There are many pubs which are claimed to be the oldest. Certain names crop up time and again – the Old Ferryboat Inn, St Ives (claim: 560AD); Porch House, Stow-on-the-Wold (claim: 970AD); or the Old Man & Scythe, Bolton (claim: 1251AD). In this blog we’ve covered the claims of various Nottingham pubs, including Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem (claim: 1189AD), and penned an article on the variables involved in dating ancient inns. Elsewhere, the historian Jon Mein has assessed the claims made by the Ye Olde Fighting Cocks at St Albans to have opened in 793AD (spoiler: it probably didn’t).
One name is repeatedly listed as a potential contender – the Bingley Arms at Bardsey-cum-Rigton, which is claimed to date back to 953AD. In this article I’m going to outline the evidence for the date of this West Yorkshire boozer.
The Claim
The Bingley Arms’ website makes the following claim: “The Bingley Arms is no ordinary pub. It’s the original English pub – officially the oldest in Britain – dating back over 1000 years to a time when Vikings were conquering parts of the country and before England had its first King.” The date on the website is a tad non-specific, but the pub’s social media account is proudly entitled The Bingley Arms 953ad. Around the building there are various signs which also proclaim the origin date of 953AD. One example even indicates that the Bingley Arms is “England’s Oldest Inn Recorded in the Guinness Book of Records”.
The Bingley Arms (Image Credit: JThomas / Wikimedia Commons)
Elsewhere, the Yorkshire Post ran an article, in July 2019, which claimed that: “The hostelry is mentioned in the Domesday Book and has a recorded history dating back to 953AD”.
To summarise, the various claims include the following statements:
The Bingley Arms predates England’s first king.
The pub is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.
It is officially the oldest pub in Britain according to the Guinness Book of Records.
The building dates to 953AD.
This all sounds very definitive… but can any of it be verified?
England’s First King
The development of the kingdom of England took place during a protracted period from the second half of the ninth to the earlier tenth century. Broadly speaking, the political and military circumstances brought about by Viking incursions during the mid-ninth century led to the gradual expansion of the kingdom of Wessex. Under the rule of the kings Alfred, Edward, and Aethelstan the formerly independent states of Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria were incorporated into a single political entity which became known as England.
Aethelstan is widely noted to have been the first king of a united England after the capitulation of the Viking kingdom centred on York in 927. Although the situation remained fluid, most early mediaeval historians agree that it was Aethelstan who can be reliably named as England’s first king (Livingston 2021, 93-98; Holland 2016, 56-61; Stenton 1971, 340-41).
Detail of Aethelstan presenting a book (Image Credit: Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge / Wikimedia Commons)
Given that Aethelstan was in control of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria by 927, it may not be historically accurate to say that the Bingley Arms (which is claimed to date to 953) was built at a time “before England had its first King.”
Domesday Book
The Bingley Arms is not alone in being noted to be referenced in the Domesday Book. The assertion is also made by the Royal Standard of England at Forty Green, Buckinghamshire (another claimant to be the oldest pub in the country). However, according to an authoritative history of the Great British boozer published by English Heritage (now called Historic England): “The Domesday Survey of 1086, which deals with the value of land and identifies those holding it, has not a single mention of alehouses or other drinking establishments” (Brandwood, Davison & Slaughter 2004, 3).
The Domesday Book (Image Credit: The National Archives)
The text of the Domesday Book is freely available to access online and the statement that there are no pubs included within it can be easily checked. Brandwood et al seem to be entirely correct; therefore, the Bingley Arms is unlikely to be mentioned in the 1086 survey.
Guinness World Records
There are at least three pubs which currently claim that Guinness World Records have included them as an entry for the category of oldest pub: Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans; Sean’s Bar, Athlone; and the Bingley Arms. The problem with the contention is that Guinness World Records do not maintain a category for oldest pub. Although they may once have done so, their website is now completely empty for such a category. They have even confirmed this via their official social media account.
Ye Olde Fighting Cocks (Image Source: Legis / Wikimedia Commons)
Given that Guinness World Records no longer monitor the category of oldest pub, the Bingley Arms might no longer officially hold such a title.
The Date of 953AD
We must be extremely cautious of any claim that a building dates to the early mediaeval period. The architectural historians Mary and Nigel Kerr have pointed out that there are around 400 buildings in the country which can genuinely claim to have pre-Norman fabric within their structure – and all of them are ecclesiastical (Kerr & Kerr 1983, 7). Research indicates that we probably do not have any roofed, domestic, secular buildings surviving anywhere in England from the tenth century. This appears to put the claim of the Bingley Arms to date to 953 into some doubt.
The listed building entry by Historic England for the Bingley Arms points to it being a mid-eighteenth building with later nineteenth and twentieth century remodelling. It bears a close similarity to other stone-built structures in the region constructed around the same period. The listing even notes a date stone of 1738, which may refer to the year of construction. The entry also makes it clear that the inspector saw the property both externally and internally; so we can have a reasonable degree of confidence in the assessment.
The Bingley Arms (Image Credit: Mtaylor848 / Wikimedia Commons)
The architectural details of the building chime well with this assessment. The historic core of the pub is built entirely from locally quarried Carboniferous sandstone. During the mediaeval period, stone was mostly used in West Yorkshire for high status construction projects such as castles, great houses, abbeys, priories, and churches. Gradually, it became used in manor houses from the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Stone was only routinely extended to non-elite domestic buildings, such as the Bingley Arms, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Lott 2023, 4). Prior to this period vernacular architecture was dominated by timber-framed structures (Giles 1986, 26-47). Further features which help to date the building to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries include the details of doors, sash windows, beam stops, and fireplaces (Hall 2005, 42-44, 76-82, 158-63, 180-86). However, much of the pub’s fixtures and fittings date to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The material culture of the Bingley Arms points towards a primary construction date in the mid-eighteenth century with evidence for later remodelling.
Myth-making
The claim that the building dates to 953 is made so often that it is widely believed and repeated. The source of the claim may be the business itself as repetition always seems to circle back to the pub’s own publicity materials. A recent article published by Leeds Live, which backs up the 953 date, made no attempt at critical evaluation and reads as a regurgitation of details published on the Bingley Arms’ website.
It is not possible to confidently identify the source of the 953 claims, but the date may be a nod in the direction of the tower at All Hallows, Bardsey cum Rigton. The latter is conventionally assumed to date to 850-950 (NHLE 1135652; Pevsner & Radcliffe 1967, 89). It is not uncommon for the claims of other pubs to attempt to link with the established early histories of their settlements – as may have happened with Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans and Porch House, Stow-on-the-Wold. The implication being that if the settlement existed then there *must* have been a pub. Unfortunately, this may be a logical fallacy.
Parish Church of All Hallows, Bardsey (Image Credit: John Turner / Wikimedia Commons)
One problem for the tenth century assertion is that there has yet to be any archaeological or archival evidence presented. The claim is repeated, and the stories are told, but the evidence is never offered. Popular folklore suggests that the building dates to the tenth century whereas archaeological research points in the direction of the eighteenth century.
Meanwhile, the Bingley Arms has yet to be cited as an ancient building in the hard-nosed, peer reviewed and authoritative texts on the history of public houses (for example: Brunning 2014; Brandwood, Davison & Slaughter 2004; Haydon 1994). There are genuinely ancient pubs still surviving from the mediaeval period; including the George Inn, Norton St Philip (dated c 1375 and remodelled 1430) and the New Inn, Gloucester (dated (1430-32); but they do not pre-date the later fourteenth century. The claim that the Bingley Arms is a tenth century building is almost worthy of the controversial pseudo-archaeologist Graham Hancock himself!
Conclusions
Most of the pubs which claim to be the oldest in the country seem to present little in the way of evidence to back up the dates on their signs. The majority – including the Ferryboat, Fighting Cocks, Porch House, Trip to Jerusalem and Old Man & Scythe – are housed within post-mediaeval buildings and probably did not open until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Alas, it is unfortunate to write, that a good rule of thumb is to gently discount whatever date is painted on a pub sign because even the quickest piece of research may usually prove it incorrect.
There is nothing especially unusual in the Bingley Arms’ claim to be tenth century or that news outlets and popular websites regurgitate that date without critical evaluation. There may be a desire, on the part of some people, to want to believe invented histories. Such views might reinforce an emotionally driven, rose-tinted, misty-eyed, romantic view of the past which ye olde British boozer seems to specialise in.
I genuinely do not have any ulterior motive in writing this article. I have nothing against the past or present landlords of the Bingley Arms. I wish them well. However, history matters. It is a major component of local and national identity. Unfortunately, the popularly believed tenth century date for the Bingley Arms might not be supported by the evidence. Instead, it is probably a building of the mid-eighteenth century and later.
The fact that the pub may be eighteenth century should not be a source of shame or disappointment. By embracing a verifiable and accurate history the locals and tourists who patronise the Bingley Arms could still proudly support a thriving business which is providing excellent food and drink. It is the community value of the pub that is of greatest significance here.
Dedication
This article is dedicated to the bafflingly eccentric persistence of Phillip Wood.
References
Brandwood, G., Davison, A., & Slaughter, M., 2004, Licensed to Sell – The History and Heritage of the Public House. English Heritage. Swindon.
Brunning, T., 2014, Merrie England: The Medieval Roots of the Great British Pub. Bright Pen.
Giles, C., 1986, Rural Houses of West Yorkshire, 1400-1830. Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. London.
Hall, L., 2005, Period House Fixtures and Fittings, 1300-1900. Countryside Books. Newbury.
Haydon, P., 1994, The English Pub. Robert Hale. London.
Holland, T., 2016, Athelstan – The Making of England. Allen Lane. London.
Kerr, M. & N., 1983, Anglo-Saxon Architecture. Shire. Princes Risborough.
Livingston, M., 2021, Never Greater Slaughter – Brunanburh and the Birth of England. Osprey. Oxford.
Lott, G., 2023, West and South Yorkshire: Building Stones of England. Historic England. Swindon.
Pevsner, N. & Radcliffe, E., 1967, The Buildings of England: Yorkshire – West Riding. Penguin. London.
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures on the subject of mediaeval building myths. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
Secret passage tales are ubiquitous. This blog has covered several unfounded rumours already – including examples of the genre at Stone, Tintern, Guildford, and Burton-upon-Trent. There has also been an attempt to look at the underlying reasons for the continued popularity of hidden tunnel folklore.
There was a real flurry of online excitement when an apparently real secret passage was listed for sale in Fowlmere (Cambridgeshire) by the estate agents Ensum Brown in May 2023. Hill View Cottage was listed as including: “original period features, 2 reception rooms, 4 bedrooms over 2 floors, and a delightful enclosed garden.”
Hill View Cottage, Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire (Credit: Ensum Brown)
All pretty basic stuff, until the entry took a turn for the unexpected:
“There is also a door down to a basement area, with lots of space for storage, as well as a historic underground tunnel!
The Tunnel goes from Hill View Cottage and joins up with several historic properties in the village, with a small central meeting room. It was likely to have been built when Henry VIII created the church of England and was most likely used by Catholics and Protestants as an escape route when persons of authority visited, so as to avoid persecution. It is believed this could be the last remaining access to the tunnel, with others having been sealed off.”
There is even a photograph (see header image) and a Youtube video (hilariously soundtracked with The Jam’s 1980 number one hit single Going Underground) that has, at time of writing, been viewed over 9,700 times. This is no mere rumour, its allegedly the real deal! Or is it…
BBC Reporting
Well, the BBC certainly thought that it was real because, on 25 May 2023, they published an article about the 30 metre, L-shaped feature cut through the natural chalk under the headline: “Fowlmere: House over Reformation tunnel goes on the market” and incorporated a direct quotation from the estate agents’ listing.
Their investigative journalism knew no bounds as the anonymous journalist went on to note that there were “historical records” which proved that “the tunnel – which is 5ft 9in (1.75m) at its deepest and just 33in (0.8m) at its narrowest points – stretches under the road towards the war memorial, where it changes direction towards the Old Manor House on the other side of the High Street.”
Old Manor House, Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire (Credit: Mike Hallett / Historic England)
Finally, Auntie Beeb spoke to a local parish councillor – Deborah Roberts – who went on to explain that: “The house was once lived in by the parish curate of St Mary’s Church, but as things got difficult he would have needed a quick escape route.” She also noted that the local village pub, The Chequers, was connected to the labyrinth.
To sum up the claims by the BBC, Ensum Brown and Deborah Roberts:
There is a chalk-cut tunnel which links Hill View Cottage and the Old Manor House in Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, as well as several other properties in the village including the Chequers.
The tunnel is 30 metres long by 1.75 metres at its deepest and 0.8 metres at its shallowest.
The tunnel was dug beneath the house of the parish curate, shortly after the English Reformation, so that both Catholics and Protestants could escape from Henry VIII’s persecutions.
Questions
There is absolutely no denying that this tunnel exists. However, can we be certain of its form, date, and function?
The first point to note is that we can probably discount rumours that other buildings are connected to this tunnel. Both the video and a plan of the feature, published in 1980, make it fairly clear that only Hill View Cottage and the Old Manor House are linked. Admittedly, there is a “blocked side-creep” (Pennick 1980) to the north-west of the Old Manor House entrance, but this is heading in the opposite direction to the Chequers (which is 107 metres to the north-east). There is no evidence to suggest where the blocked passage leads or how far it extends.
Plan of the Fowlmere tunnel (Credit: Pennick 1980)
Secondly, both the estate agents and the BBC make the claim that the tunnel dates to the sixteenth century and is in some way connected to Henry VIII’s Reformation. Somewhat oddly, it is alleged that both Catholics and Protestants used the tunnel – despite being on opposing sides in the religious turmoil. No physical evidence is supplied to underpin these claims.
The BBC hinted that: “Details with the property suggested the tunnel “was likely to have been built when Henry VIII created the Church of England…” However, no explicit reference is made as to what these “details” might be. Although, in the next paragraph there is a link to “historical records” – which takes the reader to an article entitled “The Underground Tunnel at Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire” by Nigel Pennick. This piece was published in the Journal of Geomancy vol. 4 no. 2 in January 1980.
The Journal of Geomancy was a short-lived publication which ran from 1976 until 1981. It was the brainchild of Nigel Pennick – who authored the Fowlmere article, edited, typed, and produced the journal, provided much of the copy and was the head of the Institute of Geomantic Research (IGR). According to their own publicity leaflet, the IGR encouraged research into: “landscape geometry; ley lines, terrestrial figures and zodiacs; feng shui and allied sciences; sacred geometry; cosmological town planning; earth energies and dowsing; astro-archaeology; ancient stones and the modelling of the landscape.”
The IGR was one man’s quest into the world of pseudo-science and pseudo-archaeology. We must be extremely cautious of basing any firm historical or archaeological conclusions on the work of a self-confessed geomancer given how widely discredited his field of research has been.
Reformation
However, if read very carefully, Pennick’s article does have some merit. First, it includes a reasonably accurate plan of the feature. Second, his research into the graffiti inscriptions determined that the tunnel had been accessible since at least the 1880s, and perhaps as far back into the eighteenth century. Third, that village folklore connected the tunnel to religious persecutions but, crucially, Pennick was sceptical of that.
Pennick critically cites the work of the local rector, Mr Yorke, who published an article on the tunnel in The History Teacher’s Miscellany for 1925. Yorke concocted a story, based on little or no evidence, that the tunnel was the creation of John Morden, rector of Fowlmere between 1610 and 1644. The latter was apparently removed from office on the orders of Oliver Cromwell and the tunnel was excavated so that he could access the Old Manor House to deliberate with, his patron and sympathiser, the local worthy Edward Aldred.
It is true that Morden was preferred as rector by Aldred and that he was removed from office in 1644 for his high church, Laudian, beliefs (Baggs Keeling and Meekings 1982, 155-64). However, Yorke made the assumption that the presence of the tunnel revealed where the renegade rector lived – Hill View Cottage. However, there is simply no archaeological or historic evidence to connect the tunnel or Hill View Cottage with Morden or the religious struggles that took place within the British Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century.
The story, as presented by the estate agents and the BBC, is yet another interpretation which tracks back in time from the British Civil Wars of the seventeenth century to the English Reformation of the 1530s and 40s. Yet again, though, there is no physical or documentary evidence presented which proves that the tunnel was constructed during this period. The “historical records” for the sixteenth century date, cited by the BBC, is Pennick’s article. Yet Pennick wrote only of Yorke’s seventeenth century story and was highly sceptical of any connection between the tunnel and the religious turbulence of the Early Modern period.
Strangely, Pennick did not offer up an explanation for the function of the tunnel. Instead, he was more concerned with the shape of the feature. The tunnel goes north-east from the Old Manor House before taking a sharp turn at a point directly under the Fowlmere war memorial and then heading south-east to Hill View Cottage. Pennick thought that the L-shaped deviation was a result of the presence of a ley line running east-west through the site of the war memorial. He speculated: “Could it be that the tunnellers had a dowser with them whose job it was to detect any such energy flows? Coming across a flow during the construction meant that a direction change had to be made so as not to disrupt the flow.”
We are far out into the reaches of pseudo-archaeology here.
Function
There is no direct evidence linking the tunnel to ley lines or the religious upheavals of the Early Modern period. However, rumours of secret passages used as escape routes for persecuted Catholics is a common trope in such folklore. During the post-mediaeval period Catholics were viewed with deep suspicion by the English establishment as the enemy within. Several Catholic conspiracies to undermine the state were unmasked and the perpetrators were tortured and executed mercilessly. The most famous of these seditious plots was, of course, the Powder Treason of 1605.
The Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, 1605 (Credit: National Portrait Gallery / Wikimedia Commons)
The notion that Catholics required secret passages to escape into or had tunnels dug so that they could covertly move between properties is so common. We may be seeing evidence for Protestant fears that those damned Catholics *must* be up to something! Such stories even persist to this day – as the example at Fowlmere demonstrates.
If the tunnel isn’t connected to fleeing Catholics, then what was it for?
The first clue is probably contained within the flint rich Upper Chalk (now more commonly referred to as the White Chalk by geologists) which is the underlying geology beneath Fowlmere. Industrial chalk extraction still takes place within Cambridgeshire, at Barrington and Steeple Morden, but was once more widespread and included historic quarrying at places such as Cherry Hinton, Great Chishill and Harlton. Extraction was often in the form of open-cast pits, but adits could also be driven into the ground as happened at Balsham.
Chalk adit at Balsham, Cambridgeshire (Credit: Bikin Glyn / 28dayslater.co.uk)
The form of the Fowlmere tunnel indicates that it was probably not cut in a single event. The tunnel is approximately 1.75 metres in height at its entrance but dips down to just 0.8 metres and then turns through a sharp angle of 60 degrees. The fact that the roof of the tunnel does not have a consistent height and is very low in its central section may indicate that it was not used for human traffic. The form of the tooling in the Fowlmere tunnel is remarkably like that at Balsham and we may be looking at two chalk adits, dug out from two adjacent properties, which unwittingly collided.
There were many reasons that landowners might have wished to dig chalk adits. First, in the context of a village settlement, land was at a premium so tunnelling was a convenient option. Second, open cast chalk pits took up a great deal of space which could not then be used for agriculture or building upon. Third, chalk was a valuable commodity which could be used for agricultural lime, road building, brick manufacture and walling. Equally, the flints found within the chalk also had varied uses including construction, gunpowder ignition and ceramic manufacture.
Put simply: the physical evidence seems to indicate that the Fowlmere tunnel was probably two chalk adits rather than a secret access for persecuted Catholics. The proposed reality may be less romantic, but this argument is based on archaeological observation rather than local folklore.
Conclusions
The natural chalk and flint geology of Fowlmere is an economic asset that was probably exploited by the historic occupants of the Old Manor House and Hill View Cottage. We cannot be certain when these colliding adits were dug, but dated graffiti inscriptions indicate that the tunnels were open from at least the 1880s and possibly from the eighteenth century.
Although there has been speculation, since at least 1925, that the tunnels were in some way connected to the persecution of Catholics, there is no clear proof that this was the case. The reasons for including such a romantic story in the property sales particulars is clear enough. Neil Wise, of Ensum Brown, noted that most properties “get around 60 clicks a day on Rightmove – this one received over 10,000 in a single day at the weekend“.
It is perhaps rather disheartening to see that the BBC reported hearsay as if it were historical fact without any attempt to critically evaluate the story. Yet, similar conclusions were also made, apparently without fact-checking, when the BBC covered the discovery of a “secret medieval tunnel” at Tintern, in 2021. This turned out to be a water conduit from the industrial manufacture of wire in the Angiddy valley (see Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog #5). Unfortunately, such credulous reporting of secret passage myths does media outlets no credit and only serves to muddy the waters of fact and fiction.
References
Baggs, A. P., Keeling, S. M. & Meekings, C. A. F., 1982, ‘Parishes: Fowlmere‘, in Wright, A. M. P. (ed.), A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 8. Victoria County History. London. pp155-164.
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures on the subject of mediaeval building myths. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
Over the course of a wet Bank Holiday weekend, I have seen lots of online requests, by owners of historic buildings, for help in dating their property. The pages of Your Old House and the Mediaeval and Tudor Period Buildings Group have been bursting with such queries. I’ve genuinely not seen so many similar threads since the early days of the first pandemic lockdown. It seems that the wet weather has forced people to spend an extended period trapped inside. There comes a point, after looking at the same four walls for a long while, where certain landowners start to think… “Just how old is my house and how can I find out?”
With the question posed on social media groups, an army of well-meaning folk are happy to offer cheerful advice on how to get the job done quickly. The same phrases keep popping up: “Look at some old maps!”, “Check the property deeds!” or “Go to your local record office!” In the three minutes that I have been typing this blog I’ve received eight alerts of such pieces of advice being posted.
Lancashire Archives (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Now, at a very basic level, this advice isn’t bad. Its baseline data. Its stuff that the professional historic building researcher will do. However, it will only take you so far. If the property is more than a few decades old, it is unlikely to give you the answer to that vital question: “How old is my house?”
I’m going to use this blog to try and (gently) explain why archival trawls rarely offer the solution to this specific query and how it is sometimes possible to get at the solution.
Here’s the TL, DR answer… For truly ancient properties the answer is twofold: 1) spend years training and gaining experience as a buildings archaeologist, or, 2) commission a buildings archaeologist to do the work for you. The latter will probably be quicker, cheaper and cause less stress, heartache, and career penury.
A Worrying Commission
During 2019, I received a commission from the landowner of a property in the very well-heeled village of Southwell, Nottinghamshire. They called me to discuss a project which had two basic research questions: 1) How old is my house? and, 2) Who was the architect? My stomach churned. I knew that I was going to have a very difficult conversation with my client. I needed to let them know that I could not guarantee to answer either question for definite, but in such a way that they wouldn’t immediately slam down the phone and try someone else who would promise the earth.
Southwell Minster, looking east (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Even though this house was not particularly ancient (a site recce told me that it was entirely eighteenth century or later) and it was a fairly posh building in a village with good documentary sources, I was concerned that it is still rare to be able to answer the posed questions. In the end, after months of exhaustive research, I was able to tell the landowner that the building might have been constructed during the period c 1762-74 and that it may have been designed by a local builder named Francis Ingleman. An equivocal response, but about as close as I could get given that no precise documentation existed – despite the building being only around 250 years in age. For anything much older the documents would probably not have existed.
Mapping the Maps
The key to the Southwell commission was historic mapping coupled with some family history. In 1780, a local antiquarian noted that a specific family had recently built the house and further analysis showed that one of their number had inherited wealth in 1762. The earliest map to show the house was made in 1774. The architecture, known history of the village’s development, family history and mapping seemed to triangulate on the period c 1762-74. However, I could not be certain and had to really argue the case.
The Southwell building went up during a relatively fortunate era – we were entering a golden age of map-making. Parliamentary acts led to the creation of hundreds of enclosure maps between c 1750 and c 1830 (Hey 1996, 153-54). This was followed by the creation tithe maps, largely made between 1836 and 1852 (Hey 1996, 439-40). Finally, the Ordnance Survey was established in 1841, although there are some limited military maps which precede this date (Hey 1996, 333-35). Despite this, many regions were not mapped by the OS until much later; Southwell included – the first map to cover the village did not arrive until 1885.
Map surveyors depicted on an eighteenth century enclosure map (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage / Nottinghamshire Archives)
Earlier maps are variable. Some were made by commercial surveyors. For example, John Chapman’s 1774 map of Nottinghamshire; which first showed the house at Southwell (Henstock 2003). Others were estate maps made for private landowners – such as the Welbeck Atlas which was surveyed between 1629 and 1640 to represent 81 manors owned by William Cavendish, earl of Newcastle (Mastoris 2017). Such early modern maps are vanishingly rare and can only be consulted in exceptional circumstances.
Even when a structure was built, or remodelled, during the era of map-making reference to them will usually only give a date range. For example, historic maps of Greasley Castle Farm, Nottinghamshire, revealed that numerous brick buildings were added to a stone-built farmyard at some point between George Sanderson’s map, surveyed 1830-34, and the Ordnance Survey map, plotted 1877-78. However, archaeological survey was able to narrow this down to 1832 through reference to craftsperson graffiti (Wright 2022, 30).
Greasley Castle Farm, looking north (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
For most properties, historic maps are useful but, if a structure was built before the mid-eighteenth century, they are unlikely to help with identifying the date of primary construction. The answers will lie in a period before accurate mapping and can only be accessed through analysis of archival records and buildings archaeology.
Title Deeds
The deeds which come with a property are often assumed to be a “sovereign specific” for dating a building. Surely, the owners of a property will have diligently maintained the records of the building stretching right back to its construction? This common fallacy may be related to the experience of ownership of relatively modern buildings. Historic deeds are often entirely missing as the 1925 Law of Property Act abolished the need to prove ownership beyond three decades. This means that, although some deeds (previously held by property solicitors) were deposited in local record offices, many were jettisoned.
There is also a widespread misconception about what information is contained within the deeds. Title deeds are legal documents which relate the transference property from one owner to another. ‘The deeds give information about vendors and purchasers, the agreed price, some description of the property, and (from 1840) a plan’ (Hey 1996, 127). Useful information to the social historian but, for the archaeologist, there is no indication of when buildings were initially constructed.
I am currently working with a historian to unpick data from a lengthy sequence of title deeds for a former public house in Essex. Astonishingly, the documents stretch back to the late seventeenth century. However, at no point do they ever discuss construction work of any kind. This is despite the abundance of evidence from the building’s archaeology that many structures were erected from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. It is a very ancient building, but the deeds are completely silent on the first two centuries of the property’s existence.
Essex Record Office (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Title deeds are useful in establishing the social history and transference of ownership, but they rarely offer up a solution to the date of construction. Once again, it is a combination of further archival research and buildings archaeology which have the potential to unlock the mystery.
Trawling the Archives
In 2011, whilst working for Museum of London Archaeology, I headed off to the Wellcome Collection to look up an early twentieth century property in Croxley Green, Hertfordshire. It transpired that the building had been commissioned by a famous surgeon and his diaries, held at the archive, revealed not only the date of construction but also the name of the architect. I cannot begin to articulate just how rare this find was. My client in Southwell would have jumped for joy. I had never hit such a goldmine before and have failed to do so since.
Assigning a specific construction period to a house, purely on archival evidence, is dependent on the survival of documents. This will be reliant on a set of fortunate circumstances which led to their retention and deposition within a public archive. The case at Croxley Green was unusual and preservation of the archive was only brought about by the fame of the surgeon coupled with the acquisitions policy of the repository.
It may come as a shock to learn that most buildings do not have any documentation available – and this includes some very famous structures. There has been a decided uncertainty about the construction date of the great tower at Warkworth Castle, Northumberland. Now in the care of English Heritage, the great tower of Percy family has been estimated to date from anywhere between the mid-fourteenth century and the early sixteenth century on architectural grounds (Johnson 2002, 101-04). This was the castle of one of the premier families in mediaeval England whose line are still the dukes of Northumberland to this day. Yet, crucially, there is not a shred of documentation surviving.
Warkworth Castle, looking north (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
I have just written a journal article on the dating of Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire. Here, some patchy building accounts from the mid-fifteenth century do survive (Simpson 1960). They span the years 1434-35, 1448-39, 1439-40 and 1445-46, but we do not know from them in exactly which years the project began and ended. Moreover, the famous brick great tower is mentioned only once (‘le dongeon’) – during the 1445-46 building season. Some commentators have taken this to mean that the tower was begun that season and can therefore be dated c 1445-1455 (Harvey 1978, 183). Others think that it is a bit earlier, perhaps c 1440-50 (Emery 2000, 310-11). New archaeological evidence, briefly covered in a prior Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog, has come to light which may indicate that construction work began during the second half the 1420s. However, without the science of dendrochronology the archival evidence traditionally put the tower two decades later.
Warkworth and Tattershall were major buildings created for the highest in the land. Yet neither has reliable documentation for their construction… what chance is there for more humble buildings to appear in the archives?
Tattershall Castle, looking south-west (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
House Histories
The first part of any archaeological building survey report will usually be an outline of the known historic background. Sometimes the documents can genuinely take us right back to the moment of construction. At Greasley Castle, Nottinghamshire, a licence to crenellate was issued to Nicholas, 3rd Baron Cantelupe on 5 April 1340 by Edward III (Davis 2006-07, 239; Wright 2022, 10). This kind of data is momentously rare. On other projects the archival frustration is high!
A colleague and I recently discovered that there were only 23 documents pertaining to an entire Lancashire village… and none of them referred to the property that we were researching in any way. In most cases, the building in question will appear in the records but the earliest reference will be long after the primary construction took place. For example, records linked to a Worcestershire farmhouse, that I worked on in 2020, began in 1540 yet the archaeological evidence suggested that the building dated to the mid-fifteenth century.
Library at the Society of Antiquaries of London (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
On some projects I will work alongside tremendously talented house history researchers such as Karen Averby, Gill Blanchard and Melanie Backe-Hansen to construct incredibly detailed social histories for properties. Their trade relies on unpicking a multitude of resources including architect’s plans, building accounts, references in personal papers (letters, diaries, financial papers etc.), newspaper articles, genealogies, valuations, inventories etc. We work well together because their great skills are in teasing out archival details that are perhaps beyond the abilities of this archaeologist. However, when the records cease before a construction date has been established, it may only be the discipline of buildings archaeology which can point towards a structure’s origins.
Buildings Archaeology
The field of buildings archaeology developed throughout the mid- to late-twentieth century. It is a multi-disciplinary technique which aims to deploy ‘all of the tools in the toolkit’ to understand the origin, form, function, fabric, history, significance, context, development, and phasing of historic structures. Projects can include archival research, oral history, structural observation, photography, drawings (sketches, measured sketches, and metrically accurate scaled drawings), photogrammetry, 3D laser scans and dendrochronology.
Buildings archaeology survey at Greasley Castle (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Buildings archaeology can be targeted towards structures of any period and type. In my career, I have recorded a twelfth century palace, thirteenth century church, fourteenth century castle, fifteenth century barn, sixteenth century house, seventeenth century farm, eighteenth century windmill, nineteenth century pumping station and a twentieth century hospital. When it comes to the dating of such structures, we have already looked in detail at the variables in a former Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog, in January 2023, but it must be noted that there are two broad methods: scientific and stylistic.
The science of dendrochronology was the subject of a Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog, in January 2022, which demonstrated that felling dates are a strong indicator for the period of construction. Tree-ring dating has proved invaluable to the better understanding of timber-framed buildings. For example, 22-24 Kirkgate, Newark (Nottinghamshire) was listed as being late fifteenth century, yet dendrochronology later provided a felling date of 1337. Elsewhere, 40 Westhorpe, Southwell (Nottinghamshire) was listed as seventeenth century, yet tree-ring data indicated a felling range of 1332-57 – a significant disparity of approximately 250-350 years.
Dendrochronology at Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Although dendrochronology has the potential to provide scientifically accurate felling ranges or dates, there may be cases when timbers fail to yield a date or it cannot be deployed due to limited project budgets. In these situations, buildings can be dated by stylistic methods which rely on a careful assessment of the development of a building and the recording of primary architectural features which are reliably datable. Such features may include in-situ doors, windows, fireplaces, panelling, staircases, and roofs. A good starter for looking at this subject is Linda Hall’s incredibly useful book: Period Fixtures & Fittings, 1300-1900 (Countryside Books, 2005). I take it to literally every single site with me.
Dating by stylistic methods will vary according to both time and place. For example, the presence of a crownpost roof in Yorkshire might be expected in the years c 1280-1450. Meanwhile, the same design appears in Essex at around the same time but was still in use until c 1570. In other circumstances, clasped side purlin roofs were constructed in Yorkshire from c 1325 whilst they did not become widespread in Essex until c 1525 (Walker 2011, 18, 24-26).
A recent project by Triskele Heritage at Ivy Cottage, Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, was able to refine the dating of the building using stylistic methods. Survey work demonstrated that the primary build was a combination of stone and timber-framing and that there was a queenpost roof structure that would be unlikely in the region prior to c 1550. The roof had then been ceiled during the seventeenth century through the insertion of a floor frame incorporating stylistically diagnostic scroll and notch chamfer stops on a bridging beam.
Ivy Cottage, Wollaton, Nottinghamshire. Looking west (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Buildings archaeology can usually triangulate the available evidence to provide a date to within half a century. This might sound like a wide margin of error but without unambiguous documentary and scientific evidence it is rare to be able to get much closer.
Conclusions
Please do not feel that I am denigrating the advice of others here. Checking the maps, deeds and archives is basic level stuff and all good research projects should incorporate such data. Equally, establishing a historic background for a property is an essential requirement for most detailed research projects. The work of social historians is to be greatly valued.
For more recent buildings historic research may be enough to establish a date of construction. However, archival research will only ever tell part of the story. Even relatively modern buildings will feature structural phases which have gone completely unrecorded.
To go back further in time – into the mediaeval and early modern periods – buildings archaeology may be the only option for understanding the date of a building. This is especially true for non-elite structures but, to the surprise of many, some buildings of the great can only be unlocked using buildings archaeology. However, the discipline can prove surprisingly illuminating when applied to buildings of any period.
References
Davis, P., 2006-7, ‘English Licences to Crenellate: 1199-1567’ in The Castle Studies Group Journal Vol. 20. Castle Studies Group. pp226-45.
Emery, A., 2000, Greater Medieval Houses of England and WalesVol. 2 East Anglia, Central England and Wales. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
Harvey, J., 1978, The Perpendicular Style. Batsford. London.
Henstock, A. (ed.), 2003, Chapman’s Map of Nottinghamshire, 1774. Nottinghamshire County Council. Nottingham.
Hey, D. (ed.), 1996, The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History. Oxford University Press. Oxford and New York.
Johnson, M., 2002, Behind the Castle Gate – From Medieval to Renaissance. Routledge. London and New York.
Mastoris, S., 2017, The Welbeck Atlas – William Senior’s Maps of the Estates of William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle: 169-1640. Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire. Nottingham.
Simpson, W. D., 1960, The Building Accounts of Tattershall Castle, 1434-72. Lincoln Record Society No. 55.
Stenning, D., ‘East Anglian Roofs: An Essex-centric View’ in Walker, J. (ed.) The English Medieval Roof: Crownpost to Kingpost. Essex Historic Buildings Group.
Walker, J., 2011, ‘Introduction and Overview’ in Walker, J. (ed.) The English Medieval Roof: Crownpost to Kingpost. Essex Historic Buildings Group.
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures on the subject of mediaeval building myths. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
Whenever I speak or write about castles, I am aware that castle specialists, such as myself, have perhaps not been completely successful at communicating new thinking to the wider public. In the minds of lots of people castles were built primarily as military defensive fortifications. However, this has not been an orthodox view among castle specialists since the late 1980s.
Instead, research by numerous experts, over almost 50 years, has consistently demonstrated the incredible complexity in the function of mediaeval castles. Security was certainly a consideration, but it was probably not the paramount purpose of castles. In concentrating on military matters, at the exclusion of all else, we risk understanding only a tiny fraction of how castles were viewed and used in the mediaeval period. I would like to explore the amazing diversity of castle functions in this blog.
Old Wardour Castle, Wiltshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
History of Castle Studies
We must trek back in time to understand how the military interpretation of castles became so dominant for so long (and why it still holds sway for so many). The study of castles did not really get underway until the second half of the nineteenth century. Two of the earliest figures to carry out fieldwork were the French restoration architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1860) and the English archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers (1883, 429-65). Both men had military backgrounds and saw active service. As a young man Viollet-le-Duc manned the barricades during the July Revolution and, later in life, was a military engineer at the siege of Paris (1870-71). Pitt-Rivers was a Captain and Assistant Quarter Master General at the battle of Alma (1854) and spent 32 years in the British Army, finishing at the rank of Lieutenant General. Perhaps it is no surprise that both men were interested in what they perceived to be mediaeval military structures.
Viollet-le-Duc and Pitt-Rivers were followed by figures such as the engineer, George Thomas Clark, who published Mediaeval Military Architecture in England in 1884; and the academic, Alexander Hamilton Thompson, who released Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages in 1912. It is notable that the word “military” appeared prominently in both titles. Militarism dominated castle studies for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even scholars, such as Ella Armitage or Reginald Allen Brown, who accepted that castles also had important residential functions, were still drawn into debates on the tension between living in and defending a castle. Brown’s definition of castles summed up this tension: “the private fortress and residence of a lord” (Brown 1954, 17).
Early castle specialists: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (top left, credit: Archives Photographiques); Augustus Pitt-Rivers (top centre, credit: Pitt-Rivers Museum); Alexander Hamilton Thompson (top right, credit: National Portrait Gallery); George Thomas Clark (bottom left, credit: National Library of Wales); Ella Armitage (bottom centre, credit: unknown); Reginald Allen Brown (bottom right, credit: Cambridge University Press)
As late as 1973 Philip Warner, a Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, stated that: “Castles were… magnificent devices for delaying and dislocating an invading army” (Warner 1973, 8). Such overtly martial interpretations were addressed by David Stocker in an essay, entitled ‘In the Shadow of the General’s Armchair’, which noted that the early commentators on castles came from military backgrounds and tried to make the mediaeval evidence fit their own experience (Stocker 1992, 415-20). This observation can be extended to consider multiple generations of authors in the early- to mid-twentieth century who had grown up in a world fundamentally underpinned, and effected by, the legacy of the British Empire, Boer War, First and Second World Wars. The bureaucracy and militarism of those years may have skewed the interpretation of castles to such an extent that it would have been unrecognisable within the mediaeval world.
By the late 1970s the tide began to turn against the dominance of militarism in castle studies. One of the first to attempt new interpretations was Charles Coulson (1979, 73-101) who suggested that castles were fundamentally architectural expressions of elite living. Whilst acknowledging that the castle did have residential and military roles, Coulson concluded that: “The social purposes of fortresses almost always comprehended and transcended their military functions.” In doing so he opened the floodgates.
Battle for Bodiam
There was a brief period of volatile argument between the militarist old guard and the revisionists but by the mid-1990s the latter were in the ascendancy. Much of the debate centred on the so-called “Battle for Bodiam”. On the one hand were those who thought that Bodiam Castle (East Sussex) was constructed for Sir Edward Dallingridge – a veteran of the Hundred Years War – to protect south-eastern England from attack by the French (Warner 1973, 232-33). Militarists tended to draw attention to the presence of machicolations, gunports, gatehouses, corner towers and the moat; alongside reference to the wording of the 1385 licence to crenellate: “for the defence of the adjacent country, and the resistance to our enemies” (Thompson 1987, 17, 36; Platt 1982, 114-18).
Bodiam Castle, East Sussex (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Meanwhile, the revisionists pointed out that the castle was palpably unworkable as a fortification. It is directly overlooked by a nearby hill, the main gatehouse faces inland, the walls are very thin, the crenellations are very low, the gunports are badly sighted, there are some very large ground-floor windows, and the moat is not only shallow but could easily be drained externally (see Liddiard 2005, 7-11 and Johnson 2002, 19-33 for summaries of the various arguments). Instead, they viewed the castle as an impressive moated manor house, surrounded by a landscape of lordship, with an intricate access route dominated by aquatic features intended to create a theatrically ceremonial display of prestige (Everson 1996, 79-84). Bodiam may have looked the part, but it was not a serious defensible position.
An older generation sought to apologise for the military weaknesses of sites such as Bodiam by suggesting that there was a technological evolution of castles, linked to periods of warfare and conquest, starting in the eleventh century which reached a high point at the end of the thirteenth century. From here, they argued, the castle went into decline as the country was largely pacified; but lords still needed the protection offered by strong, self-sufficient, great towers should their own post-feudal mercenaries revolt (Simpson 1969). Given the political upheavals of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this simplistic linear model was never realistic.
To this Coulson offered a radical solution – that this evolutionary rise and subsequent decline would have been anathema to the actual lived reality of the mediaeval period. Instead, he suggested that the castle was primarily a building which evoked elite status, prestige, and ceremony at all points during the mediaeval era and that this was always the primary imperative for building such structures… but was he correct?
Tower of London (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Diversity of Thought
One of the chief joys of working in castle studies in the twenty-first century is the diversity of thought. No longer are specialists confined to relatively narrow arguments within the military versus residential parameters. Coulson helped to enable a whole new spectrum of interpretation. Castles have come to be understood as the most complex structures built within the mediaeval period.
This diversity of function can be typified through analysis of the great hall. Everything in houses of both modest or palatial means pivoted around the hall – sandwiched between the lower status services and the high-status apartments beyond. This layout can be felt in the houses of yeoman farmers or in great castles of all periods including Oakham, Kidwelly, Bodiam, Raglan and Thornbury.
Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
The Great Hall
Castle great halls offered multi-purpose venues. Traditionally, they could be used as a place of dining for the household. However, these were not mere canteens. Everything about such spaces was geared towards the social rituals which helped to order and bind community. The hall had a low end (closest to the cross-passage and services) and a high end (closest to the high-status apartments). The lord would sit on a raised platform, known as a dais, at the high end beneath a tester canopy (a signifier of status). Below the lord the household would sit at trestle tables in order of rank, and, during meals, the lower status members would serve those higher up the pecking order. The architecture of the hall emphasised the innate hierarchy of the mediaeval household (Johnson 2002, 78-80).
The hall was a space festooned with architecture and artwork which proclaimed the status of the lord and his household. Knowledge, patronage and understanding of such motifs was a signifier of lordship. Halls included lavish portable goods and comestibles, elaborate timber roof structures, up-to-the-minute tracery windows, sculpted and moulded stonework, tapestries or wall paintings and fireplaces dripping with iconography. The first-floor hall chimneypiece at Tattershall Castle (Lincolnshire) features armorials of Ralph Cromwell’s ancient family pedigree, purses symbolising the source of his wealth as Lord Treasurer of England, miniature crenellations (the ultimate symbol of lordship), religious scenes of the fight between good and evil, and more marginal images including woodwoses, grotesques and foliage which explored notions of chivalry, spirituality, and sinfulness. Everything here was intended to be an expression of a great and pious Christian lord (Wright 2021, 313-329).
First floor chimney piece, Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Halls were not just used by the feasting household. They could provide a location for activities including manorial courts, meetings with visitors or retainers, and for dispensing patronage, gift-giving, and charity. At a time when the cohesion of society was predicated on the itinerant management of manors by lords the hall was the centre from which those estates were run. For the uppermost ranks in society the castle hall acted as the beating heart of the complex.
If the great hall was the heart of the castle, it had many arteries spreading out from it. Beyond were the services – including buttery, pantry, kitchen, bakehouse, brewhouse and barn – geared towards feeding the household. Off the upper end were apartments for the higher-ranking members of the household and their guests – which might include a parlour, privy chamber, great chamber, garderobes, bedchambers, and a chapel.
Services (left), hall (centre), great chamber (right) and chapel (extreme right) at Ashby Castle, Leicestershire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Beyond the Castle Gate
Religion played a fundamental part in mediaeval life and there was no clear distinction between the sacred and the secular worlds (Aston 2003, 72). Consequently, castles had a strong provision of ecclesiastical structures. These might range from personal oratories at the Tower of London, to the household chapel at Haddon Hall, to the Augustinian priory at Porchester Castle (Hampshire) or the collegiate foundation within the walls of Warkworth Castle (Northumberland). Castles were sometimes founded at more or less the same time as monasteries by the same patrons as part of a planned lordly landscape. Examples include Walter Espec at Helmsley Castle and Rievaulx Abbey (North Yorkshire, 1120s) and Nicholas de Cantelupe at Greasley Castle and Beauvale Priory (Nottinghamshire, 1340s).
A close proximity between castle and parish church is near-ubiquitous, with the lord of the manor often a significant patron of the church. Examples include Bolingbroke (Lincolnshire), Northallerton (North Yorkshire) and Egmanton (Nottinghamshire). Sometimes the church was rebuilt at the same time as the foundation of the castle, as happened at Strelley (Nottinghamshire) in the 1350s where it provided a location for the burials of the lordly family.
Tomb of Sampson de Strelley and Elizabeth Hercy, All Saints, Strelley, Nottinghamshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Religious foundations by castle patrons are a reminder that the reach of a castle projected, far beyond the walls and moats, across designed landscapes of lordship (Creighton 2002, 110-132). The immediate locale of a castle could include structures essential to providing for the household. At Tattershall this included a substantial, adjacent, extra-mural enclosure which featured a collegiate foundation, bedehouses, walled gardens, a rabbit warren, fishponds and a brick-built mill. Beyond this the power of Ralph Cromwell was felt through his reorganisation of the adjoining village around a large marketplace with a prominent cross at its heart (Wright 2022, 153-163).
Such markets point towards castles acting as economic centres which could propagate regional trade (Creighton 2002, 163-66). Markets directly outside the gates of castles can be found at Lincoln, Ludlow, and Richmond. Other important features of urban life, such as grammar schools, and almshouses, were sometimes founded at the same time as castles – as they were at Tattershall by Ralph Cromwell (Wright 2022, 165-66, 167-68).
Ludlow, Shropshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Further afield, castles acted as the centres of great agricultural estates. The open fields which surrounded castles and their settlements would provide a source of food and income for the lord, household, and tenant farmers (Creighton 2002, 89-109). The families of those farmers might also find gainful employment within the walls of high-status dwellings too. In the fourteenth century there are records of local women acting as both cleaners and singers at the royal palace at Kings Clipstone, Nottinghamshire (Wright 2016, 17, 110).
Beyond the fields could be found enclosed deer parks – intended to protect, feed and nurture beasts of the chase. Again, the infrastructure of parks required an investment in the local labour force to keep them managed, repaired and free of poachers (Creighton 2009, 100-66). Within the hinterlands of castles further structures were built including the hunting lodge at Woodhall Spa (Lincolnshire) and the banqueting house or pleasance at Kenilworth (Warwickshire). The latter was separated from the castle by a manmade lake and was probably only accessible via boat – making it an exceptionally elite space for the most high-status guests or household members (Johnson 2002, 139). Whole landscapes were designed and managed to support and project the power of the castle lords.
Tower on the Moor, Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Women and Castles
The lordly household was primarily male, but it is possible to sense women in castles and the study of feminine patronage, space and access has been approached with greater frequency in recent years. Abigail Wheatley (2004, 78-111) has raised the connections between femininity and spiritual discourse in castle-themed poetry such as the Château d’Amour. Gillian Scott (Eadie 2015, 174-88), the current chair of the Castle Studies Group, has delved into the use of Irish tower houses within the context of family life. Karen Dempsey (2020, 85-98) has looked at the historiography and place of women as castle specialists as a preface to her discussion on the meanings and interpretation of gender within the gardens of Irish castles.
The diversity of voices within modern castle studies can, and must, be extended. It has been figures such as Ella Armitage, Roberta Gilchrist and Pamela Marshall who have helped to make significant shifts in the discipline. At various times such scholars have asked important questions which have broadened the debate away from military matters to include greater emphasis on residential aspects (Armitage 1912), spaces devoted to female members of the household and the gendered language which was used to discuss castles (Gilchrist 1999, 109-145), or the use of the great tower as a ceremonial space (Marshall 2002, 110-125).
One of the most important reassessments of any castle has come, in recent years, from Rachel Swallow’s work at Caernarfon. She has queried the orthodox view, initially proposed by Arnold Taylor (1963, 369-71), that the design of the castle walls and towers were uniquely the vision of Edward I – who wished to present himself as a new conquering emperor in the Roman mould. Instead, Swallow has proposed the significant involvement of Eleanor of Castile through a curious interplay between history, myth, and theatrical ceremony at the Queen’s Gate to the castle (Swallow 2019, 153-195). Some of the most significant statements about castles ever to have been made are those by authors – including Gilchrist, Wheatley, and Swallow – that have queried who the varied audiences for castles were and what those people thought about castles in the contemporary moment.
Queen’s Gate, Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd (Credit: Albertistvan / Wikimedia Commons)
Breadth of the Subject
The sheer variety of the built environment of castles must be underlined. Broadly speaking, castles were constructed across Europe from the ninth through to the seventeenth century, with an especial focus on the eleventh to early sixteenth century in England. Although there are certain similarities between some sites or periods of construction, no two castles are the same. There is tremendous diversity in architecture across time, space, and patronage.
Anglo-Norman motte and bailey castles of the eleventh century look radically different to the brick courtyard castles of the late fifteenth century. An early sixteenth century Irish tower house bears little resemblance to contemporary late mediaeval English buildings. Even within a specific time period, such as the late eleventh century, the earth and timber ringworks of regional lords bore little physical relationship to William I’s great donjons at Norwich, Colchester or London. Yet all were intended to project the power of their lords.
Colchester Castle, Essex (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
The pages of the Castle Studies Group Journal reflects this cultural diversity and includes articles on structures such as motte and baileys, moated manor houses, courtyard houses, palaces and great stone castles. All such works were the architectural expression of lordship – it is just that the means of the lords and the physical form of their buildings altered according to available wealth, regional styles, and chronological developments.
Despite all this, we can still embrace the thoughts of latter-day militarists. Castles often had defensive elements and, in some rare cases, those features were challenged during actual armed conflict (Liddiard 2005, 71-78). Some of the best work on sieges in recent years has come from Peter Purton (2010) and Dan Spencer (2018) who offer well-rounded perspectives in the light of modern scholarship. Bodiam has once again been re-considered as a fortified site by Jonathan Foyle (2017, 10-13). Security was certainly a feature of castles. However, the wider discussion is no longer just about defences. Voices who concentrate their study on fortifications are welcome additions to the literature, but a balance has been achieved.
Gunport in the gatehouse at Berry Pomeroy Castle, Devon (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Definitions
Many scholars, such as Brown and Coulson, have attempted to define the castle. More recently, John Goodall (2011, 8) has offered a re-worked version of Brown’s definition: “A castle is the residence of a lord made imposing through the architectural trappings of fortification.” I especially like the use of the word “trappings” here as it acknowledges that the fortifications only had to look the part rather than necessarily be fully functional.
Personally, I would like to see a greater degree of diversity and complexity to be considered in the definition of castles. To be honest, the functions of castles are rather nebulous despite their earthworks, carpentry and masonry being oh-so-very tangible. Any definition will be open to criticism, revision, or outright rejection. However, I offer up the following option:
Mediaeval castles were highly complex architectural expressions of elite rank, power, and prestige. Castles were built in a wide variety of regional traditions for diverse patrons in chronologically differing styles. The environment of castles involved the construction and management of buildings and landscapes which may incorporate functional or symbolic military features, but this was not their primary purpose. Instead, the construction of castles was concerned with a wide range of hierarchical, ceremonial, theatrical, religious, residential, administrative, economic, agricultural, social, political, and gendered functions and perspectives which enabled a display of elite status.
Unwieldy, I know… but nuanced.
Conclusions
It must be said, though, that heavy-handed militarism lingers. Perhaps this can be excused at sites, such as Beeston (Cheshire) or Dunstanburgh (Northumberland) where it is only the defences which survive to a meaningful extent. It is difficult to tell other stories in these cases. Yet, castles with substantial surviving architecture, such as Warwick (now owned by a financial investment firm and leased to Merlin Entertainments), have a plethora of opportunities to tell a wide range of stories. However, Warwick is presented as a mediaeval theme park. Events are dominated by knights and jousting. The gift shops are full of plastic swords, helmets, and shields. The nineteenth century militaristic view of castles still reigns… which makes Warwick my least favourite castle to visit. Only a tiny fraction of the story is being told.
Warwick Castle (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Part of the problem stems from pop culture representations of castles. Blockbuster films set in the mediaeval period – such as Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Robin Hood (2010) and Ironclad (2011) – rely on depictions of sieges for major set-piece action scenes. This is despite the relative rarity of sieges of castles in mediaeval warfare (Liddiard 2005, 71-78). Unfortunately, the military interpretation has been continuously reinforced by TV historians, including Dan Jones, who make programmes where the tropes presented reach little further than the research of the 1980s.
Much of the militaristic view is learned early in life from both family and school. It is impossible to stand on a castle spiral staircase and not hear a small child listening to an elderly relative knowledgably repeating the myth that they all turn clockwise to advantage right-handed defenders (a subject covered in a former Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog). Meanwhile, the coverage of castles in the National Curriculum for schools is largely stuck in the 1950s. Militarism prevails.
Despite this, castle specialists have found allies. The National Trust and Usborne Books have brought out fabulously accurate, yet hugely entertaining, books on castles for children (Colby 2021; Cox 2015). Usborne can even boast Abigail Wheatley on their roster of authors. English Heritage are generally excellent in their diverse multi-level presentation of castles through online platforms, social media, audio tours, interpretation panels and guidebooks written by genuine experts in the field such as John Kenyon, Richard K. Morris, and Marc Girouard. Having experts such as Will Wyeth on the strength at English Heritage has no doubt had a positive effect too.
There are different methods of telling the castle story, it just requires castle specialists to be able to find broader platforms to accurately communicate the last 50 years of research in innovative and accurate ways.
References
Armitage, E., 1912, The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles. John Murray. London.
Aston, M., 2003, ‘The Use of Images’ in Marks, R. & Williamson, P. (ed.’s), Gothic: Art for England, 1400-1547. V&A Publications. London. pp68-75.
Brown, R. A., 1954, English Medieval Castles. Batsford. London.
Colby, R., 2021, The Castle the King Built. Nosy Crow / National Trust. London.
Cox, P. R., 2015, What Were Castles For? Usborne. London.
Creighton, O., 2009, Designs Upon the Land – Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages. Boydell. Woodbridge.
Creighton, O., 2002, Castles and Landscapes. Equinox. Sheffield.
Clark, G. T., 1884, Medieval Military Architecture in England Vol. 1 & 2. Wyman & Sons. London.
Dempsey, K., 2020, ‘Planting New Ideas: A Feminist Gaze on Medieval Castles’ in Château Gaillard – Etudes de castellologie médiévale Volume 29. Publications du CRAHAM. pp85-92.
Eadie, G., 2015, “Know you that serving folk be of three kinds’ Irish towers and the familia’, in Oram, R. (ed), ‘A house such as thieves might knock at’ – Proceedings of the 2010 Stirling and 2011 Dundee Conferences. Shaun Tyas. Donington. pp174-188.
Everson, P., 1996, ‘Bodiam Castle, East Sussex: castle and its designed landscape’ in Chateau Gaillard – Etudes de castellologie médiévale Volume 17. Publications du CRAHAM. pp79-84.
Foyle, J., 2017, Bodiam Castle. National Trust. London.
Gilchrist, R., 1999, ‘The Contested Garden: Gender, space and metaphor in the medieval English castle’ in Gender and Archaeology – Contesting the Past. Routledge. London and New York. pp109-465.
Johnson, M., 2002, Behind the Castle Gate. Routledge. London.
Liddiard, R., 2005, Castles in Context. Windgatherer Press. Macclesfield.
Marshall, P., 2002, ‘The Ceremonial Function of the Donjon in the Twelfth Century’ in Château Gaillard – Etudes de castellologie médiévale Volume 20. Publications du CRAHAM. pp141-51.
Swallow, R., 2019, ‘Living the dream: legend, lady and landscape of Caernarfon Castlke, Gwynedd, North Wales’ in Archaeologia Cambrensis Volume 168. Cambrian Archaeological Association.
Taylor, A., 1963, ‘Caernarvon’ in Brown, R. A., Colvin, H. M. & Taylor, A. J., The History of the King’s Works Volume I. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. London. pp369-94.
Thompson, A. H., 1912, Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages. Henry Frowde / Oxford University Press.
Thompson, M. W., 1987, The Decline of the Castle. Cambridge University Press.
Viollet-le-Duc, E. E., 1860 (1990 ed.), Military Architecture. Greenhill Books. London.
Warner, P., 1973, The Medieval Castle: Life in a Fortress in Peace and War. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson. London.
Wheatley, A., 2004, The Idea of the Castle in Mediaeval England. York Medieval Press.
Wright. J., 2016, A Palace for Our Kings. Triskele Publishing. Cheltenham and London.
About the author
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures on the subject of mediaeval building myths. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
Understanding the correct dating of historic buildings is important. Structures are rarely left untouched over the centuries, and they are altered according to the needs of their occupants. For example, the late sixteenth century London topographer, John Stow summarised the changing use of a building which once stood on the corner of Old Jewry and Lothbury:
“…this house, sometime a Jews’ synagogue, since a house of friars, then a nobleman’s house, after that a merchant’s house, wherein mayoralties have been kept, and now a wine tavern” (Wheatley 1956, 249)
Detail from the Woodcut map of London, 1561 (reproduced c 1633). The plot on the corner of Old Jewry and Lothbury is highlighted in blue. Picture Source: British History Online.
The various functions of synagogue, friary, lord’s residence, merchant’s house, mayor’s home, and pub would have led to structural modifications. Such changes can be traced in extant buildings through archaeological survey. Buildings archaeology demands a close analysis of the historical and physical evidence to understand development over time. However, most historic buildings have never been researched in detail. Despite this, specific dates of origin are commonly repeated even though the evidence is thin.
This blog article will look at why errors of dating creep in and how to find reliable sources of information for dating mediaeval and early modern houses.
History of Research
A part of the problem of dating ancient homes is connected to how they have been studied. British architectural history developed in three broad stages. Initially, from the late seventeenth century, there was a fascination for ecclesiastical architecture. By the later nineteenth century castles, great houses and palaces began to get a look in. The study of timber-framed domestic and agricultural buildings (often referred to as vernacular architecture) did not become prominent until the mid-twentieth century. It is the dating of these non-elite structures which is often the most inaccurate.
Thatched barn at Dale Abbey, Derbyshire. Listed as being “Probably C18”. Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage.
There were very few vernacular buildings listed in the first editions of Nikolaus Pevsner’s The Buildings of England series. Although Pevsner was concerned with ecclesiastical, elite, and civic buildings – vernacular structures held little interest for him. This was symptomatic of many architectural historians, in the early- to mid-twentieth century, who saw little significance in non-elite structures. However, an uptick in the demolition of such buildings during the 1950s and 1960s led to a burgeoning interest in the study and protection of vernacular architecture which was led by researchers and campaigners including Ronald Brunskill, Maurice Barley and Dan Cruikshank. Eventually a gradual halt was put on the wilful devastation starting with a nationwide survey of historic buildings ordered by the British government in 1968. This led to something of a race as inspectors tried to protect buildings through statutory listing before they were pulled down. Rural areas were not well-served and it was not until a second survey in the 1980s that many agricultural buildings attained a degree of protection.
Heritage Organisations
The second half of the twentieth century saw the foundation of specialist organisations focused on the protection, curation and understanding of historic buildings. The Vernacular Architecture Group was founded in 1952. Architectural museums were developed at Avoncroft, Worcestershire (1963); Singleton, West Sussex (1967); and Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire (1976). In 1983 English Heritage, latterly Historic England, were formed to act as national curators of assets including listed buildings.
Weald & Downland Living Museum, Singleton, West Sussex. Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage.
There can be little reasonable criticism of the mid-twentieth century desire to protect historic buildings at risk. However, the legacy has proved to be problematic as further detailed research has demonstrated that many buildings were inaccurately dated. During listing surveys time spent on site was minimal, most properties were assessed only from the street and entries were extremely brief. It is common to find vernacular buildings, where the timber-framing was not substantially visible from the street, assigned wholesale to the early modern period. This fed into the widespread mid-twentieth century belief that few lower status buildings survived from the mediaeval period due to what was understood at the time as a national “Great Rebuilding” in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although many houses were built or remodelled during this period the picture is more complicated and developments did not occur at the same rate in all regions at the same time. Additionally, many mediaeval buildings did survive.
An example of inaccurate dating is 392 Picklersleigh Road, Great Malvern (Worcestershire), known as Lydes House. It was first listed in May 1979 as a remodelled seventeenth century house. The listing entry is brief and only deals with external features. However, after an assessment of the building was requested from Triskele Heritage, by the landowners in June 2021, it was revealed that the primary build was a mediaeval cruck frame and that the house had been reorganised during the early modern period. Subsequently, this was confirmed and refined by the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory who dated the cruck to 1447-77, with a later phase of construction in 1625-35.
Lydes House, Great Malvern, Worcestershire. Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage.
Dendrochronology
The accuracy of dendrochronology was the subject of another Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog, in January 2022, which demonstrated that felling dates are a strong indicator for the period of construction. The science of tree-ring dating has proved invaluable to the better understanding of timber-framed buildings. For example, 22-24 Kirkgate, Newark (Nottinghamshire) was listed as being late fifteenth century, yet dendrochronology later provided a felling date of 1337. Elsewhere, 40 Westhorpe, Southwell (Nottinghamshire) was listed as seventeenth century, yet tree-ring data indicated a felling range of 1332-57 – a significant disparity of approximately 250-350 years.
Although dendrochronology has proved that errors in listings are common, we must not go too hard on the mid-twentieth century inspectors. Given that time was short and most buildings could only be assessed, stylistically, from the public highway inaccuracies were perhaps inevitable. The external appearance of Lydes House is wholly early modern or later and there is no indication that its primary build is mediaeval from the roadside. A more detailed internal survey demonstrated its mediaeval origin, which was then confirmed by dendrochronology. Lydes House is not an isolated case and it is frequently the roof structures, often invisible from the roadside, which give us clues to the real age of a building.
Roofs have the potential to reveal so much about a building. When they are left relatively intact roofs can be highly diagnostic for dating. No. 4 Blacksmiths Lane lies at the heart of Kelham (Nottinghamshire) and was listed as a seventeenth century building in August 1981. From the roadside precious little information is present – the ground floor of the building is brick, the first floor rendered and the tiled roof is hipped to the south. However, a survey of the property (Wright 2019) has demonstrated the survival of a three-bay, timber-framed, mediaeval hall house. The common rafter roof structure was found to be entirely in situ and blackened from a period, before the insertion of the upper floors, when smoke from open fires drifted up to soot the timbers. Stylistic evidence from the jointing of the wall plate (which features edge-halved and bridled scarfs with over-squinted abutments) demonstrated that the house was probably constructed in the early fifteenth century (Hewett 1980, 268).
The more surveys that are carried out by buildings archaeologists, the more the listing dates are challenged. Fieldwork by Triskele Heritage in another Nottinghamshire village – Wollaton – has complemented the findings at Kelham. Ivy Cottage was conventionally dated to the eighteenth century by reference to its Neo-Gothick brick façade. However, the potential for an earlier date was noted by the inspector. This was subsequently proven through the identification of a remodelled queenpost roof structure that potentially dates to c 1550-1600.
Although dendrochronology has the potential to provide scientifically accurate felling ranges or dates, there may be cases where it cannot be deployed due to limited project budgets. In other cases the samples may not yield dates. This can happen where timbers do not have either the sapwood or bark present; species are not indigenously grown oak; the wood is rotten; the trees were grown in open environments such as parkland; the master chronologies are not available for particular regions; or there simply are not enough growth rings present to be statistically accurate. Further information on dendrochronology can be gleaned from the Nottingham Tree-ring Dating Laboratory website. The variables are significant and not every timber can be sampled and analysed successfully. In such situations it may only be possible to date a building stylistically.
Stylistic dating relies on a careful assessment of the development of a building and the recording of primary architectural features which are reliably datable. Such features may include in-situ doors, windows, fireplaces, panelling, staircases and roofs. We have already touched on the potential of roofs, but it must be stressed that their dating by stylistic methods will vary according to both time and place.
Crownpost roof at St Mary’s Guildhall, Boston, Lincolnshire. Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage.
For example, dendrochronology tells us that the presence of a crownpost roof in Yorkshire might be expected in the years c 1280-1450; whereas the same design appears in Essex at around the same time but was still in use until c 1570. Meanwhile, clasped side purlin roofs were constructed in Yorkshire from c 1325 whilst they did not become widespread in Essex until c 1525. During a survey of a house in Sible Hedingham, Essex, Triskele Heritage revealed that the property had a clasped side purlin roof over the hall range whilst the crosswings had crownpost roofs. These are two distinctly different styles of construction with quite different periods of construction. The earliest phases of the building are the two late fifteenth century crosswings, which were dated from a combination of the roof structure and the stud-to-stud “Colchester” bracing. Meanwhile, the central hall range was rebuilt c 1600 and can be dated by a combination of the roof structure, ovolo-moulded windows, small-square panelling and wall paintings.
Clasped purlin roof at Knole, Sevenoaks, Kent. Picture Source: James Wright / MOLA.
Stylistic dating is often accurate to only a half century or so but can still be an important mechanism for refining the dating of buildings which have previously been assessed from their exterior.
Unlisted Buildings
There are numerous buildings which, for a variety of reasons, may not have previously been identified as historically significant. Rapid archaeological assessments of such structures may demonstrate their potential through stylistic dating. An assessment in Barnacle (Warwickshire) revealed that a building, which appeared to be a late nineteenth century property from the roadside, was in fact a timber-framed hall house of c 1500 during internal inspection. A property in Collingham (Nottinghamshire) – 6 Westfield Lane – demonstrated evidence for a partial timber-frame that probably dated to before c 1550. During work in Wollaton (Nottinghamshire), the Admiral Rodney pub was found to contain a single timber-framed bay, at first floor level, which contained a bridging beam with a chamfer stop that might be expected during the early modern period (Hall 2005, 158-63). Directly behind the pub is another unlisted building – Middleton Cottage – which yielded an in-situ stone window surround with a cill dated from its mullion profile to the later sixteenth or earlier seventeenth century (Hall 2005, 72-74).
The evidence for the dating of these buildings, and therefore their historic significance, was not apparent from the roadside during the twentieth century listing surveys. It took internal assessments to understand that the properties were much older than previously understood. We can be reasonably certain that there are still many ancient buildings hidden in plain sight which await accurate identification.
Older or Younger?
Numerous surveys may have proven that some vernacular buildings are older than their listings indicate. Yet we must not overstate the potential for overturning existing estimates. Many other surveys have corroborated the listings. For example, work by Triskele Heritage in Haskayne (Lancashire) on a building listed as seventeenth century was able to further refine the period of construction to c 1630-60 on stylistic grounds.
Yet there is a class of building routinely estimated as far older than the evidence can verify: public houses. It is remarkably common to see ancient dates printed on pub signs. Examples of this include: Ye Olde Fighting Cocks (St Albans, Hertfordshire; 793), the Bingley Arms (Bardsey, West Yorkshire; 953) and Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem (Nottingham; 1189). Yet the real architectural dating of all three buildings is well-understood. Ye Olde Fighting Cocks started off life as a monastic dovecote, built c 1400, which was re-sited and turned into a house c 1600 and did not open its doors as a pub until c 1756. In Bardsey, the Bingley Arms is entirely a mid-eighteenth-century building – it even has a datestone of 1738. Finally, all of the Trip (including its famous caves) was constructed from the later seventeenth century onwards. There is a certain misty-eyed romanticism surrounding a pint in an old English boozer which has led to some rather tall tales being told about their dates of origin – a subject which has been covered in another Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog on the search for Britain’s oldest pubs.
Trip to Jerusalem, Nottingham. Picture Source: James Wright / Triskele Heritage.
Another group of historic buildings reckoned as being older than can be verified are those within the brochures of estate agents. To give an example, the Manor House at Chipping Norton (Oxfordshire) was listed for sale by Savills via Rightmove in February 2022 as being a fifteenth century building. This is despite dendrochronology, published in 2017, which gave felling dates for the primary structure as summer 1677, summer 1679 and spring 1680 – suggesting a single campaign of building between 1677 and 1680 (Alcock & Tyers 2017, 83).
Quite why pubs and estate agents habitually claim that buildings are older than they really are can only be speculated on…
Uploading Ongoing Research
Listed building descriptions can be accessed online. The various countries in the British Isles have their databases available to view: National Heritage List for England; Canmore (Scotland); Cadw (Wales); HERoNI (Northern Ireland); and the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (Ireland). Within England the process for updating listings, in the light of new research, is somewhat labyrinthine. Typographical errors can be altered by the minor amendments team. However, for anything more detailed an application must be submitted for a full amendment. Unfortunately, this is a slow process which is used sparingly. A colleague at Historic England recently stated that: “We are aware it is a bit cumbersome, but it’s a result of the legislation and legal status of listed buildings that any significant change needs to be signed off by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.” Consequently, listing descriptions often lag behind new research.
Listings are not the only port of call for understanding the dating of a building. Each county also has a historic environment record (HER) which is a database of heritage assets including listed and non-listed buildings. There is a statutory requirement for HERs to be staffed and maintained, usually by an employee of a local authority, and much (but not all) of their data is available via the Heritage Gateway website. This means that any new information on a building which comes to light (including survey reports, published articles, sources, images, mapping, archives etc.) can be added to the publicly accessible database. The entries are usually available for personal research, free of charge, either via the Heritage Gateway or through an in-person visit, but commercial requests (usually connected to planning applications) incur a fee to cover officer time. However, a colleague working as a HER Officer has also noted that: “All HERs are massively different, to get a clear handle you probably want to reach out to see how individual offices work.”
New research is also made available to the public via the Archaeology Data Service, OASIS or individual project websites or publications. Furthermore, the Vernacular Architecture Group maintain an annually updated list of buildings positively dated by dendrochronology which is free to access. The new volumes of Pevsner’s The Buildings of England are greatly expanded on their predecessors. The latest crop of editors are very diligent to ensure that recent research is incorporated. Finally, it is not widely appreciated that historic building reports often make their way into the public arena through local authority planning portals (associated with planning applications). These documents can offer a wealth of information about the current state of knowledge of a building and can be accessed freely online via local authority websites.
Ultimately, there is no one single repository of information on the dating of historic buildings and a researcher should always attempt to cast the net wide to ensure that the most up to date research is captured. In cases where there is no consensus, or where data is not forthcoming, contacting the HER Officer, county archaeology society, archives, or local civic society may open up further leads.
Conclusions
The age of a building has a great impact on assessments of its significance which can, in turn, effect planning decisions which are made about the future of the structure. If a building is inaccurately dated inappropriate interventions may be made due to a lack of understanding.
The specific dating of a property is not always an easy piece of information to access. Historic building listing descriptions are sometimes inaccurate. Online sources should always be authenticated against solid research and publication. Never trust anything on Wikipedia which does not have a citation – and, even then, check the sources for accuracy. Just because a website says that a building is seventeenth century does not mean that it necessarily is that date.
It is always worth doing the detective work to understand the age of a building – because there are lots of mediaeval buildings which are genuinely hidden in plain sight. Buildings archaeology and dendrochronology are the key to accurate dating.
References
Alcock, N. & Tyers, C., 2017, ‘Tree-ring Date Lists 2017’ in Vernacular Architecture Vol. 48. Vernacular Architecture Group / Taylor & Francis.
Hall, L., 2005, Period House Fixtures and Fittings, 1300-1900. Countryside Books. Newbury.
Hewett, C. A., 1980 (1997, ed.), English Historic Carpentry. Phillimore. Sussex.
Wheatley, H. B., 1956 (1980 ed.), Stow’s Survey of London. Everyman. New York.
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures on the subject of mediaeval building myths. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
In 1517, a flamboyant new gatehouse was under construction at Canterbury Cathedral. Built in a late-flowering example of the Perpendicular Gothic style, the Christchurch Gateway features twin turrets flanking a gate portal and every facet is decorated with panel tracery, armorials, and figure sculpture. In among this decorative exuberance is a carving of a woman… but this is no ordinary female. She is shown, emerging from foliage, unashamedly naked with her head and spine provocatively arched backward. Her breasts are prominently pushed forward and upwards. Meanwhile, her legs are spread wide, and her vulva is clearly and unapologetically on display. Her form is deliberately voluptuous, and her posture is explicitly sexual.
The sculpture has caused some red-faced discussion by modern commentators attempting to rectify the apparent pornographic content with the sacred context of the building. Lauren MacDougall of Kent Live concluded that “It doesn’t feel very Christian” and went on to note that: “The story goes that the church were trying to get out of paying what was due the stonemason… He finally accepted a payment lower than what was originally agreed, but got his revenge by putting in this rude carving.”
Canterbury is far from alone in housing such naughty imagery. At Norwich Cathedral the bosses of the rib vaulted cloisters feature religious scenes such as the Crucifixion, Christ’s Ascension and Mary the Queen of Heaven. Elsewhere, there are more earthly moments including a pair of raucous musicians, a group of gossiping townsfolk and a feast. However, dotted among these images of heaven and earth are altogether more disturbing views. A nude man disappears into foliage, a bearded fellow is openly presenting his bare posterior and a half-naked man is ripping at the clothing of a maligned woman.
It is not just cathedrals either. So many parish churches have figures engaged in all manner of grotesque behaviour. At Wiggenhall (Norfolk) a gargoyle has a visibly erect penis. At West Knoyle (Wiltshire) a monstrous chap is licking his own testes. Meanwhile, at Ewerby (Lincolnshire) a gurning man appears to be masturbating.
Man ripping at a woman’s clothing, Norwich Cathedral (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Speculation
In a self-published book, Demon Carvers and Mooning Men: The East Midlands School of Church Carving, Lionel Ward follows Lauren MacDougall’s misgivings about such imagery in a sacred context: “Why… would a church pay for this work? Well, the answer is that I don’t think they knowingly did. It is well known that the master mason would often be paid a fixed price for the whole job, even sometimes to include procuring the stone. If the master had labour being freed up towards the end of a project he could easily put men to decorative work. All the evidence is that it was mediaeval practice throughout the land to give the masons a free hand on decorative carving.”
Elsewhere, regular posts on social media forums such as the Medieval and Tudor Period Buildings Group draw attention to the plethora of scandalous images found in ecclesiastical architecture. Speculation on how naughty carvings came to exist inevitably follows. Many draw attention to the widespread story of the disgruntled stonemason who had not been paid properly taking sculptural revenge. Others point to the “well-known anti-establishment views” of craftspeople, masonic humour, pornographic intent and possibly even the survival of pagan fertility cults throughout the mediaeval period.
Sheela-na-gig
The latter is commonly assumed to be true. However, there is little-to-no evidence of genuine pagan beliefs during the high mediaeval period, outside of very limited areas on the extreme edge of north-eastern Europe. Reference is inevitably be made of the famous sheela-na-gig carvings of female forms which hold open exaggerated vulva. Candy Bedworth has asked if “Sheela Na Gig is generally believed to be a pre-Christian deity or fertility symbol… Is this the Earth goddess who both births us, and then takes us in death? The figures are often depicted in a birthing position. There are suggestions that they are a folklore talisman used for promoting a successful birth. They may have been comical in-jokes by stone-masons, or a magical protection used to scare away evil. Are these the last defiant images, left as a reminder of the power of women? Power stolen by the misogynist politics of the Christian Church?”
Sheela-na-gig from Easthorpe; now at Colchester Castle Museum, Essex (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
However, as the historian Francis Young has noted: “The Romantic notion of paganism as a cult of conscious resistance to institutional Christianity is not a meaningful idea in the context of the Middle Ages themselves.” Despite this, the sheela is certainly a contentious image which has given church authorities cause for ethical rumination. During the early twentieth century, the vicar of Easthorpe (Essex) removed one such carving, and donated it to the Colchester Castle Museum, as he thought it too obscene to keep in the church. Meanwhile in an essay on sheelas, the pseudonymous author, Nora Bone referred to the motif as “the undefinable terror twat” due to the mystery and moral panic that it is capable of provoking among excitable and prudish parishioners. However, these sculptures cannot be described as pornographic as they are far from titillating or arousing.
A more measured view has been taken by Theresa Oakley. She offers us a mediaeval context in which to view sheela-na-gig imagery and points out that they may be material evidence of a form of Christian theology known as negative mysticism: “which consciously employed a strategy of disarrangement as a way of finding God… to find God, therefore, one has to enter darkness. This is a darkness caused by excessively blinding light, a darkness of deep knowledge rather than of ignorance” (Oakley 2009, 65). Essentially, the further from the sanctified, the better the chance of finding salvation and redemption. In Biblical terms, this is the equivalent of Jesus heading to the desert to fast for 40 days and 40 nights prior to his temptation by the devil. Notably, he apparently came back from the nadir stronger and even more convinced of his message to the world (The New Testament – Matthew, Chapter 4: Verses 4-11).
