Echoes from the Earth: A Community-Led Archaeological Project at Crookston Castle

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.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

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.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

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. 

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

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.

Castle Studies Trust Awards a Record Amount in Grants

The Castle Studies Trust is delighted to announce the award of five grants, totalling a record amount of £42,000, to a wide range of projects with different types of research. The amount means that since our foundation we will have given over £300,000 to castle research projects – a landmark to celebrate.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

The five projects we will be funding are:

Canterbury Castle Keep copyright geograph.co.uk

Canterbury, Kent: To create an interactive digital model of the castle’s keep. The keep is one of the largest surviving from early Norman England dating to the late eleventh / early twelfth century. Now much ruined and inaccessible to visitors due to instability, the project will use the findings of previous archaeological research to create an interactive model. Work will start in March and be completed within ten months.

Clavering Castle platform copyright Simon Coxall

Clavering, Essex: To fund an excavation to help understand the development of the site which was occupied for over 600 years and which could be one of the very few pre-conquest castles in the UK. The excavation will build on the extensive survey work carried out by the local group of the site. They are planning to do the excavations in June.

Crookston Castle copyright Friends of Crookston

Crookston, Glasgow: A community-led geophysical survey, using multiple techniques, through which the Friends of Crookston Castle in conjunction with HES hope to learn more about Glasgow’s only castle. While the standing remains are believed to date from the early fifteenth century, it is believed that the castle dates back to the twelfth century. The group hopes to discover evidence of that earlier history and whether it was based on an earlier Iron Age hillfort. They plan to do the survey in early August.

Knepp Castle copyright Richard Nevell

Knepp, West Sussex: An excavation building on a geophysical survey to better understand the site’s development and its relationship to the local area of this important baronial centre thought to be built by the de Braose family. The first documentary evidence is from 1210 when it was under royal control, documenting repairs, while the geophysical survey shows activity that pre-dates the extant stone tower. Excavations are planned for late July/ early August 2025.

Image of Transcript copyright Esther van Raamsdonk

Transcription and translation of C17  Dutch Engineer’s Survey of English castles and fortifications: A joint project between Dutch academic Dr Esther van Raamsdonk and English Heritage to transcribe and translate part of an early seventeenth-century manuscript of a Dutch surveyor’s examination of castles and forts in England. The sample covers five of the 22 castles and fortifications in the document, which is called SP 9/99,   held by the National Archives in Kew.  The sample will include Dover, Walmer and Deal. The document is filled with detailed drawings and maps of these fortifications with often lengthy descriptions of their condition. Esther has already started work on it.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter