Page 51 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

Appendix B

Excavations at Oakham Castle, Rutland 1953-54

by P W Gathercole

Editors’ note: John Barber conducted his excavations at Oakham Castle some two years after the investigation
described here by Peter Gathercole. The text and images are from Gathercole, P W, Excavations at Oakham Castle,
Rutland, 1953-54, Trans Leicestershire Archaeol Hist Soc 34 (1958), 17-38, and are reproduced by kind permission
of the Leicestershire Archaeological & Historical Society.

INTRODUCTION

The excavation described in this report was undertaken on behalf of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, Ministry
of Works, while the author was a student at the Institute of Archaeology, London University. It was divided into two
parts; in the first instance, a sector of the site was ‘watched’ during March and April 1953 while building operations
were in progress. In the summer of 1954, a controlled excavation took place in an attempt to answer certain questions
raised in the previous year. The report on this work, which lasted for a total period of eight weeks, is set out below.
I am greatly indebted to many people for their assistance both during the excavation and subsequently in the
writing of this report. Acknowledgments are due:
For continual guidance to Mr J G Hurst, MA. For permission to excavate within the Castle grounds, to the Rutland
County Council. For co-operation on the building-site, to the contractors, John Cawley and Sons, of Nottingham.
Particular thanks are due to Mr Jack Downes (General Foreman), for unstinted practical advice. For local help, I am
particularly indebted to Mr J L Barber, MA, FSA, and to Mr de la Rue, the County Planning Officer. For excavation:
Messrs Draycott and Stimson (Contractors), Mr J Hunter, Mr C Newton, Mr J Dobney, Mr G Draycott, Miss Jean
Smalley, Master Robert Lewis and Master Christopher Knowles. I would like to thank Mrs M F Pursall and Mr Brian
Roberts for drawing most of the pottery, and Miss Rachel Hunt for typing the manuscript.
Acknowledgments to those who assisted in the interpretation of finds are to be found in the appropriate sections.

THE EXCAVATION

Oakham Castle is known to students of Norman domestic architecture principally for its fine aisled hall dated to the
last quarter of the twelfth century. 1 [for footnotes to this article, see p63 – Ed] This building is the only one now surviving of a
substantial group, which according to an inquisition of 1340 also included ‘four rooms, a chapel, a kitchen, a stable, a
barn for hay, a house for prisoners ... a room for the porter, a drawbridge with iron chains, and the castle contains
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within its walls two acres of ground’. The other buildings now show only as irregularities in the ground to the east of
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the hall, the whole complex (actually covering about three and a third acres) being within a sub-circular bailey,
enclosed by a rampart originally about 25ft high, but now denuded to between 9 and 23ft. in height. Remnants of a
stone curtain wall are to be found occasionally. Outside are substantial traces of a ditch, which has largely been filled
in to the south, and, on the north side, modified to form fish ponds. On the outside of these ponds lies a rectangular
court, also bounded by a bank and ditch and once used as a garden.
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Mr Ralegh Radford has now shown that the earliest castle at Oakham had a motte at the south-east corner of the
bailey, today largely cut away, which may be dated shortly after 1075, when the owner, Edith, the widowed queen of
Edward the Confessor, died, and the castle reverted to the Crown. In addition, he argues that ‘the straight eastern side
of the bailey and the plan of the northern enclosure show that the latter is the earlier and that it forms part of a
rectangular fortification, which certainly included the church and probably extended south as far as the cross street at
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the end of the markets. This can only have been a late Saxon burh’. The latter proposal lies outside the scope of the
present report, but the former, the existence of a motte and bailey shortly after 1075 (or at any rate by c.1100), is
supported by the results of the excavation. The excavation was prompted by the demolition of a number of houses to
the south of the bailey, in the angle between Castle Lane and the Market Square, and the construction of a new Head
Post Office in their stead. This site was a rough rectangle covering about one third of an acre lying astride the moat
(Fig. 1).

Work in 1953
During March and April 1953, it was levelled, and the moat excavated to an average depth of 13ft 6in, although
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occasional ‘stanchion holes’ were dug to a depth of 18ft 3in. Most of the clearing was done by a mechanical digger,
which, combined with poor weather and periodic flooding, had an adverse effect on the work, and made the rescue of
finds and the recording of stratigraphy often difficult, and sometimes hazardous (Pl. IIa).

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