Castle of Old Wick: Hot Fire and Cold Murder: Looting and Legitimacy in late medieval Caithness

In the second of two articles on the Castle Studies Trust / Historic Environment Scotland co-funded project to date the timber left in a wall socket at Old Wick, Dr Will Wyeth offers an explanation for the surprising date of the timber.

Past investigations of Castle of Old Wick provide a context for the most recent research on this enigmatic Caithness castle. The archaeological evidence combined with historical details give sharp insight into an episode of violence and destruction at the castle in the life of Christian Sutherland, the Lady of Berriedale.

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Based on some similarities with Cubbie Roo’s Castle in Orkney, Old Wick’s standing fabric – a unornamented stone tower with small windows – has been dated to the 12th century. A survey in 2016 led by Dr Piers Dixon of Historic Environment Scotland (HES) was the first comprehensive assessment of its standing buildings and earthworks since the publication of MacGibbon and Ross’s Castellated and Domestic Architecture in the late 19th century. Dixon’s study queried the consensus of the castle’s high medieval origins, pointing to regional comparators whose documented history sat more comfortably in a date range beginning in the 14th century. My review of archaeological and historical evidence for Castle of Old Wick in 2019 substantiated the conclusions of the 2016 survey.

Ground plan of earthworks and floor plans of stone tower, Castle of Old Wick, from 2016 survey. Copyright HES

Nevertheless, the simple stone towers of Caithness are poorly understood. They are fairly numerous in the county but our understanding of them relies on an unproductive mixture of simplistic architectural study and a reliance on references in historical sources.

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Dr Coralie Mills’ and Hamish Darrah’s research gives scope to uphold Dixon’s assertion, and challenge a 12th century date for Castle of Old Wick. Their analysis of the fragment of alder has given the first substantive dating evidence for the castle with a felling date range of 1515-50 (95% probability).

Interior of the tower at Old Wick copyright HES

The slot in which the timber was recovered, located on an internal wall face within the tower, was argued by Dixon to be part of a hanging lum. This is a form of fireplace common to buildings of middling and high status in late medieval Britain, also helpful for dating the construction of the tower at Old Wick. A hanging lum is a fireplace whose hearth and flue are built against, not within, a wall.

Mills and Darrah suggest that the alder was a replacement for an earlier timber used for the same purpose, i.e. to support a hanging lum, therefore, the felling date corresponds with a period of repair, restoration or improvement of the interiors of Castle of Old Wick in the early 16th century.

Looting and legitimacy

The historical context is one where violence both within and between kin groups is a feature of elite society in late medieval Britain. Typically, these disputes centred on rights of succession to property and titles. Those held by women were the most precarious. In 1517 two parties from the extended Sutherland of Duffus family met to settle a violent succession dispute at Drumminor Castle in Aberdeenshire. William Sutherland of Duffus agreed to an arbitration on the matter of assisthment (compensation for loss) and kynbut (compensation for manslaughter) with Christian Sutherland (the Lady of Berriedale) and her son and heir, Andrew Oliphant. William and his accomplices were held responsible for the murder of Christian’s elder son Charles. Duffus was also accused of seizing and looting two of her properties: Berriedale Castle and Castle of Old Wick.

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The family dispute which led to the murder of Charles Sutherland originated in the legitimacy of Christian’s inheritance of several estates on the death of her father, Alexander Sutherland (d. 1451×1471), including those in Caithness but also Duffus and elsewhere. William Sutherland’s father, also William Sutherland of the fittingly named Quarrelwood, contended that Christian was illegitimate. The court of the Bishop of Aberdeen had found in favour of Christian in 1494, but two years later Quarrelwood violently seized Castle of Old Wick. This was very likely not the same occupation mentioned in the 1517 document. Still unsatisfied, Quarrelwood pursued his case in the court in Rome for several years, until a settlement of sorts around 1507, when Christian surrendered her father’s Duffus lands.

