Tag: Newcastle

Castle Studies Trust 2026 Grant Awards

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Stories in Stone: Warkworth Castle and a new geophysical survey of its earthworks

William Wyeth, Properties Historian at English Heritage Trust and project lead on the Castle Studies Trust funded project to geophysically survey Warkworth Castle explains what he hopes the survey will achieve.

In 2019 English Heritage, a charity which looks after over 400 historic properties and sites across England, began a project to change the way in which the stories of the people and buildings at Warkworth Castle in Northumberland were told. The castle is a popular destination in the county, and is both connected with notorious figures from the past as well as featuring an iconic piece of medieval architecture and design in its late 14th-century Great Tower.

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Figure 1. Warkworth Castle from the south-east. The Great Tower, in the background, sits atop a large motte. In the foreground, the curtain wall is punctuated by the Grey Mare’s Tail tower. Archaeologists from Archaeological Services – Durham University are surveying the unenclosed strip of bailey

Warkworth is located at the foot of a narrow loop in the River Coquet, in coastal north-eastern Northumberland, about 25 miles north of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and 30 miles south of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, themselves both significant fixtures of the late medieval history of this area. Just north of the castle proper and nestled on three sides within the river loop is the small village of Warkworth, arrayed in quite typical medieval layout. At the north end of the high street, sitting on a rough north-south axis, is the parish church of St Lawrence, probably an early medieval foundation, as well as a bridge with a toll-collecting tower built in the later 14th century. South of the church, numerous narrow parallel plots of land spread out at right angles from the high street. The southern trajectory of the street is abruptly broken by the enormous motte (earthen mound) of the castle, which acts to physically separate the village from the land south of the river.

Figure 2. Looking north from the motte top down the high street of Warkworth village. The great tower casts an impressive shadow. © Will Wyeth

Among the most famous historical figures connected to the castle was Henry Percy, eldest son of the 1st Earl of Northumberland, though he is more familiar to us today as Harry Hotspur. The origin of his martial nickname is not certain, but is accounted for in several traditions, all of which confirm that they drew from his short-tempered and violent character. One later 16th-century source rhythmically noted “For his sharp quickness and speediness at need / Henry Hotspur he was called in very deed.”

Though the early history of the Percy Northumberland earls and associated figures will form a key part of the story of the castle when the interpretation project is completed in 2022, other questions about the castle, and especially its earlier history, remain as yet unresolved. Among these is the relationship of the earthworks – the motte and bailey – with the stone structures atop them, the oldest of which date to the later 12th century. The Castle Studies Trust has graciously agreed to fund a geophysical survey of much of the castle earthworks to resolve three big questions.

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The first touches upon the motte, which features the Great Tower of the 1370s, but was probably topped by an earlier structure. By assessing buried deposits around the tower, we aim to reveal traces of this earlier structure. But we also want to establish evidence for the means by which the Great Tower may have been provisioned, via a secure door to the motte-top outside the enclosing curtain wall which gave access to storage areas for beer and food in the tower’s north-west segment.

Figure 3. The secure door of the great tower, giving access to the motte top and outside the enclosure of the castle. Its infilling is a secondary feature. © Will Wyeth

The second question relates to the bailey. In common with other castles of this type, the bailey was filled with buildings, often (as at Warkworth) in their earliest phases arrayed along the inner face of the enclosing wall. But were there buildings here before, or were there also buildings here from later periods, but for which above-ground evidence has been lost? Findings from the survey here will greatly influence how we understand the formal approach to the bailey’s principal buildings – its Gatehouse, Great Hall and Chapel – but also the late medieval Great Tower. The results may also shed light on the peculiar overhauling of spatial arrangements in the bailey occasioned by the construction of a 15th-century Collegiate Church which straddled the span of the bailey, arguably fundamentally changing how the castle was to be experienced.

The last question also relates to the bailey, but here to a strip of the bailey which sits outside the embrace of the late 12th-early 13th-century stone curtain wall, on the eastern side of the castle. The omission of this area from enclosure is unusual, though it is not without analogies from elsewhere, which suggest areas like this could contain gardens. It may be instructive that just within the bailey and adjacent to this strip was the location of late medieval stables – perhaps this area came to be used for the grazing of horses, though whether this was its original intended purpose remains to be seen. In addition to all of this, however, is the possibility that when the motte-and-bailey was built, perhaps well before the earliest stone parts of the castle were erected, the earliest enclosing wall of the bailey also embraced this eastern strip, thereby creating a larger bailey than the present one.

Figure 4. The north face of the great tower, facing the high street of the village. The Percy heraldic lion, standing a full storey high and with metallic claws, is one of many such images across the castle. © Will Wyeth

We hope that the survey will allow us to answer at least some of these questions. Whatever the outcome, it is certain that the results will help change how we understand the story of Warkworth Castle and its previous inhabitants.

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