Mark Newman - Territory Archaeologist
Harry Beamish - Archaeologist
NORTHUMBERLAND
Northumberland Coast properties
Following on from a very successful survey of the wider landscape around Norham Castle by the English Heritage survey team from York, it was proposed that a similar approach might be adopted to investigate the complex earthworks around Dunstanburgh Castle. Al Oswald (Field Investigator, English Heritage) from the survey team describes the project:
In November 2003, English Heritage embarked on a research project in partnership with the National Trust in an attempt to better the understanding of Dunstanburgh – built by Thomas, Second Earl of Lancaster in 1313 and once one of the grandest castles in northern England. The investigation also extended to a Second World War radar installation a mile further south along the coast towards Craster.
This was to assist with the management of the large numbers of visitors to the castle by creating (in the long term) an alternative focus of historic interest. The survey was undertaken entirely using a differential GPS satellite mapping system, which offers accuracy in the region of 1cm, but the keys to the success of the investigation were, as ever, the low-tech skills of observation and analysis.
Though still current amongst local residents, the story that the castle once had its own harbour and was almost entirely surrounded by water at high tide has been played down by academics in recent years. However, detailed study of the inter-tidal zone south of the castle revealed the indisputable remains of a massive stone-built quay, with patches of its original cobbling surviving intact, and evidence that much of the fine sandstone for the construction of the castle may have been imported by sea.
It seems highly improbable that noble medieval visitors would often have approached Dunstanburgh by boat, but it does appear more than coincidental that the axis of Earl Thomas’ fashionable keep-cum-gatehouse is aligned on the end of the quay.
The new field survey also revealed the nugget of truth within the traditional story that the castle was surrounded by water. The marshy area long alleged to be the site of the medieval harbour appears to have been the southernmost of a series of three large artificial lakes, or meres, fed by an elaborate system of feeder ponds and leats. The meres doubtless provided an outer line of defence and an easily accessible larder for both fish and wildfowl, but seem to have been designed in part to show off the castle’s dramatic setting and elaborate architecture.
A reference to the digging of a ‘great ditch’ in 1313 – an earthwork which can be securely identified on the ground and which is integral to the working of the meres – indicates that this ornamental setting was part of Earl Thomas’ original grand design.
Surrounded in this way, the eminence on which the castle stands would have acted as an outer bailey, possibly the intended site of a permanent settlement, since there is anecdotal evidence for the survival of the foundations of medieval buildings below the ridge and furrow cultivation. An artificial embankment, perhaps originally topped by a timber palisade, was identified where the natural gradient is slight on the west, and blocking the natural causeways that would have dammed the meres at north and south.
The main approach seems to have been from the west via a causeway between two of the meres, and there is some evidence for a major stone-built gatehouse overlooking the head of the causeway. This offers a potential target for future geophysical survey. Work has also begun on environmental sampling of the marshy ground and initial results suggest an exceptional level of preservation, the deposits apparently stretching back to the Mesolithic.
Tantalising evidence for the existence of an Iron Age hillfort underlying the castle – whose presence has repeatedly been suggested and discussed but never proven – was recognised on the final day of fieldwork. A bank outside the southern curtain wall, which effectively defines a moat in front of the wall, has long been assumed to be simply part of the medieval defences on this, the weakest side of the perimeter.
But it now appears possible that ridge and furrow cultivation responsible for partially levelling the bank may pre-date the imposition of the curtain wall, from which it can perhaps be inferred that the bank was constructed some considerable time before 1313. An Iron Age rampart seems a reasonable interpretation of such an earthwork.
The investigation also recorded numerous Second World War coastal defences, and the site of a ‘Chain Home Low’ (and subsequently ‘Extra-Low’) radar station closer to Craster, which was converted to a prisoner of war camp in the latter years of the war. The recording of oral testimonies was an important part of the research into the working on the installation.
Preparation of the full report is in its initial stages, but you can follow how the investigation progressed day by day on the Web: www.english-heritage.org.uk/diary
WEST YORKSHIRE
Nostell Priory, nr. Wakefield
Understanding the designed landscape (and the oldest pebble dash in England?)
Following a DEFRA co-funded Historic Parkland Survey (Janette Rae et al, 2000) and archaeological survey (Northern Archaeological Associates, 2000), detailed analysis and interpretation of the designed landscape at Nostell has continued. This was given an added incentive when Lord St. Oswald unexpectedly expressed a willingness to sell the majority of the historic parkland to the NT (previously ownership only covered the house itself and a few acres adjoining) at the end of 2001. With the generous support of the Heritage Lottery Fund sale was agreed, and in the autumn of 2003 the National Trust put areas long in agricultural use down to grass, providing a new “green lung” for local conurbations and starting to restore an important historical designed landscape.
Nostell lies about mid-way between Wakefield and Pontefract. The current house was constructed in a protracted manner between the 1730s and 1770s, while the designed landscape evolved in a similarly “relaxed” but even more elongated fashion. Understanding of its development has long been “obscured” by the design proposal by Stephen Switzer. Recent phases of investigation (Newman, 2002b) have included modelling exactly what the Switzer design would have looked like on the ground, conclusively proving that little of its content was ever enacted. What did survive, however, was the broad scale design intention, much of which was taken up and developed when Robert Adam became involved at Nostell in the 1760s and 1770s.
Switzer proposal for the designed landscape of Nostell Priory. Very little from this design was ever put into effect, although the park was – some 40 years later – expanded northwards to these limits © West Yorkshire Archive Service
The Adam involvement at the house has long been known, and that in the designed landscape recognised, but not fully evaluated and appreciated until now. But the 1770s scheme was left incomplete, only to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion in the 1820s, with a few mid-Victorian overlays. Therefore, despite the eminence of earlier originators, it is the designed landscape shown on the 1847 first edition OS map that we shall aim to return to., This includes elements of post-medieval tree cover, early eighteenth-century formality, the scale of vision of Switzer, with Adam garden buildings and embellishments, and nineteenth-century lake design! A typical, and beautiful, English compromise!
There has also been more detailed archaeological recording in the complex Menagerie garden, which contains physical traces of all the main phases of Nostell’s development from the medieval period onwards. Investigation to date has tended to ask more questions than it answers and much further work is yet required. One of the more difficult questions is what do we do with the Gothic Arch. This is a rather fine “Adam period” feature of mouldering local sandstone; but detailed examination has shown that it was originally pebble-dashed - could contemporary taste stand returning to that original model?
- Plan a visit to Nostell Priory
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