterbury Castle refurbishmentCanterbury Castle refurbishment copyright Dr Katie McGownHerringbone fireplace at Canterbury Castle, copyright Dr Katie McGown
We’ve also been thinking more broadly about how the project might fit into wider activities in development for the 2027 European Year of the Normans. Professor Leonie Hicks, Cat and Katie travelled to Caen Castle to see about possible collaborations for work at the site, and were delighted to have a detailed tour led by Curator Jean-Marie Levesque around the delicate foundations of Caen Castle’s Norman keep. The team also took the opportunity to see the Bayeux Tapestry prior to its voyage to the British Museum.
Caen Castle, copyright Dr Katie McGownCanterbury Castle visualisation team with Caen Castle curator Jean-Marie Levesque
Each of these visits informs the development of the digital reconstruction. For example, following the visit to Canterbury Castle, the fireplaces were adjusted to showcase the herringbone brickwork.
Original visualisation of Canterbury Castle fireplace prior to visit. Copyright Canterbury Castle Visualisation Canterbury Castle Visualisation updated fireplace with herringbone stonework. Copyright Christchurch Canterbury Visualisation
Similarly, being able to see the refurbishment of Canterbury’s Caen stone has informed the exterior of the digital reconstruction.
Refurbishment of Canterbury Castle with new Caen stone, copyright Dr Katie McGownCanterbury Castle Visualisation updated to include Caen stone noted in the castle restoration, copyright Christchurch Canterbury Visualisation team
The team has one final visit planned to Norwich Castle before the end of the project, and we are looking forward to continuing to develop our understanding and appreciation of Norman keeps.
Project leads Paul Pattison and Esther van Raamsdonk give an update on how their project on transcribing and translating of the Seventeenth Century survey by a Dutch Engineer of 22 castles and fortifications.
Now we are reaching the end of our research project – Transcribing and Translating SP9/99: A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Survey of 22 English Castles and Fortifications – we wanted to share a little more about the process of coming to grips with this engrossing manuscript.
A brief bit of context: the National Archives holds an anonymous manuscript, currently undated but certainly early seventeenth century, which contains a survey of at least 22 English castles and fortifications. This survey was carried out by a Dutch engineer, who clearly spent considerable time in England, as he has adopted several English words (albeit with idiosyncratic spellings). Because of the linguistic and material challenges – the unorthodox Dutch, the difficult handwriting, and the bad condition of the paper – it has never been transcribed and translated. The value of understanding the manuscript, however, is clear. The survey outlines the condition of the castles and fortifications at the time; it provides early modern names of buildings and their elements, some of which are now lost. It also provides suggestions for improvement, some of which we know have later been realised. We can now relate these improvements to the suggestions of the survey. More will be said in due course about some of our findings concerning what we can learn about the history and development of the 6 particular castles that we have now transcribed and translated – Sandown, Deal, Walmer, Dover, Sandgate and Camber – but here we wanted to elaborate a little on the fun and challenges of transcription.
The engineer was from the Low Countries. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where, but it was likely the southern end of the Netherlands, as the language does not follow the more standardised version of Dutch that by that time flourished in the North. Beyond the language, there is no punctuation in the document, not even a full stop. Almost all text is in phrases; there are no complete sentences; frequently verbs are missing. It reads like a list or a summing up of the engineer’s thoughts as he examined the sites. However, the content is also careful and precise, noting measurements, directions, costs and uses, all accompanied with skilful drawings and plans.
We will give you here two examples from Camber Castle. We have included the engineer’s full sketch plan here but will zoom in on the central keep. Having spent several months with this engineer and his handwriting, it can feel like we know the man quite well. He was often in a rush. This is visible in the way he sometimes repeats the same word in a row, and the density of abbreviations used. In the early modern period, abbreviations were common, and were themselves often standardised. For example, yt for that, or Sr for sir. These could be marked in several ways, but most often in either superscript or with a line above the word. Our engineer liked to break with tradition and places a characteristic C above a word. In my years working as palaeographer, I have never come across this, so we can reasonably conclude that this engineer was not formally trained. That is to say, he did not go to university; for most of the early modern texts that we work with, the authors had received a formal education and conform to the ‘rules’ of writing, but our engineer had worked out his own system of noting deviations. In a similar break with tradition, he uses the C symbol in three ways: to mark an abbreviation, to flag where he has made a mistake, or to indicate an English word and that he does not know how to spell it. Which one of these is the case for individual words is up to us to find out.