Drumminor Castle, where in 1517 Christian Sutherland agreed to arbitration to settlement with her kinsman, William Sutherland of Duffus (copyright HES)

We don’t know exactly why she reached this settlement but it may be telling that her husband’s kin, the Oliphants, had spent substantial sums (not entirely selflessly) on supporting her legal case and accommodating Christian and her children during the difficult years of legal wrangling. We also can’t be sure if the 1517 document references this settlement, or another outburst of violence.

It is tempting to connect the episode of refurbishment at Castle of Old Wick implied by the radiocarbon dating and the documented evidence of looting at the castle which took place before the  1517 settlement, with the implication of subsequent repairs implied by that settlement. I think this is the best conclusion, but others are possible. Between 1515-50 the castle was held by at least seven different parties, but evidence suggests that they were either in financial difficulty or held the castle to generate money from its lands, not as a family seat. Only when the senior branch of the Oliphants take over after 1548 is there a compelling reason to think that the castle was systematically renovated: this is the best alternative scenario to that suggested above.

Archaeologists’ efforts over the last six years have drastically altered our understanding of the Castle of Old Wick. But they have also shed light on the story of Christian Sutherland and violence and upheaval occasioned by her kinsman’s legal contestation. This research demonstrates the value of revisiting the smaller castles of the world, for the potential to challenge an existing consensus as well as shed light on lesser-told stories from the medieval past. 

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To read the first blog by Dr Coralie Mills and Hamish Darrah click here:

Castle of Old Wick: The tale of a tower, a timber and time

 

Castle Studies: Present and Future

A symposium to celebrate ten years of the Castle Studies Trust

Saturday, 10 June 2023, University of Winchester

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Castle Studies Trust was founded in 2012 to advance the study of and research into the history and archaeology of castles for public benefit. Over the last ten years the Trust has funded ground-breaking research into castles in the UK, Ireland and further afield.

In celebration of this, the Trust is organising the symposium Castle Studies: Present and Futures and seeking proposals for 20-minute research papers. We welcome submissions on any topic exploring castle studies, particularly encouraging papers from projects which link to current and future areas of castle studies. Themes to consider might be (but are not limited to):

  • Castles and the Environment
  • Gendering Castles
  • The Decolonised Castle
  • Challenging Orthodoxy
  • Theory in Action

Please send a 250 word abstract of your paper to Dr Katherine Weikert (Katherine.Weikert@winchester.ac.uk) and Dr Catriona Cooper (Catriona.Cooper@canterbury.ac.uk) by 16 January 2023. We particularly encourage scholars from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds to submit abstracts.

The seminar will also feature poster presentations for early career research and ongoing projects. Proposals for posters should be submitted as above.

The CST relies entirely on public donations to fund our grants; we aim to support attendance and travel for early career, unemployed and under-waged scholars who are giving papers, but hope it is appreciated this will be limited in scope.

For more information about the Castle Studies Trust and its activities visit the Trust website at www.castlestudiestrust.org

So, what did happen at Caerlaverock?

Lead research on the Weathering Extremes: Medieval Climate Change at Caerlaverock Castle Dr Richard Tipping outlines what he and the team of researchers found during their research.

After an engrossing year of field and laboratory analyses, the team of researchers from the Universities of Stirling, St Andrews and Coventry, along with Morvern French and Stefan Sagrott of Historic Environment Scotland, try to summarise what happened at Caerlaverock Castle, on the Scottish Solway coast, some 600 years ago.

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The new castle, top left, and the old castle, bottom right © RCAHMS

When it was built in AD1229-30, the older of the castles at Caerlaverock stood close to the coast. Salt marshes probably extended south, worked by salt-panners. But the Solway had been far from tranquil. On the coast, preserved intact for around 1,400 years, was a series of huge, 200m long, 20m wide sand and gravel ridges: barrier beaches created by extreme storm surges. They started to form around 200BC, in the late Iron Age, and probably continued into the 1st millennium AD. There were at least four (we don’t know if each was a single storm) that added 200m to the coast.

The builders of the old castle may not have given these much thought. But around AD1200, we think, extreme storm surges recurred, initially with an enormous event that ripped apart the earlier barrier beaches, eroded archaeological structures and impacted the coastal cliffs: we wrote about this event in our third blog . This had minimum wave heights >4.5m above highest ordinary tides. And these waves were not like those surfers play on; these were like tsunami, swelling and not breaking.

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We think the builders of the old castle added what has been called a harbour on the coast: our fourth blog described us coring its sediments. These went back 6,000 years, formed when the so-called harbour was a tidal creek, and they probably record the storm surges of the 1st millennium AD. The creek was widened and maybe deepened around AD1200, but even so, waves at the highest ordinary tides could not have flooded the harbour: the harbour wasn’t a harbour. But it was the only way freshwater in the moat system could drain to the sea. It was also, of course, the quickest route for storm surges, increasing in frequency if not scale, to force their way inland. But they didn’t. The sediments in the ‘harbour’ from around AD1200 record still-water, low-energy deposition. We have to think that somehow the ‘harbour’ entrance was blocked off by people increasingly scared of the changing climate – not that they understood what was happening

Much of this reconstruction, made in 2004, is now incorrect, but if you ignore the ship, this image shows the relation of the ‘harbour’ to the old castle © Crown Copyright HES

Our first two blogs  described the patient work of understanding sediments trapped in the moat system. Several different types of analysis converge to show that the moat system, inland of the ‘harbour’, was impacted by storm surges, at least twice in the 14th century. How come, when the harbour was blocked? We think the surges skirted round the ‘harbour’, pushing over low cliffs and across parkland to pour into the moat surrounding the old castle. We may not, of course, have recorded the earliest surges, only those after the moat system was dug. We still don’t know whether the storm surges caused the old castle to be abandoned. We think the wave energies were insufficient to undermine the structure. But wave heights will also have rattled the occupants, and we don’t know how big these were: we’ll keep on searching. The salt-panners, by the way, are not recorded after AD1304.

But around AD1277, the old Castle was abandoned and a new one built 200m inland. The final storm surge to impact the long-abandoned old castle was around AD1570, by which time a further six huge barrier beaches had been stacked up. But because its moat had to be filled from the same spring-line that fed the old castle, the new castle could not be located any higher than 7m above contemporary ordinary tides. This, we speculate, created a painful dilemma because this may not have been high enough to escape these medieval and later surges.

This project has demonstrated how our understanding of castles’ construction and landscape can change significantly as new techniques are employed. Also, medieval people were conscious of the effects of extreme natural weather events: a critical topic for the 21st century.

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Historic Environment Scotland is grateful for funding received from the Castle Studies Trust, and for research done by Dr Richard Tipping, Dr Eileen Tisdall, Dr Tim Kinnaird, Dr Aayush Srivastava, Dr Jason Jordan, Busie Gisanrin, Neil McDonald, Carla Ferreira, and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre.

In turn, Richard and Eileen would like to thank Historic Environment Scotland, and particularly Morvern French and Stefan Sagrott, for support and assistance in every aspect of the work, and the Trustees of the Castle Studies Trust for their generous financial support and interest. Stefan Sagrott’s LiDAR imagery of Castle Wood was the catalyst to this work. The Caerlaverock Estate provided access to Castle Wood. Grateful thanks for help with fieldwork go to Valerie Bennett, Finn Thompson, Kath Usher, Richard and Laura Bates, Tim Kinnaird, Aayush Srivastava, Morvern French and Steve Farrar. Lisa Brown (HES) facilitated the 14C dating programme and the re-assessment of archaeomagnetic dating at the old castle. The staff at the SUERC 14C Laboratory, University of Glasgow) are thanked for the provision of 14C assays. Carla Ferreira is thanked for assistance with BACON software. Tim Kinnaird and Aayush Srivastava (University of St Andrews) provided more than just OSL age estimates. Jason Jordan (University of Coventry) supervised the diatom analyses in the western moat undertaken by Busie Gisanrin. Neil McDonald undertook particle size analyses from the western moat and the outer ditch. Steve Farrar (then at HES) and Andrew Burnett enthused over the interpretations.

