Page 38 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

Para 14: JETTON
(December 1979) Found on the paved area to the south of the buttery.
It is English or Aquitainian, 14th century (mid-2nd half), diam. 20mm, pierced as usual,
cf. Barnard Pl II, 36:

Obverse: Stylized Agnus Dei with a border of paired semi-circles.
Reverse: Cross fleury; three pellets in each quarter and one between each pair of fleurs.

Fig. 53. Jetton (Barnard 1917, Pl II, 36).

FURTHER THOUGHTS
(June 15th 1991): Further thoughts, some eleven years later, see Para 4. All that I am about to add now could
reasonably easily be checked by archaeological research and some adequate funding. I would hazard a guess
that there were about NINE bastions or interval towers on the curtain wall, all of them rounded rather than
squared in outline, as follows, from the present gateway in clockwise progression:

1 & 2. Flanking the present entrance and the drawbridge. No visible remains.
3. In the garden of ‘Choir Close’, the red brick house on the corner of Church Passage and the path
leading to Cutt’s Close. The tower here I can remember, but it had been interfered with at various
times, having been ‘landscaped’ into the garden. The house belongs to Oakham School.
4. Adjacent to the (much vandalised) Public Lavatories. This I remember seeing clearly delineated, and I
recall its rounded profile.
5. East of the Old School (now known as The Shakespeare Centre). No evidence, but the wall must have
turned east hereabouts in any case and have formed the southern edge of the moat along the reach that
widened out to form the fish stews, where the Cottesmore hounds so often meet on Boxing Day.
6. At the north eastern corner, where a large sycamore now grows. Little evidence, except that the wall
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must have turned south at this point (just opposite the now vanished ‘Tipples’ ). There may also have
been a tower between 5 and 6, which I will call 7. No evidence.
7. See under 6.
8. Half-way along the eastern wall. These butt joints provide, in my mind, the strongest evidence of the
interval towers, being evidence of the towers having collapsed (into the moat?) and the walls made
good without them. There might even have been TWO towers along this eastern stretch of wall.
9. The motte in the south-eastern
corner of the enclosure, however
that was incorporated into the
scheme of things. Certainly it has
been cut back in no uncertain
manner – to make way for the
moat? – and various ornamental
features cut into it when it formed
part of the garden of the house on
the other side of Burley Road,
which I always knew as ‘Grannie
Bradshaw’s house’. [Bradshaws
were] the coal/corn merchants in
Mill Street/South Street.

Fig. 53. John Barber’s thoughts on the
locations of the bastions on the curtain wall
of the Castle site, shown on the OS Second
Edition map of 1904.

38 As far as can be determined from enquiries made locally, this refers to one or more sets of railings along Burley Road, made of metal tubes and
concrete posts on which children used to play, often ‘tippling’ off, similar to but not the same as those which surround Cutt’s Close today.

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