{"id":883,"date":"2020-04-19T16:33:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T15:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/?p=883"},"modified":"2020-04-22T17:26:06","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T16:26:06","slug":"shrewsbury-castle-a-2020-vision-from-saxon-habitation-to-c18-landscaping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/2020\/04\/19\/shrewsbury-castle-a-2020-vision-from-saxon-habitation-to-c18-landscaping\/","title":{"rendered":"Shrewsbury Castle: a 2020 vision, from Saxon habitation to C18 landscaping?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last\nyear, the Castle Studies Trust excavation \u2013 the first ever to have taken place\nwithin the walls of Shrewsbury Castle \u2013 produced three headline conclusions.\nThe first was that the work of the young Thomas Telford there for his client,\nWilliam Pountney M.P. in 1786-90 was, sadly, more destructive of the medieval\noriginal than had previously been recognised. The extent of his restoration of\nthe house (now the Soldiers of Shropshire Museum) and the curtain walls has\nlong been known. What wasn\u2019t appreciated was that standing walls of ruined\nbuildings and a 13th<\/sup>-century tower on the motte top were destroyed\nand reduced to their footings, and the interior of the inner bailey was, it\nseems, scraped flat, producing a lovely level lawn at the expense of any archaeological\ndeposits overlying the natural gravel of the hilltop. Despite this, infilled\nnegative features (pits and ditches) cut into the gravel survived and were\nfound by our excavation trench. As a result, our second headline conclusion was\nthat the motte was ringed on its landward side by a massive ditch, twelve\nmetres wide: what we know as the inner bailey must, in the early Middle Ages,\nhave been little more than a barbican defending the end of the bridge giving\naccess up the motte. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

C18\nRemodelling?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nthe extent of Telford\u2019s work raises a question, first put to the archaeological\nteam by Martin Roseveare, our geophysicist: if Telford had the inner bailey\nlevelled flat, where did he put the proceeds, meaning the scraped-up earth and\ndebris? Could the apparently well-preserved medieval ramparts ringing the\nbailey actually be down to the young Scottish civil engineer, rather than\nimpressed English labour under the whip-hand of William the Conqueror\u2019s\nhenchmen? This is one of the leading questions that a second season of\nexcavation at Shrewsbury Castle hopes to be able to answer, by digging on part\nof the western rampart known to be already disturbed by former Victorian\ngreenhouses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

High\nStatus Saxon Living<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare, however, other at least equally compelling reasons for excavating on this\nsite. The third headline conclusion of the 2019 trench was that there was\npre-Conquest activity within the area of the inner bailey. This was\ndemonstrated by a pit, pit 20, containing Stafford-type ware (well known in\nlate pre-Conquest Shrewsbury) and a type of pottery known as TF41a, an import\nup the Severn from Gloucester, never seen before in Shrewsbury. The question\nis, what was it doing there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Top piece Rim of type 41a Saxon pottery from Gloucester
Lower piece: Rim of Stafford ware Saxon pottery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Shrewsbury\nis one of those castles listed in Domesday along with the destruction it caused\nto its \u2018host\u2019 shire town. Construction of Shrewsbury Castle took out 51\ntax-paying tenements, a quarter or a fifth of the total built-up area, to the\neconomic distress of the remaining inhabitants. Many of the destroyed plots\nwill have lined the strategically important Chester to Hereford road that\npasses through the outer bailey. However, looming over the road and its plots,\nand the main gate through the pre-Conquest defences, was the hilltop on which\nthe castle would come to be built. And on it, overlooking the gate, most likely\non the Victorian greenhouse site, was the Church of St Michael, a church that\nbecame the castle chapel, but was listed in Domesday between the entries for\ntwo of the town\u2019s pre-Conquest minsters and was served by two priests later in\nthe Middle Ages, when it was a royal peculiar, exempt from episcopal oversight.\nThis need not necessarily all add up to a pre-Conquest church \u2013 but the chances\nare very strong that it does, and that this church, which, overlooking the town\ndefences,  may have had some kind of\ndefensive role, was part of the context of pit 20. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The\nclues are beginning to point to a high-status site, probably enclosed, with its\ninterior ground level two metres above that of its neighbours, and its own\nchurch. For an analogy, one could do worse than look to Wallingford, whose\ncastle in the north-east corner of the Saxon burh had probably taken over and\nre-fortified a royal site of some kind, possibly housing government functions,\nperhaps a mint, and a garrison of housecarls. Or one might look to Oxford,\nwhere St George\u2019s Tower is now generally thought to be of pre-Conquest date. Shrewsbury\nseems to be joining the list of Norman town castles established on sites of\npolitical, not just tactical, importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 \u2013 the first ever to have taken place within the walls of Shrewsbury Castle \u2013 produced three headline conclusions. The first was … Continue reading Shrewsbury Castle: a 2020 vision, from Saxon habitation to C18 landscaping?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[150,9],"tags":[162,128,161,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":890,"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions\/890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/castlestudiestrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}