Marlborough Castle: twenty years of restoration and exploration

After two decades of research into Marlborough Castle, the Marlborough Mound Trust has collated all the results of their work in to a new publication. Here, Richard Barber of the Trust looks at what they have found.

Marlborough Mound is one of the least visible of the great monuments of England, and almost unknown except to local historians and specialists. It stands in the middle of Marlborough College in Wiltshire, and even for generations of members of the school, it was no more than a mysterious but familiar presence, largely concealed by trees, and with nothing to explain what it is or why it is there.

In the last twenty years, the curiosity of one Marlburian, Eric Elstob, who set up a trust for its systematic restoration and the exploration of its history, has led to dramatic results. The key moment came when the Marlborough Mound Trust was offered the use of a coring machine by English Heritage, who were investigating the structure of Silbury Hill six miles down the Kennet valley. They wanted to see if the Mound was comparable to their site. As a result, we now know, thanks to the dating that radiocarbon analysis has enabled, that it is the second- largest Neolithic mound in the whole of Europe, broadly contemporary with Silbury Hill, and thus part of the much-vaunted ‘Stonehenge landscape’.

Marlborough Mound Now copyright Marlborough Mound Trust

Subsequent research by Jim Leary has shown that Marlborough is currently the only known example of the reuse of a prehistoric mound as a castle motte. However, only a few traces of the foundations of the medieval castle survive. We have nothing of the keep which once stood on the Mound. So here the question was not of archaeology – several trial pits were unsuccessful – but of historical research. Initially in the hands of the family of William Marshal, (whose family retained a connection with the castle as late as 1297), the records in the National Archives enable us to reconstruct many of the details of the vanished buildings.

However, the use of the castle in the early thirteenth century is a much richer story. To take one example, John sent the queen and his children to Marlborough for safety just before the signing of Magna Carta. For Henry III, it was one of his most favoured residences outside London, and he spent a total of about two years there in the first three decades of his reign. His love for Eleanor of Provence is reflected in the costly refurbishment of the royal chambers in the castle. There is also evidence of ‘herbers’, the small courtyard gardens found in other royal castles of this period.

After Henry III’s death, the castle passed to Eleanor, and thereafter was part of the dowry of English queens until 1548. It began to decay shortly after Eleanor’s death [insert date], when part of the great tower collapsed, and by 1400 the whole castle was more or less deserted. The meagre list of royal property there in the fourteenth century is matched by accusations against the local rector who had surveyed the castle in 1371, which described how he had removed material from the site to build his own houses. By 1541, when John Leland came to Marlborough on his great journey round England recording its antiquities, only the remains of the keep were still prominent.

One other interesting element at Marlborough castle was the fishpond. The ‘king’s great fishpond’ survived unidentified until a year or two ago, when it was filled in (and now appears to be a paddock for polo ponies). It was a major source of supply for freshwater fish such as bream – not to be confused with sea bream – and pike. Henry and Eleanor, however, preferred lampreys, finding all other fish ‘insipid’. The fishponds also supply breeding stock for other castles, shipped in water-filled barrels.

Marlborourgh Castle as in C18 with Summer House on top of the motte

The last stage in the Mound’s history was its adaptation, probably in the decade before the civil war, as a major feature in the garden laid out by Francis Seymour, the owner from 1621 and builder of the first house on the site of the Castle. A spiral path and a grotto were cut into it, possibly in the 1640s. The Mound was well maintained when Marlborough College took over the house in 1843, but later photographs record steady decay and encroaching trees. A water tank was installed on the top early in the seventeenth century, which had become a massive cast iron and concrete structure after the second world war, surrounded by a jungle of undergrowth.

The Mound Trust’s work over the past twenty years has restored something of the impressive aspect of the original mound, and this newly published book presents a fascinating picture of the history of the hidden treasure in the heart of the College.

The Marlborough Mound: Prehistoric Mound, Medieval Castle, Georgian Garden

Copies are available to followers of the Castles Studies Trust at £25 direct from the publisher, Boydell and Brewer Ltd, on their website (until December 31 2022) at:

https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783271863/the-marlborough-mound/

Use code  BB072 when completing the order. Normal price is £45.

 ISBN 978 1 78327 186 3, 234 pages, 234 x 156 mm, 54 illustrations.

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Flying High: Project update from Raby Castle

Project lead for our Raby project, Julie Biddesecombe-Brown. Curator at Raby Estates, gives an update on how the building survey and work around it has progressed.

Work has progressed this summer on Raby Castle’s project funded by the Castle Studies Trust to create a digital model of the 14th century Nevill stronghold.

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During July, Durham University Archaeological Services’ drone scanned the castle exterior. Every nook and cranny was covered; from courtyard and tunnels, to rooftops and bartisans, relying on the skill of the pilot to navigate the hardware into some pretty tight spaces. The photographs were taken utilising a 14mm lens and 36 megapixel sensor, supported by RTK GNSS positioning to precisely document every feature of the building. The data captured will then be uploaded and processed through Agisoft Metashape Professional and output as a 3D model utilising AutoCad Map 3D.

As well as creating an outstanding record of the building as it stands today, the software will enable the project team to ‘strip back’ known later additions and ‘rebuild’ known, lost features, such as the Barbican. Throughout the summer, Raby’s dedicated volunteers have continued to research the medieval structure and to collate findings based on evidence in other related sites that will help to build the model and to ensure accuracy as far as possible. The end result will have many uses, not only in building our understanding the medieval castle but also how it intersects with later additions and how it functioned as a building. The findings will be shared with visitors in new interpretation to be introduced as part of the castle’s wider development plans.

There has never been a full archaeological survey of Raby Castle and opportunities for research have been limited in the past. This project reflects the ambitions and vision of Lord and Lady Barnard, the castle’s owners who firmly believe that it is by understanding and sharing the castle’s past that we will secure its future. We look forward to sharing our progress as the model develops.

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For more information about Raby Castle visit www.raby.co.uk

What did they find on top of Shrewsbury’s motte?

Following the finishing of excavations at Shrewsbury Castle, the director of the excavations, Dr Nigel Baker, outlines what they found during the dig.

The third season of excavations at Shrewsbury Castle, funded by the Castle Studies Trust and staffed by experienced local volunteers, supervised by Dai Williams MCIfA, and students of University Centre Shrewsbury (University of Chester) under Dr Morn Capper, has just ended. Having investigated the inner bailey interior and one of its ramparts in previous years, the principal objective of this third season has been to examine the top of the motte – more easily said than done as it is paved by cobbles set in thick cement, which had to be drilled through by the volunteers at the peak of the recent heat-wave. The question was: did any archaeology bearing upon the character and use of early medieval motte-top buildings survive the depredations of Thomas Telford, who is known to have demolished a standing 13th-century tower and the ruined walls of at least one major building up there during his ‘restoration’ of 1786-90.

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The three trenches on Shrewsbury Castle motte. Copyright Dr Nigel Baker

The answer is that buried archaeology does indeed survive, truncated, under Telford’s topsoil (imported to create a motte-top garden) and the 1990s cobbles. Cut into the orange clay top of the motte were post-holes, a post-pad and slots for sleeper-beams of buildings, generally of the period when local unglazed cooking-pots were in use (late 11th to mid-13th-century). In places these features were intercut, showing that the remains represent buildings that had existed over an extended period of time. Remains of the ‘great tower’, the timber tower that collapsed in the third quarter of the 13th century, were not positively identified. Some of the post-holes were packed with a distinctive crumbly green sandstone (Coed-yr-Allt beds) obtained nearby from the River Severn that has recently been identified as the stone used in the first phase of building the curtain walls and converting the Norman earth-and-timber fortress into a stone castle.  