Image of Camber Castle from manuscript SP9/ 99. Copyright Paul Pattison
In the image below, there is a good example of the difficulty of these abbreviations or deviations. In the keep of Camber castle, there is written ‘ende boven, …… 3r 1v’. We know there is something strange going on with the word ‘boven’ because of the symbol C. To confuse matters further, this handwriting uses the same letter for v and n, and its e is often written as an o. We therefore assumed that this word would be an abbreviation of ‘benen’ (sometimes written as benéen), meaning ‘beneden’, which is Dutch for beneath or underneath. However, after working on several castles, it did not make sense that he would be talking about a roof beneath a room, and we therefore had to revisit all instances of benen and realised in some cases it had to be ‘boven’, meaning above. In this case the C symbol merely signifies the confusion between n and v, that the engineer himself clearly also suffered from.
Camber Castle image close up from SP9 / 99. Copyright Paul Pattison, National Archive Kew
To give an example of the engineer’s haste, or possibly enthusiasm, we can turn now to the marks just above the word ‘boven’ in the previous image. As is clearly visible from the full photo of Camber castle, this was a gifted draftsman. Camber Castle is certainly not the most technically difficult of the castles in the manuscript, but, as ever, his attention to detail and scale is impressive. The care he took in the drawing itself is not always present in his annotations, presumably because these were in draft form. As a result, the distinction between what is part of the drawing and what are notes that were added later is blurred. In the below image on the left, there is a strange mark which can be transcribed as ‘hffo’. This is not even close to an early modern Dutch word. The h also misses its characteristic full loop in the bottom curve. We thought it might be an abbreviation, although the C-symbol is not present, or some sort of mark highlighting an element of the building. It was only after we went over the full transcription several times again, that we realised he had misspelled ‘hoff’, like the word on the right, meaning ‘courtyard’ in Dutch. In his rush he had jumbled the order of the letters and not fully closed his h.
Camber Castle image close up 2 from SP9 / 99 at National Archives, Kew. Copyright Paul Pattison
These moments of breakthrough are rather exhilarating. Most of the transcriptions and translations that we have made still have some outstanding ‘curiosities’ to be solved. However, as a result of these idiosyncrasies or oddities, we have been drawn very close to the material and grappled with all aspects of it: the material history, the background of the engineer, the process of surveying these castles and fortifications, and the long history of repair. We are now in the process of puzzling over the new information the survey has brought to light and how it fits with what we already know about these buildings. We look forward to disclosing further updates here, hopefully in fully legible modern English.
In the first of two articlesDr Cristian Clarkson, Heritage Consultant at Simpson & Brown takes a look some of the work she has doneat various castles during her time with the firm.
The exterior of Dalkeith Palace is easily accessible to visitors, standing within a popular country park south-west of Edinburgh. Its interiors, however, have been largely hidden away since its construction for Anna, Duchess of Buccleuch, in the very early eighteenth century, and it has been relatively little-studied. Duchess Anna commissioned a radical remodelling of Dalkeith Castle, the Buccleuch family seat, from architect James Smith, and the family used the house for two hundred years. Clumsily converted for office use in the 1970s, and then used as the study-abroad centre of the University of Wisconsin from the 1980s, the building was vacated in 2021 and new uses are currently being evaluated by the Buccleuch Estate. Simpson & Brown completed a conservation plan for the building in 2024, one of the key questions of which was how far there were remains of Dalkeith Castle within the Palace, and what that castle was like.
Dalkeith Castle probably originated in the fourteenth century as a Douglas fortification, and was expanded by the 4th Earl of Morton in the sixteenth century. It was bought by the Scotts, then Earls of Buccleuch, shortly before the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the seventeenth century, and passed to Anna Scott in 1661 when she became Duchess in her own right. The fact that there is at least some medieval fabric remaining at Dalkeith is clear: there is a rib-vaulted basement room in the north range, at the centre of an area of very thick walls. There is also an asymmetry in the Palace’s plan: although the south entrance front is highly regular, the west range in fact meets the north range at an angle, immediately suggesting the re-use of earlier fabric. Several locked voids in the plan of this range suggest the historic presence of a kitchen with large flues which were blocked by James Smith.
