Director’s End of Season Excavation Round-up

The focus of our work over the last three seasons has been the investigation of the outworks beyond St Oswald’s Gate and in particular the Tower of Elmund’s Well and our ongoing search to find what remains of the well within it. You can read our previous seasons excavation to round-up to here to see where we started at the beginning of this year’s dig season.

Tower of Elmund’s Well

We have been surprised, delighted and even a bit astonished just how much of the tower survives even if this discovery has involved moving a lot of rubble! The stairs down into the tower, by the end of the season, had passed through the archway and into the tower room itself. This would suggest that although we have yet to reach the floor there is less and less space for many further steps before we will reach the far wall so we feel that the floor is probably no more than 1 metre deeper, and hopefully somewhat less.

This season, with the fence that surrounds the outworks moved back a little to allow for more space, we were able to start a trench outside of the turret to the seaward side to expose the outside of the wall face.

The tower wall before the seaward side was exposed.

This was to give us a proper understanding of the width of the wall, the top of which had been altered substantially it seemed when the tower was converted into a cottage. Here, less than a metre down, we found that the wall survives wider than it appears at the top, where some facing stones had been removed. As we excavate deeper (next season) it is hoped to identify buried ground surfaces, now covered by the windblown dunes, and perhaps even the ground surface contemporary with the tower’s construction.

One of the more interesting finds from within the backfill within the tower was a well constructed metal bucket. It is of course tempting to see this as associated with the well – perhaps the last well bucket that was in use! Of course there is every likelihood that it was just another item disposed of in the backfill, along with a car wheel and other household items, but we can still hope to identify some of the machinery needed to work the well abandoned at floor level.

Allen with the bucket!

Postern Gate and Wall

This season also saw further work on the external postern gate that leads out to the village. This involved continuing the excavation immediately behind it to uncover more of the structure. The intent for this was to uncover more of the wall to help interpret it, perhaps recover some datable finds, and if fortunate, see if we could find the level from which it was constructed. We had certainly not at all expected to discover what we actually found which was a gap in the wall that was deliberate. The gap was not there because the wall had been robbed away as it had deliberately constructed faces. The width and form of this strongly suggested a second narrow gate.

The gap in the postern wall that must be a second and perhaps earlier postern gate

The outside face that looks out to the village had been blocked by a single layer of masonry to close off the gap. It was also evident that it was quite high up (on the outside) as it bottomed onto a spur of the bedrock. This means the gate was at ground level on the inside but was a couple of metres above it on the outside. There is no trace of a stair up to it, so it seems likely that there would have been a wooden stair, which perhaps would have made it a little more defensible as it could be discarded in the face of an enemy.

It does not seem to make sense that there would be two posterns next to each other so its tempting to see one as replacing the other. As the current path leads to the one that is still, in its way in use, its natural to assume that this is the later one, but this may be false as we simply cannot be sure the positions of the path in early times.

Trench 5e the new feature that is something of a flashback to T3

This season we opened a new trench on the outside of the wall with the postern gate (now two gates). The new trench was next to the short length of wall that we investigated last season to see if it had once extended further. Rather disappointingly we found that it confusingly just ended rather abruptly with no trace of foundations extending further, or even of a robber cut where once could have been removed. The new trench was opened between that wall and the postern wall and thankfully has proved to be much more interesting.

It has revealed a stone alignment that extends parallel to the two standing walls. So far only the upper level has been uncovered, so it is possible that it could be a wall top (or foundation) or just a surface like a path. It is made of dolerite and sandstone and in this, along with its width and general form, it is very reminiscent of some of the early medieval features the we saw within Trench 3 (within the castle). Here these features had been interpreted as stone foundations for timber walls. It is then very intriguing to wonder if we are seeing the same kind of feature here in the outworks, and even more interesting should the feature prove to be of similar date. One of the questions we asked ourselves at the beginning of the work on the outworks was – could we find any evidence for structures and arrangements from the early medieval period? After all we know the entrance was in use from this time and likely centuries earlier, so there must have been access routes and perhaps structures associated with this use and also control of the small port.

The new linear structure between the two standing walls that could perhaps be a wall base, with a possible ground surface to the left in the photo.

Geophysics

We were very fortunate to have a geophysical team from Southampton University with us for a few days in our final week. This was a part of the work on understanding and recording the outworks at St Oswald’s Gate that has been generously funded by the Castle Studies Trust. We will report in much greater detail on this and on the 3D recording and building survey in future blogs, as the results are worked through. As of now we have seen just enough information from the geophysics undertaken on the green in front of the castle to know there will be lots to discuss, including what at first sight may be some early features on the far side of the green. Not bad when we really only hoped to find trace of a ditch extending towards Oswald’s Gate and the port area.