Shrewsbury Castle Excavation opening of the trench outside the curtain wall to investigate possible remains of a bastion. Copyright Dr Nigel Baker

A second trench was also opened outside the north curtain wall to look for evidence of a projecting bastion in that area that is known to have still been standing in the 18th century. The wall itself shows no trace whatever of this, suggesting that its outer face was rebuilt in the mid-19th century. The ground outside the curtain wall was found to have had been stripped down to natural in the 19th century when the wall was indeed rebuilt. Concurrent research by Historic England in its registry files suggests this is not in the least surprising as the curtain walls evidently have a long history of instability and collapse.

Following three seasons of CST excavations and additional research for a conservation management plan commissioned by Shropshire Council, the site owners – including the first-ever examination of the curtain walls with dense vegetation now removed from their faces – attention is now turning to publication of this long-neglected Marches shire-town fortress.

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Featured image, copyright Dr Nigel Baker

Video updates on two 2022 Castle Studies Grants

Back in May the geophysical of survey took place at Pontefract Castle. Find out what they were surveying and the various techniques they were using to achieve the best results

You can find more about the different geophysical survey techniques in the article we published back in January 2021 by our geophysical survey specialist assessor Kayt Armstrong:

Geophysics and Castles: An Introduction

While here is a short taster video of a project yet to properly start – dating the towers of Chalkida in Greece. With permissions having been granted by the Greek government, Dr Andrew Blackler outlines what they will be doing when the fieldwork gets underway in September.

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What is on top of Shrewsbury’s Motte?

Dr Nigel Baker, Excavation Director of the Shrewsbury Castle Excavation 2022 outlines what he hopes him and his team hope to find over the next two weeks with the main focus on the previously unexplored motte.

A third season of excavation funded by the Castle Studies Trust is about to begin at Shrewsbury Castle. In 2019 a trench was excavated across the interior of the inner bailey and in 2020 an inner bailey rampart was sampled. Attention has now turned to the top of the motte, and to the north curtain wall. The excavations, the first ever to take place at the castle are carried out by a team of local archaeological volunteers under the direction of Dr Nigel Baker and David (Dai) Williams together with students of University Centre Shrewsbury (University of Chester) led by Dr Morn Capper.

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The motte top excavation will establish just how much damage Thomas Telford did to the medieval motte when he was modernising the hall and landscaping the castle in 1786-1790. Ruins on the motte top were cleared to make way for a Gothic summerhouse known as Laura’s Tower, with a garden laid out around it. The team will be looking in particular for surviving evidence of the Tower of Shrewsbury, the timber watch-tower, assumed to be of 11th-century origin, that is known to have collapsed in 1269-71.

Vertical view of Shrewsbury Castle Motte (copyright James Brennan Associates)

The irregular plan of the motte top seen in the drone photo (undertaken by James Brennan Associates for the current conservation management plan for Shropshire Council, the site owner) arises from a number of factors. Originally probably oval, the straight line across the bottom of the picture is a pale sandstone wall with red sandstone stripes built, probably by Edward I’s masons, across the damaged side of the motte after a landslip into the river below in the 13th century. Laura’s Tower occupies the bottom left corner, set off-centre on the base of a 13th-century tower demolished by Telford. The lobed shape of the motte on the left of the photo results from at least two phases of medieval building incorporated in the retaining walls: an angled structure with a high chamfered plinth and recessed masonry panels, superimposed over a projecting curving rubble footing. These remains were seen and recorded for the first time this year as part of the ongoing CMP work.

Antiquarian (18c) image of Shrewsbury motte showing what looks like the base of large windows possibly from a first floor Great Hall

A second trench is to be opened on the north curtain wall. A long stretch of this wall is unusually consistent in its fabric, with small, squared rubble and two offset courses. 18th-century illustrations show however that a projecting bastion formerly stood in this area, of which no trace can be seen in the standing masonry. The suspicion is that a major part of the wall here has been rebuilt, and the trench is designed to explore this question – and to establish the nature of the surrounding stratigraphy.