Basement of North Range at Dalkeith Palace, copyright Simpson Brown
There are two key images of the historic castle: Slezer’s engraving (incorrectly labelled Glamis in his publication), and an unnamed, undated plan held in the Buccleuch collection which shows one storey of the castle. Slezer shows a castle built around two courts, with the inner court on three sides replicating the plan of the existing Palace. At the north-east corner, a tower over three or four storeys with bartizans and pedimented window-surrounds stands over the existing vaulted cellar, while a low range to the west must contain the historic kitchen. On the east side, there is a regular range which stands where there are barrel-vaulted cellars in the present Palace. The plan shows a turnpike stair where there are now empty round rooms at each level in the former stairwell, and a scale-and-platt stair on the same location as the existing state stair. At the north-east corner of the castle there is a projecting round tower shown which almost survived to the present building, as later documents show.
Phased Plan of Dalkeith Palace, copyright Simpson Brown
Little is known about the castle’s interiors, but there was something to be gleaned from the huge wealth of documentary evidence relating to Duchess Anna’s rebuilding. The Buccleuch archive, held partly in the National Records of Scotland, includes many receipts for work on the building. Although the majority of these are for the new eighteenth-century fabric, there are some which relate to cosmetic renovations on the old castle: the Duchess travelled north after decades in London to stay in the castle, meet James Smith and sign contracts for the rebuild, and the house needed some work in advance of her stay. Invoices for plastering list the rooms of the castle, including ‘the great painted room’, as well as ‘the King’s room’ with an adjacent study; these entries are arranged by floor and give some suggestion of the location of these rooms within the building. They also give clues as to which rooms were retained: one room listed is known as the ‘stone hall’, and a room with this name appears consistently in invoices for work in the new building as well. It is probably the vaulted room above the kitchen, used by the steward.
We also examined a series of design development drawings by James Smith, in which he helpfully shades fabric to be retained in the new house. None of these drawings are exactly as-executed (William Adam’s plans in Vitruvius Scoticus are the closest to the finished house), but show that initially Smith hoped to raze the old palace and eventually retained a great deal of the castle at basement and ground levels. There appear to have been particular difficulties around the north-east corner, where the plans were to retain the existing round tower; this was not carried off in the final design and would have made an interesting companion-space to the exquisite neighbouring ‘picture closet’ with its elaborate parquet floor and painted mirror by Jakob Bogdany. Smith also workshopped an option where the original re-entrant stair would be retained with a new branch down into the entrance hall, but this was not executed.
The Buccleuch archive also contains the details of a court case between Smith and the Duchess after the completion of the building, which reveals some of the decision-making process behind the retention of castle fabric. The Duchess complained that the building was poorly constructed, with cracks in the walls and chimneys which smoked: Smith blamed the Duchess for insisting that he keep old masonry rather than building anew. Presumably her primary motivation was financial, but her letters reveal a certain sentimentality for her childhood home, which she left after her father’s death and before her marriage to the Duke of Monmouth. She wrote to a friend that he might think she was extravagant in fitting out her new house with marble, ‘but it is to shew you I do not Dispyse my old Castle.’
Buildings archaeologist, Neil Ludlow, gives an update of the work that has been donesince the Trust funded two projects at Pembroke Castle.
Two CST-funded projects, in 2016 and 2018, looked at a late-medieval building complex in the outer ward at Pembroke Castle (Day and Ludlow 2016; Meek and Ludlow 2019). All above-ground remains of the buildings have gone, but vestiges of walling are marked here on a plan from 1787, while a drawing from 1802 appears to show a surviving doorway. The buildings were part-excavated in the 1930s, but sadly without record. However, the presence of walls, floors and stairs was noted, and a cess-pit from which was retrieved a Limoges-enamelled bronze fitting of late thirteenth/early fourteenth-century date. The wall-lines show as strong parchmarks in dry summers (see Fig. 1).
Figure 1: Phased plan of Pembroke Castle, copyright Neil Ludlow
The spacious outer ward was added to Pembroke Castle in the 1240s-50s, and appears to have been an entirely new enclosure. It was not ditched, the limestone bedrock instead being levelled as a platform to receive the curtain walls. And a flanking tower, the so-called ‘Dungeon Tower’, had been built against the inner curtain only 20 years previously, implying that it was still a forward line of defence. Moreover, it subsumed part of the town as at Swansea (Glam.) and Ludlow (Shrops.). Geophysics by Dyfed Archaeology in 2016 suggested it was largely an empty space, perhaps intended for ‘civil’ assembly, military gatherings, pageantry/display or leisure – or perhaps all four. By the early fourteenth century, it appears to have contained a garden and it may always have been perceived as ‘gentrified’ space, rather than seeing the kind of purely functional use that is normally ascribed to outer enclosures (Ludlow 2017).
