Tag: William the Conqueror

Revealing Richmond Castle’s Secrets: Excavation Starting Monday 19 July

Jim Brightman of Solstice Archaeology, dig director of the Richmond Castle excavation, outlines what the next three weeks of excavations of Richmond Castle to mark the 950th anniversary of its founding. The excavation is being co-funded by the Castle Studies Trust along with Richmond and District Civic Society and Richmond District Council.

By way of an introduction to the Richmond 950 community excavation, I’m going to start with a bit of a personal reminiscence. I am a former pupil at Richmond School, and in the dim and distant past when I was in in Lower School (the old Grammar School building), the first topic covered in history lessons was the medieval period. I’d already been fascinated by the past through primary school, and I was ready for it to be my favourite class. I wasn’t disappointed. On a seasonably warm autumn afternoon, we all trooped up the hill for our first site visit: Richmond Castle.

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Many, many years later, having studied archaeology at university and spent my early career in and around the Peak District, I moved back home in 2012. The first time I walked back into town, I vividly remember thinking “was the Castle always that big?!”. Then as now, and as in the centuries preceding, the keep towers over the marketplace, easily the most prominent building in the town’s skyline. Indeed, I was so taken with this icon of my childhood love of history, that the outline of the Castle now features on my company’s stationery!

Richmond Castle’s Great from the Bailey near where some of the trenches will be placed. Picture courtesy of English Heritage.

With the 950th anniversary of the Castle’s original founding rapidly approaching, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to run a volunteer archaeology excavation as part of the wider celebrations being held in the town through the course of 2021. Having been fortunate enough to be involved in a lot of community archaeology projects through the course of my career, it felt like a real homecoming.

As we started developing the project, it became clear that there was a wealth of places within the Castle where targeted excavation had the potential to shed light on parts of its story that have remained hidden. Geophysical survey in recent years has revealed whole complexes of possible walls and structures beneath the grassy sward of the bailey, and Richmond 950 is the first time that they will see the light of day for many, many centuries.

Richmond Castle from the air. Most of the excavation will take place along the far wall where many remains have been located. Picture courtesy of English Heritage.

The volunteer archaeology project was made a reality by the kind support of several funders, all of whom believed in the vision of engaging local people directly with the tangible past in such a beautiful and historic setting. We are very grateful to the Castle Studies Trust, Richmond and District Civic Society and Richmondshire District Council for their huge generosity and support – I feel strongly we will repay your trust with a fantastic project!

As I write this on the eve of the project starting, we are almost fully booked in terms of volunteer places—a real testament to the interest in archaeology in and around Richmond. That said, if you are reading this and getting the itch to try your hand at archaeology, then there are still a few places available on our Eventbrite link; no experience is required and everything you need to unlock your inner Indiana Jones is provided! Even if you are just interested in finding out more, then the Castle is still open to visitors through the next three weeks while we are digging, and we would be delighted to talk you through the unfolding story of the archaeology.

See you in the Castle!

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The Virtual 3-D Reconstruction of 12th-Century Lincoln Castle

Dr Jonathan Clark, Historic Buildings Director, FAS Heritage and project lead for the Castle Studies Trust funded 3-D Reconstruction of C12 Lincoln Castle explains how it was done and the challenges faced in doing it.

A virtual 3-D reconstruction of Lincoln Castle as it may have looked in the late 12th-century has been completed by Peter Lorimer, Pighill Illustration in collaboration with FAS Heritage.  The reconstruction was funded by the Castle Studies Trust and made possible through 15 years of archaeological research for the Lincoln Castle Revealed project. The project consisted of a £22m repair and restoration programme to conserve the site and renew the visitor experience funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Lincolnshire County Council and the European Regional Development Fund. The programme provided opportunities for research-led archaeology which yielded a wealth of new information about the site.

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Mondern day Lincoln Castle from the west copyright Andy Tyner Photography on behalf of FAS Heritage and Lincolnshire County Council
Lincoln Castle as it could have been in the late C12 copyright FAS Heritage and Pighill Illustrations

William the Conqueror established Lincoln Castle in 1068 in the walled enclosure of the former Roman colonia. The Lucy Tower motte was built in its southwest corner reusing the west and south walls to defend the new inner bailey. The next 100 years saw rapid development: originally earth and timber, the Conquest-period castle was replaced in masonry, a process now understood to have started by the 1080s including East and West Gates; by the early 12th century the stone enclosure of the bailey and internal gate ranges were complete, along with the Lucy Tower shell-keep and later Observatory Tower. Inner bailey buildings were also contacted during excavation including the Great Hall, stables, East Range and the Observatory Tower motte and ditch, all contributing information to the reconstruction. Evidence for a lost South Gate to match East and West Gates was found; along with a reappraisal of the early form of the Lucy Tower shell-keep it provided information about a former southern enclosure. This enclosure was abandoned, probably by the early 13th century, when the castle contracted to the form of the current enclosure.

It was the culmination of this intense century of development, arrived at by the late 12th century that was selected for the digital reconstruction.

Plan of Lincoln Castle in C12 copyright FAS Heritage

Archaeological excavation and detailed building recording formed most information about the early form of the castle, but the assembly of the 3-D reconstruction led to reappraisal of other parts of the castle; previously unnoticed anomalies were discovered which required further analysis.

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The lost southern enclosure and South Gate were both identified from fragmentary evidence and establishing the exact position and size of the original south wall presented a challenge. When reconstruction began there was little information on this wall except a projection of the line of the southern colonia wall. This placed the south wall slicing through the Lucy Tower motte – a relationship which did not seem likely. However, recent work on this part of the motte during a programme of banks stabilisation provided more information. A substantial medieval masonry wall measuring 3m wide and traversing the Lucy Tower motte west-east was revealed. The wall is probably founded on the Roman wall indicates the motte may have been constructed against it, flattening its southern side.

The Lucy Tower Motte after the removal of dense vegetation.  The fragmentary masonry remains of a structure can be seen towards the top of the trench. Copyright FAS Heritage

The reconstruction provides a sense of where concentrations of occupation were; around East Gate and Observatory Tower, the Lucy Tower, the Great Hall and around West Gate. With the discovery of South Gate it is easier to appreciate how these areas were autonomous. Other areas within the castle, particularly the western side, are presented as large open spaces; without further investigation these zones cannot be reconstructed easily.

The Lucy Tower, sat upon on an enlarged motte, can now be shown with its original east and west chamber blocks, internal ranges and window overlooking the city. With the tower, wing walls and South Gate, these formed a discrete enclosure.

Detail on the form of the Observatory Tower in the late 12th century can also be added. The tower is shown as a gaol tower which replaced a predecessor developed by Earl Ranulf during the Anarchy, later commandeered to become the county gaol. A stone ‘skirt’ around the base of the motte and a motte ditch were found and formed a hard circuit detaching the gaol from the rest of the castle.

The reconstruction will be made available across a range of media. The analytical process and collaboration with Pighill Illustration provided an opportunity to translate the archaeological study of the castle into a tangible representation. It enables the results of the research programme to be conveyed to a wide audience and goes hand-in-hand with the publication of a book about the Lincoln Castle Revealed Project in July 2021.

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Shrewsbury Castle: a 2020 vision, from Saxon habitation to C18 landscaping?

Project lead for the Shrewsbury Castle excavations Dr Nigel Baker looks forward to the forthcoming excavations at the castle, hopefully this year, funded by the CST

Last year, the Castle Studies Trust excavation – the first ever to have taken place within the walls of Shrewsbury Castle – produced three headline conclusions. The first was that the work of the young Thomas Telford there for his client, William Pountney M.P. in 1786-90 was, sadly, more destructive of the medieval original than had previously been recognised. The extent of his restoration of the house (now the Soldiers of Shropshire Museum) and the curtain walls has long been known. What wasn’t appreciated was that standing walls of ruined buildings and a 13th-century tower on the motte top were destroyed and reduced to their footings, and the interior of the inner bailey was, it seems, scraped flat, producing a lovely level lawn at the expense of any archaeological deposits overlying the natural gravel of the hilltop. Despite this, infilled negative features (pits and ditches) cut into the gravel survived and were found by our excavation trench. As a result, our second headline conclusion was that the motte was ringed on its landward side by a massive ditch, twelve metres wide: what we know as the inner bailey must, in the early Middle Ages, have been little more than a barbican defending the end of the bridge giving access up the motte.

C18 Remodelling?

But the extent of Telford’s work raises a question, first put to the archaeological team by Martin Roseveare, our geophysicist: if Telford had the inner bailey levelled flat, where did he put the proceeds, meaning the scraped-up earth and debris? Could the apparently well-preserved medieval ramparts ringing the bailey actually be down to the young Scottish civil engineer, rather than impressed English labour under the whip-hand of William the Conqueror’s henchmen? This is one of the leading questions that a second season of excavation at Shrewsbury Castle hopes to be able to answer, by digging on part of the western rampart known to be already disturbed by former Victorian greenhouses.

High Status Saxon Living

There are, however, other at least equally compelling reasons for excavating on this site. The third headline conclusion of the 2019 trench was that there was pre-Conquest activity within the area of the inner bailey. This was demonstrated by a pit, pit 20, containing Stafford-type ware (well known in late pre-Conquest Shrewsbury) and a type of pottery known as TF41a, an import up the Severn from Gloucester, never seen before in Shrewsbury. The question is, what was it doing there?

Top piece Rim of type 41a Saxon pottery from Gloucester
Lower piece: Rim of Stafford ware Saxon pottery

Shrewsbury is one of those castles listed in Domesday along with the destruction it caused to its ‘host’ shire town. Construction of Shrewsbury Castle took out 51 tax-paying tenements, a quarter or a fifth of the total built-up area, to the economic distress of the remaining inhabitants. Many of the destroyed plots will have lined the strategically important Chester to Hereford road that passes through the outer bailey. However, looming over the road and its plots, and the main gate through the pre-Conquest defences, was the hilltop on which the castle would come to be built. And on it, overlooking the gate, most likely on the Victorian greenhouse site, was the Church of St Michael, a church that became the castle chapel, but was listed in Domesday between the entries for two of the town’s pre-Conquest minsters and was served by two priests later in the Middle Ages, when it was a royal peculiar, exempt from episcopal oversight. This need not necessarily all add up to a pre-Conquest church – but the chances are very strong that it does, and that this church, which, overlooking the town defences,  may have had some kind of defensive role, was part of the context of pit 20.

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The clues are beginning to point to a high-status site, probably enclosed, with its interior ground level two metres above that of its neighbours, and its own church. For an analogy, one could do worse than look to Wallingford, whose castle in the north-east corner of the Saxon burh had probably taken over and re-fortified a royal site of some kind, possibly housing government functions, perhaps a mint, and a garrison of housecarls. Or one might look to Oxford, where St George’s Tower is now generally thought to be of pre-Conquest date. Shrewsbury seems to be joining the list of Norman town castles established on sites of political, not just tactical, importance.

But archaeology can be frustrating. While we hope that excavation of the Victorian greenhouse site in the west rampart may yield insights into the extent of Thomas Telford’s landscape gardening, the foundations of a pre-Conquest church and further clues to a high-status or even royal site preceding the castle, by 2021 the excavation team may well be singularly well-informed experts on…Victorian greenhouses.

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