Part of the north curtain wall of Shrewsbury Castle. The even coursing apparent over this long stretch of masonry is at odds with the complex fabric visible elsewhere in the wall and with 18th and early 19th-century illustrations showing a projecting bastion in this area. Excavation will seek to confirm whether or not this stretch has been rebuilt, and to locate in plan the features seen in the illustrations. Copyright Nigel Baker

In addition to an introductory display to be mounted in the on-site marquee, there will be two further displays in the town running concurrently with the excavations. In Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery in the Square, Dr Capper’s team is assembling a display featuring artefacts found in the first two seasons, while in Castle Gates Library (the former Grammar School buildings) a display is in place that explores the evidence for the former castle outer bailey, within whose perimeter the library stands.

The excavations run from July 18th to 28th. Visitors are welcome every day except those when the castle is closed (Thursday 21st and Thursday 28th).

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Geophysical survey of Kilmacahill deserted settlement complex, County Westmeath: project aims and goals

Vicky McAlister, project lead of the Geophysical Survey of Kilmachill explains the reasons behind the survey.

“Can we use drone (UAV) gathered imagery to see how spaces around castles were being used?” This was the question that spurred the addition of geophysical survey to a wider study of the landscape surrounding the deserted medieval settlement complex at Kilmacahill, County Westmeath. The data will then be delivered to the Human-Environmental Exchanges in the Landscape (HELM) project team for analysis to detect possible subsurface archaeological remains. HELM is led by project co-Principal Investigators Dr. Vicky McAlister and Dr. Jenny Immich, with Target Archaeological Geophysical GVC commissioned to undertake the survey.

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Kilmacahill was selected for this interrogation because of its layered landscape history and good above surface archaeological remains. The vernacular settlement site of Kilmacahill is adjacent to a Franciscan Third Order Regular monastery and within visual range (c. 1km) of Joanstown motte and bailey, located to the west of the site. The work at Kilmacahill already undertaken includes UAV collected aerial photographs and topographic data over the deserted settlement complex for analysis in geographic information systems (GIS) software.

Geophysical Area 1

In its first project phase (2019-2021) HELM addressed the theory that Anglo-Norman medieval vernacular settlements could be found in close physical proximity to elite secular and religious sites. More specifically, we hypothesised that peasant settlement could be found clustered around castle sites, parish churches, and monastic sites. To test this theory, HELM analysed UAV-gathered data for four castle sites in counties Limerick and Tipperary. At three of these four sites we found what we interpreted to be burgage plots clustered in the area between the castle and parish church. One of them, Glenogra in County Limerick, looked to have a deserted medieval village showing different areas and types of house plot compared to the very planned and regular appearance of such plots at the other sites. We wondered if this indicated that both Anglo-Norman settlers and Gaelic Irish tenants were living in this settlement.

Geophysical Area 2

This led the HELM team to begin phase two of the study, which is looking at three potential deserted medieval settlement sites in County Westmeath: Fore, Kilbixy, and Kilmacahill. Westmeath was the contact zone or frontier between the Anglo-Normans and Gaelic Irish for an extended period of time. This duration made us interested in what the medieval settlements associated with castles there looked like morphologically: more like Glenogra and haphazard, or something else entirely?

In late 2021, thanks to funding from the American Philosophical Society, Dr. Paul Naessens of Western Aerial Survey collected data from UAV flights at these three sites. At one of them – Kilmacahill – he also tested a new addition to the arsenal of digital archaeologists: UAV-mounted multispectral cameras. Multispectral data is traditionally used by scientists as an effective tool to examine soil productivity and plant health. In archaeological contexts, multispectral imagery can be analysed to reflect relative differences in vegetation health as a proxy to indicate near-surface or subsurface anthropogenic features – such as field boundaries made of stone, pits with charcoal in them, crushed gravel pathways, or other architectural features. The vegetation above these man-made features appears not as healthy as that above natural ground in the data analysis. The UAV-gathered photogrammetry data showed some interesting house plots, but also details of a complex circular enclosure not listed on the Sites and Monuments Record.