So the complex, which was clearly substantial, was interpreted as high-status and residential: taken along with the parchmark evidence, the geophysics appeared to indicate a substantial, winged hall-house, with a possible yard to the southeast conjoined with a further, smaller building. Two trenches were excavated across the winged house in 2018, by Dyfed Archaeology, revealing walling, a helical mural stair, and the cess-pit exposed in the 1930s (Fig. 2). The excavated area was limited and the full layout of the complex not revealed. Neither was close dating evidence forthcoming.
Two more trenches were dug in 2023, again by Dyfed Archaeology but this time funded by the Pembroke Castle Trust (Poucher 2025). They produced a couple of big surprises. Firstly, a cellar was revealed beneath the southern wing of the hall-house. And what had been interpreted as an open yard, to the southeast, was revealed to be another roofed building, with a lateral fireplace in its south wall (Fig. 2). The base of a further mural stair was exposed in the same wall. The physical relationships showed that this building pre-dated the winged hall-house, but close dating evidence was again slight.
Figure 2: Plan of the excavation trenches over the hall-house (adapted from Poucher 2023). The winged house to the southwest (left), overlying a cellar, appears to be secondary to the open Phase 1 Hall.
While only four small trenches have been dug, and the site is still very little understood, we can perhaps propose a conjectured sequence. Its scale and location show the house to have been an elite structure from the first. On current evidence, it appears to have begun as a large, free-standing hall, with an attached, storeyed unit at its southwest end overlying a barrel-vaulted cellar; the latter is of a regional form similar to late-medieval cellars that still survive below properties in Pembroke town. This end unit was subsequently replaced with, or adapted into, a winged house that was apparently self-contained: it appears to have comprised a central space (another hall?), associated with the cess-pit and flanked by storeyed wings; the upper floor of the southern wing was accessed via a helical stair.
Comparison with similar buildings, and the sparse dating evidence, suggests both phases are fifteenth-century. By this time, the domestic buildings in the inner ward had a history of neglect, coupled with an increasing burden of administrative and penal machinery. The outer bailey was both quieter and emptier, and had perhaps always seen ‘elite’ forms of use, with at least one garden (later two); understandably, it might have been preferred for seigneurial residence. A similar development occurred in another caput castle, at Montgomery, where a mansion house was built in the outer enclosure during the 1530s.
And the Pembroke house appears not to have sat in isolation. The south curtain wall has, at some period, been doubled in thickness with over two metres of masonry applied to its internal face (Fig. 3). This has long been regarded as a Civil War measure against artillery (see King 1978, 120), but an earth fill was normally chosen for this purpose, while the thin-walled mural passage lies on the exposed external face. I suggest this thickening belongs instead to the fifteenth century, to create a broad ‘promenade’ at parapet level. The use of parapets as promenades has been suggested at a number of castles, from the twelfth century onwards: they provided a viewpoint from which a lord could show off his domain to distinguished guests, while offering scope for high-status recreational use – particularly by women. The Pembroke parapet is approached by two staircases in the thickened section, both of a somewhat ‘processional’ nature. One, a mural stair, is long and straight, while the second wraps around the Henry VII Tower as a double flight of persuasively late-medieval form, and was clearly designed to be seen; it is not obviously military (Figs. 1 and 3). Lying immediately south of the house, it is accompanied by a second ornamental feature – a projecting porch, leading to a latrine within the wall-thickening. This porch, like the thickening, has traditionally been assigned to the Civil War period (King 1978, 94 and n. 75), but in overall form it is not unlike the corbelled oriels seen in later fifteenth-century domestic work (Figs. 1 and 3). Though substantially restored, all these features respect surviving physical evidence; together with a second garden mentioned in a source from 1481-2, they appear to represent a prestige suite of ‘eye-catchers’, clustered around and associated with the hall-house. It is likely, too, that use of the latrine itself was restricted by status and/or gender. The infilling of the inner ward ditch may belong to the same period, to create more seigneurial space.
Figure 3: The outer curtain wall from northwest, showing the double flight of stairs around the Henry VII Tower, to left, and the latrine porch at centre. The parchmarks of the hall-house are visible at bottom left.
