Page 13 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

OAKHAM CASTLE

by J L BARBER, MA, FSA

INTRODUCTION

Although I have lived in Oakham ever since the end of the Second World War and although I was a boy at
Oakham School from 1928-33, it is no part of my task and intention to give a general history of Oakham Castle
(indeed I am not a trained historian and have no qualifications to delve into the written records and historical
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archives on the subject). It is my purpose on the other hand to put down on paper all such things as a long
acquaintance with the Castle, some field work and a certain amount of practical archaeology (the excavations
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of Mr P W Gathercole around the entrance gateway in 1953-54 and those that I myself conducted at the east
end of the Castle in 1956-57) have taught me over the years. Most of the assertions that I have made are based
upon authenticated facts, but there are times when I have put forward theories or deductions, that only posterity
and a more detailed examination of the evidence may prove wrong.
It is with my own excavations on the east end of the Castle that I have the most misgivings. They were
begun after the main part of the very extensive excavations on the Roman villa at Great Casterton, where, as at
Oakham Castle, I used the voluntary labour of boys from Oakham School. But after only two seasons of
excavation on the site, during the summer terms of 1956 and 1957, my own circumstances, upon my
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appointment as a House-master, made it impossible to continue. Everything, repeat everything, had to be
dropped, and it is only now some twenty-five years later that I have at last, in my retirement, found time to give
the whole business further thought. This is absolutely true of my excavations, but less true in respect of some
casual field work from time to time and some observation of the site in general over this fallow period.
During those twenty-five years I have moved house twice, and not all the relevant notes that I made at the
time have survived. The passage of time has made even the interpretation of such notes and plans that survive
no easy task, whilst my own mind has perforce forgotten many of those nuances of meaning, which are clear to
an excavator at the time, but which tend to become ever more blurred in the course of the years. Although I
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have appended a small bibliography, it must not be assumed that I have at any time undertaken any full
historical investigation. I must repeat that most of what I have set down is more in the nature of practical
observation, but as such I hope that it will make some contribution to a full and detailed history of the Castle
and its immediate surroundings.

INQUISITION POST MORTEM
Circa 1340
Para 1: There is at Oakham a castle well walled, and in that castle there are one hall, four chambers, one
kitchen, two stables, one grange for hay, one house for prisoners, one chamber for the porter, one drawbridge
with iron chains, and the castle contains within its walls by estimation two acres of land; the aforesaid houses
are worth nothing annually beyond reprises, and the same house is similarly called the Manor of Oakham.
There is without the castle one garden, which is worth 8/- a year. Stews under the castle, with the fosse, the
pasture of which is worth £6. 13s. 4d. a year. The park called the little park contains 40 acres, the herbage of
which is worth £6 per annum, and the under-wood 6s. 8d. A windmill and a watermill are worth £8, and the
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presentation of the free chapel placed within the castle amounts to 100/- (Public Record Office).
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Para 2: There appears to be no evidence of occupation at Oakham prior to the late Anglo-Saxon period. Stray
finds of earlier periods (an unfinished Neolithic axe dug up from a drainage trench in Northgate Street is the
nearest possible evidence of any earlier occupation) take the form of an occasional Roman bead or a worked

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These footnotes are all supplied by the editors. The historical background and Lords of the Manor are summarised in Clough 2008.
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Gathercole 1958; see Appendix B.
4 Of Wharflands, 1959-74.
5 JLB’s bibliography is incorporated into the full list of references on pp37-38.
6 Cal Inq Misc II (1307-49), 418-20, no 1703; The National Archives, reference TNA C145/139/20; see Appendix E.
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An important hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins was found in Oakham in 1749 (Blunt & Lyon 1979).
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