Geophysical Area 3

The HELM team agreed that concentrating our resources on one site would help to test our methodology and thus we applied to the Castle Studies Trust for funding for geophysical survey. We hope that the combination of three methods will tell us the most about vernacular settlement located between the Franciscan house at Kilmacahill and the motte castle at Joanstown. We will also be able to test the robustness of our UAV-based methodology against geophysics, which is much more expensive but is standard practice for identifying low-lying archaeological features. Geophysics currently costs up to ten times the amount of flying a site with a drone, so if we are successful in using UAV data to identify castle features, then this will be good news for everyone seeking to know what’s going on around their sites!

The data produced by the three collection methods (UAV photogrammetry, multispectral, geophysics) will be incorporated in GIS software to create a visual of the immediate subsurface archaeological remains of the DMV and will uncover finer features of the site as a whole. The HELM team should have the exciting results of the surveyed area by Autumn 2022.

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Revealing the hidden stories of Pontefract Castle

Ian Downes from Wakefield Council looks at the geophysical survey being carried out week commencing 9 May 2022 on parts of Pontefract Castle yet to be explored archaeologically. The work, funded by the Trust is being carried out by Wessex Archaeology.

Pontefract Castle in West Yorkshire is a Norman motte and bailey castle, built upon a Saxon royal palace, and used extensively during the English Civil Wars, when it suffered three prolonged sieges.  In that time, it went from being the property of a Norman Baron, to a powerful Dukedom, to the principal royal castle of the North of England.

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At the end of the Civil Wars the castle was pulled down by the people of Pontefract by order of Parliament.  The site was initially used as a market garden before it was leased by the Dunhill family for the cultivation of liquorice. Finally, it was converted into a park in 1880.  To this day the site remains a park and major tourist attraction in the town.

Now managed by Wakefield Council on behalf of the Duchy of Lancaster the castle has recently undergone a thorough restoration project seeing the ruins conserved and new visitor facilities created.

Parts of the site were excavated in the 1880s and again in the 1980s.  More recently, work commencing in 2017 to restore the site saw new areas excavated including the Gatehouse.

The Keep of Pontefract Castle courtesy of Wakefield Council.

As the Victorian excavations weren’t fully recorded or published, and more recent archaeology has been focused on areas where construction and conservation has taken place, this has left many parts of the site relatively unexplored.

The two areas we will be looking at as part of this project are the area from the Kitchens through to the Royal Apartments within the Bailey; and the northern ramparts below the royal apartments.

The first of those two is where a series of “service buildings” were sited according to historic maintenance records for the castle.  We know little more, but it was probably also the site of a gatehouse leading to a walkway to the Swillington Tower.  We hope this project will find some evidence of the footprint of the buildings, possible locations of fireplaces and to get an indication of how much survives below ground. 

Area occupied by the service buildings between the kitchens and Royal Apartments. courtesy of Wakefield Council

The second area to be investigated is an area outside of the curtain wall, which was subjected to heavy bombardment during the three sieges.  This may also be the location of a medieval garden, again mentioned in historical records, and Victorian walkways and paths. 

This area should include the bottom section of the walkway from the bailey down to the Swillington Tower. We hope to answer questions such as whether the earth mound at the side of the tower covers the remains of this walkway and how much of it survives under the start of the ramparts.

The site has seen little activity since the Victorian paths were laid, with that area falling into disuse relatively quickly.  This lack of later use raises the potential for evidence of all these things, but most excitingly the possibility of pinpointing further evidence of Civil War activity.

The outer ramparts looking from the Queens Tower back towards the Swillington Tower.

The project will see specialists from Wessex Archaeology conduct various forms of geophysics on the two areas including resistivity, magnetometry and ground penetrating radar.  The use of multiple techniques has been chosen to maximise the potential for making discoveries with the potential for quite complex buried remains being high.

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Plan of Pontefract Castle with hashed area the areas being surveyed, courtesy of Wakefield Council