Three candidates had the resources to build on this scale. It is possible that the Phase 1 hall was built by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, earl of Pembroke 1413-47, for his personal use. His political influence was in decline by 1441, and he may have intended to use Pembroke as a regular residence, far from his powerful opponents: he appears to have already built a smaller hunting-lodge for himself, just over the river from the castle at Monkton. If so, it is possible that the Phase 2 winged house was added by Jasper Tudor, soon after he acquired the earldom in 1452, in anticipation of occasional visits and to announce his ‘arrival’ among the leading aristocracy. It might not, however, allow enough time for the promenade to be built: after 1454, and until 1461, the Wars of the Roses forced him into more-or-less permanent residence at Pembroke, but in an environment that may militate against such overtly domestic work. Jasper seems moreover to have rarely visited Pembroke after the war, when he concentrated on his favoured castles at Sudeley and Thornbury in Gloucestershire. It may then be that the winged house and promenade were added by the Yorkist leader William Herbert the elder, who held Jasper’s forfeit lands between 1461 and 1469. His work at Raglan in Monmouthshire, where the castle was transformed into a magnificent palace, shows him to have been an ambitious builder.
King, D. J. C., 1978 ‘Pembroke Castle’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 127, 75-121.
Ludlow, N., 2017 ’Medieval Britain and Ireland, Fieldwork Highlights in 2016: Pembroke Castle outer ward – gentrified space and Tudor Mansion?’, Medieval Archaeology 61/2, 428-35.
Ludlow, N., forthcoming ‘Two baronial castles in Pembrokeshire: Picton and Pembroke’, Journ. British Archaeological Association 178.
Meek, J. and Ludlow, N., 2019 ‘Pembroke Castle: archaeological evaluation, 2018’ (report by Dyfed Archaeological Trust for the Castle Studies Trust: see – http://www.castlestudiestrust.org/docs/Pembroke_Castle_Evaluation_2018_FINAL.pdf.
Chair of the Friends of Crookston Castle, David McDondald and Historic Environment Scotland’s Dr Hazel Blake look forward to the community geophysical survey days that are starting on Friday that the Trust is funding.
As Glasgow celebrates its 850th anniversary, the Friends of Crookston Castle are proud to be contributing to the city’s story with a major new heritage project.
Re-established in 2024, our volunteer-led group exists to care for and celebrate Glasgow’s only surviving medieval castle, Crookston.
Crookston Castle copyright Friends of Crookston Castle
Once surrounded by ancient woodland the Castle is now encircled by twentieth-century housing. It has stood as a landmark in the life of generations of local people, but many of them do not realise just how deep its history runs.
That’s why we’re excited to be launching Echoes from the Earth – Crookston Castle’s Hidden Stories, supported by the Castle Studies Trust.
At the centre of the project is a three-day geophysical survey, the most comprehensive investigation of the site in decades. The survey will use three techniques; gradiometry, earth resistance, and ground-penetrating radar to build a picture of what lies beneath the castle grounds and the surrounding area.
With the help of Historic Environment Scotland, local volunteers will be trained to use the archaeological equipment providing our partner schools with a unique learning experience, while boosting the skills of early career archaeologists and local students. Crookston Castle is an unusual stone castle built around 1400 within earlier earthworks constructed in the 1100s. It is the only surviving medieval castle in the City of Glasgow and is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland (HES; Crookston Castle | Public Body for Scotland’s Historic Environment).
The site is a well-known local landmark and has an active ‘Friends of Crookston Castle’ group from the local community who value the monument as an important part of their historic environment. Working in partnership with the ‘Friends’, the archaeological survey team at HES will be undertaking geophysical survey at Crookston Castle. This has two main objectives – firstly to understand more about what may lie below the ground surface, and secondly to provide experience of geophysical survey to the Friends of Crookston and support them in finding out more about their monument.
At any stone-built castle, it is inevitable that impressive standing masonry is a focus of attention. But these were monuments that underwent changes and development, perhaps because of war damage or as needs changed, and may be one aspect of a much longer span of activity on the site. So, there may be more to them than immediately meets the eye. The planned gradiometer, earth resistance and ground penetrating radar surveys (see here for more information on these techniques) will provide views of what archaeological remains lie below the ground surface. We hope this will provide more information about the history of the castle, enriching the stories that the remains can tell us and informing future management of the site.
Crookston Castle, copyright Friends of Crookston Castle
Crookston Castle matters to the local community, and that is one reason why it is important to HES to be working with the ‘Friends’ to better understand their monument. By providing experience of geophysical survey and the interpretation of the results, we have an opportunity to share experience and knowledge and together contribute to a better understanding of the site now and in the future.
Geophysics is exciting because you never know what may pop up in the survey data, lurking unsuspected under the ground surface! But there are already two potential areas of interest that we know should benefit from survey. One area to the south of the stone castle may contain medieval activity, while to the west there is what may have been the original western entrance. Both areas will be an initial target for the geophysical survey, with flexibility to target further areas across the site.
Crookston Castle is valued by its local community. It is a great opportunity for HES, as the national publicly funded body for the historic environment, to be able to engage directly with the Friends and support them in their interest in the monument.
If you would like to get involved with the group, get in touch at Crookstoncastlefriends@gmail.com and follow them on Facebook.
So, if Crookston is close to you and you’d like to get involved in the project, get in touch or follow our progress on our social media and help us unearth the history and stories of a site that even after all these years still has secrets to share and that continues to surprise us, inspire us, and to remind us that the past is never quite as far away as it seems.
Project lead of the 2022 project Dating the Medieval Towers of Chalkida, Greece, Dr Andrew Blackler, gives an update on how work on the project has progressed.
Mention the Acropolis to anyone and they will probably immediately identify it with Greece. Yet the Norman invasions of Greece just fifteen years after the battle of Hastings are almost unknown. Few will know too that the magnificent horses adorning St Mark’s Basilica in Venice were pillaged from Constantinople in 1204, and that much of Central Greece and its islands were ruled for nearly three hundred years by a succession of western adventurers from as far away as Catalan Spain, until the region’s annexation by the Ottoman empire at the end of the fifteenth century. This is simply illustrated in the figure below, based on a map of Central Greece by the Venetian cartographer Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti c.1485. at a time when Athens was just a small provincial town whilst Negroponte was a major city.
This is the background to the five-year survey of the hinterland of medieval Chalkida (Negroponte) on the island of Evia (Euboea), which I was invited to join by Professor Joanita Vroom of the University of Leiden Dr Alexandra Kostarelli of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Euboea in 2020 – the first major archaeological survey in Greece to focus exclusively on the medieval period. Initially, times were tough as the COVID shutdown and lack of funding restricted our work, but slowly our team established a track record supported by sponsorship from institutions such as the Castle Studies Trust (2022).
This project, in conjunction with the National Centre of Scientific Research laboratory at the University of Athens, undertook the radiocarbon dating of sections of wood taken from within the walls of a group of medieval towers, a ubiquitous feature of the region. It was very successful. For the first time we were able to conclusively prove that the more than one hundred towers, that once stood on the island, were not built immediately after 1204 as part of a colonial process of control and exploitation, but during the fourteenth century, probably to protect local villages against pirate attack from the sea, an endemic problem of the era.
Figure 2: Taking wood samples from a tower, copyright Dr Andrew Blackler
During five years of work over the summer months our team of over thirty specialists and student volunteers has now recorded all the known medieval monuments of the region. Using intensive surface survey techniques and trial excavation trenches, evidence from ceramic, coin, glass, iron, fauna and bone finds is slowly allowing us to reconstruct a picture of the medieval life of the region. Trading links have also been identified east as far as the Black Sea and Palestine, and west to other centres around the Mediterranean. More recently, we have attracted major sponsorship and are now undertaking geophysical surveys to identify structures hidden under the earth, digital reconstruction of selected monuments and have even instituted a second phase of radiocarbon dating. In parallel, specialists have been investigating the medieval archives of the Republic of Venice and Ottoman administrative records held in Istanbul. A detailed report of the results of the first two years’ survey campaigns can be found at https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=article&id=3293423&journal_code=PHA&download=yes
I will leave you with a final thought: the medieval world, despite the slow pace of travel, was much more inter-connected than people generally believe. Two examples illustrate this. Many know that Harald Hardrada, king of Norway and the last great Viking, invaded England in 1066, and was killed at Stamford Bridge just weeks before the battle of Hastings. Few realise that he made his fortune fighting for over ten years in the elite Byzantine Varangian Guard, and that this had probably helped fund his claim to the Norwegian throne. Recent analysis of finds in the British Museum from Sutton Hoo also suggests that Anglo-Saxon mercenaries were even fighting alongside the Byzantine emperor Justinian in Asia Minor as early as the sixth century. This is the sort of international research that the ‘seed capital’ provided by the Castle Studies Trust has spawned over the last three years.