Oakley (2009, 84) goes on to state that: “sheelas are part of the sacred. They alert us to that which cannot be seen and hide a complexity of meaning which cannot be accessed by the limited view that they are fertility symbols, images of lust, or were intended to scare off the devil.” So, if it is possible to find the spiritual in the very antitheses of Christian imagery, can this help us to explain why highly sexualised artwork was so very popular in the sexually repressed mediaeval church run by (allegedly) celibate clerics?
Popularity
Man exposing himself at All Saints Hereford (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Most church buildings probably had at least one example of sexual imagery, and some had many. Not all survive, but there is still no shortage of examples spanning the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. There is a man clutching his toes and presenting an exaggerated anus at Easton-on-the-Hill (Northamptonshire). Another man is simultaneously dancing and masturbating at Bratton Clovelly (Devon). The example of the lad exposing his genitals, by lifting his legs far above his head, at All Saints Hereford became an internet viral sensation in 2021.
Was the church aware of the proliferation of such carvings? Are we to believe Oakley’s assertion that sexual sculptures were part of a now-obscure branch of Christian thinking? Is it not the case that the prosaic explanation that they were the result of crafts-people peeved at their treatment by the church more likely?
Well, most of these figures are highly visible and would have been even more so when they were still brightly painted during the mediaeval period. Yet there is not a single archival reference to a complaint or court case involving a resentful stonemason who was prosecuted for carving such an image. Given that the Catholic church was (and remains) notoriously litigious, this lack of evidence for legal cases against such frequent imagery stretches the story of the angered mason to breaking point.
Mediaeval Artistic Commissions
Vaulting boss featuring a naked man in foliage at Norwich Cathedral (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Sexual imagery must be put into the wider context of how artwork was patronised and commissioned by the church in mediaeval Europe. During the Second Council of Nicea, in 787, it was decreed that: “the composition of religious pictures is not left to the inspiration of artists, but depends on the principles laid down by the Catholic Church and religious tradition. Art alone is the painter’s province, the composition belongs to the Fathers.” This meant that the church’s own people picked the themes which were to be represented in their buildings. Artists were left with narrow parameters in which they could express themselves according to the media of their chosen trade.
This eighth century practice was still alive and well, in 1306, when Ralph Baldock, the bishop of London, ordered the prior of Holy Trinity Aldgate to lead an enquiry as: “We have heard on trustworthy authority that one Tidemann of Germany hath sold, some time since, to Geoffrey, Rector of St. Mildred’s in the Poultry, a certain carved crucifix with a cross-beam, which doth not represent the true form of the cross” (Coulton 1956, 473). Here, a German merchant had sold a non-conformist representation of the Crucifixion that was causing some alarm for the authorities. The church duly sprang into action – it was not going to stand by and let something like that be placed within one of its buildings. So, if a carving of the Cross could provoke such a response, why do we never hear of outrage by clerics at apparently pornographic carvings in their buildings – many of which were in plain sight?
Licence and Encouragement
The answer to the last question is probably that there were no complaints. Sexual imagery was liberally and gladly patronised by the mediaeval church. The notions that stonemasons were knocking out last-minute rude carvings because there was a bit of money left over in a project; that they were anti-establishment members of a covert pagan fertility cult; or that they had been diddled out of wages, just do not stack up.
Doorway to the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Sculpture was (and remains) expensive. In the mid-1250s, the sum of 53s 4d was paid out, probably to the master mason William Yxeworth, for two life-sized statues of Mary and the Archangel Gabriel at the Annunciation. They still stand in the spandrels above the door into the chapter house of Westminster Abbey. At this period, a master mason might expect to be making somewhere around £10 per annum and those two statues would have constituted around 25% of Yxeworth’s annual income (Lethaby 1906, 155). Although most sexual imagery is not of the same size and intricacy as the Westminster statues, it does still represent a significant investment in time, labour, and materials. These pieces were not created rapidly or in secret. They were deliberate commissions.
Functions Within Churches
We’ve already seen that sheela-na-gig sculptures have been linked to negative mysticism and may have been part of an intangible spirituality. There is no reason why similar notions cannot be applied to other sexual sculptures. Equally, there may be further explanations that can be proposed in certain cases.
St Michael the Archangel, Laxton, Nottinghamshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
The village of Laxton (Nottinghamshire) is famous for its substantial motte and bailey castle, and for being the last manor in Europe to be farmed on mediaeval open field principles. It also has a very fine fifteenth century parish church dedicated to St Michael the Archangel. Between the clerestory and the parapet of the north elevation of the nave is a cornice dotted with seven grotesque carvings. The fourth from the west is perhaps my favourite sculpture from the entire mediaeval period.
The carving is of a demon with an oversized head featuring pointed ears, a bulbous nose and distended brow ridges. Its clawed fingers are pulling open the centrepiece of the sculpture – a wide mouth… and a figure lies within it. The individual is, unequivocally, a male figure shown from the waist down and from behind. He is bending over and parting his bum cheeks with his hands to reveal his open sphincter, a pendulous pair of testicles and an engorged member. Subtle, it is not!
Carving of a demon consuming a naked man at St Michael the Archangel, Laxton, Nottinghamshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
The Laxton demon is a variation of a type of carving known as a “mouth-puller”, in which the figure hooks its fingers or claws into the corners of its mouth to open it widely. Alex Woodcock (2012, 34) has noted that interpretation of “mouth-pullers” varies. Some could be the pained expressions of one suffering toothache. Others may be connected to personifications of the vices, such as lust or anger. Anthony Weir and James Jerman (1986, 102) thought that they were a visual reference specifically connected to lust and adultery as mentioned in a passage of the book of Isiah: “But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore. Against whom do ye sport yourselves? Against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue? Are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood. Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the cliffs of the rocks?” (The Old Testament – Isiah, Chapter 57: Verses 3-5).
The motif could be read as a visual warning to parishioners not to behave like the adulterous pagans in Isiah. Similarly, another common mediaeval sculptural motif was the wild man. He was frequently depicted as a very hairy human with long hair, beard and a club, and represented the uncivilised barbarism that should be avoided by the chivalrous and the godly (Hayman 2010, 11). Mouth-pullers, wild men and carnal or scatological nudes were perhaps part of a normal sculptural tradition to show the reverse of what was expected of the virtuous Christian in sculpture. Here, negative mysticism may meet moral teachings.
Wild men flanking an armorial on a chimneypiece frieze at Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Other examples of “mouth-pullers” are known, regionally, at Clifton (Nottinghamshire) and Oakam (Rutland) but neither of these feature a naked man within the mouth. Remarkably, the Laxton sculpture faces directly onto the main village street and is highly visible. The fact that the demon seems to be consuming the naked man is reminiscent of the Mouth of Hell – an essential image in Doom paintings.
This scene was familiar to mediaeval folk as commonly illustrated over the chancel arch in churches. Surviving examples can be seen at Stratford-upon-Avon (Warwickshire), Salisbury (Wiltshire) and Coventry (West Midlands). The image of sinners being consumed by demons or in the fires of Hell may have acted as a moral warning: do not engage in licentious behaviour or you will be sent to Hell for all eternity (Woodcock 2012, 36).
Doom painting at St Thomas, Salisbury, Wiltshire. Note the Mouth of Hell in the bottom right corner. (Credit: Nessino / Wikimedia Commons)
Satirical Comedy
So far, the elephant in the room has been humour. In fact, humour is altogether absent from most po-faced academic literature on the subject. Instead, many sculptures, including the Laxton carving, could be described as extremely funny. To the rakish or scatological person, the mooning man at Cottesmore (Rutland), the exhibitionist grasping his testicles in both hands with a tongue lolling out at Colsterworth (Lincolnshire), and the man licking his own sphincter on the soffit of the tie beam at Stoke Golding (Leicestershire) are absolutely hilarious.
Man licking his sphincter on the soffit of a tie beam at St Margaret, Stoke Golding, Leicestershire (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Much mediaeval humour was very earthy, and this kind of visual imagery should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer:
“This Nicholas was risen for to pisse, And thoughte he wolde amenden al the jape; He sholde kisse his ers er that he scape. And up the wyndowe dide he hastily; And out his ers he putteth pryvely Over the buttok, to the haunche-bon”
Which can be translated as:
“This Nicholas had risen for a piss, And thought that it would carry on the jape To have his arse kissed by this jack-a-nape. And so he opened the window hastily, And put his arse out there, quietly, Over the buttocks, showing the whole bum”
Illustration of Robin the Miller, from The Miller’s Tale, playing bagpipes (Credit: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery / Wikimedia Commons)
Humorous, Chaucerian, imagery in churches could have acted as a soft conduit between the pulpit and the populace. Rather than hectoring parishioners in the nave, priests sanctioned the use of ribald imagery such as the Laxton carving. This imagery helped to instil mockery at the man misbehaving in the street whilst also gently warning that there could be punishment ahead in the afterlife. Satire has always been a powerful medium for diffusing serious abuses.
Conclusions
Although the story of the disgruntled stonemason, that carved rude sculptures to get one over on the church authorities, is extremely popular it is not based on verifiable evidence from the mediaeval world. The tale is perhaps predicated on three elements. Firstly, a lack of understanding at just how common sexual imagery was in the mediaeval church. Secondly, a lack of mediaeval theological and cultural context. Thirdly, assumptions of morality based on Victorian and modern concepts.
The fact that highly visible, carnal sculpture was so abundant in the mediaeval world can be coupled to a distinct lack of legal prosecutions brought against stonemasons and carpenters. This in itself acts as a significant piece of evidence that the imagery was sanctioned. Meanwhile, we have access to many actual edicts by the church which indicated that they monitored the content of artwork very closely indeed.
Naked man in the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral (Credit: James Wright / Triskele Heritage)
Instead, we must look to what functions such imagery played within the mediaeval church. Sexual motifs may have been related to negative mysticism and a sense of intangible spirituality – taking the viewer to a dark place to find the true light of Christianity. The sculptures could act as moral warnings – expressions of how not to behave. Equally, the use of satirical humour has always had a great strength in undermining behaviour: “Blimey! That carving of the naked man up there doesn’t half remind me of what happened after Old Baldrick drank all that strong ale! What a plonker!”
As ever, the mediaeval mind was extremely complex, and images could work on several levels at once. We must be careful not to bring modern morality to bear on mediaeval subject matter. As L. P. Hartley (The Go-Between, 1953) memorably stated: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
Postscript
Whilst compiling this article, it occurred to me that all of the cited sculptures lie within either Grade II* or Grade I listed buildings. The very fact that such carvings survive will be a strong part of the assessment of significance for these buildings. Rude imagery has literally helped to protect these structures!
Bone, N. [pseudonym], 1998, ‘Sheela-na-gigs’ in Towards 2012. Unlimited Dream Company.
Coulton, G. G., 1956, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
Hartley, L. P., 1953, The Go-Between, Hamish Hamilton. London.
Hayman, R., 2010, The Green Man, Shire. Oxford.
Lethaby, W. R., 1906, Westminster Abbey & the King’s Craftsmen : A Study of Mediaeval Building. Duckworth. London.
Oakley, T., 2009, Lifting the Veil: A New Study of the Sheela-Na-Gigs of Britain and Ireland. British Archaeological Reports Series 495. Archeopress. Oxford.
Wall, L., no date, Demon Carvers and Mooning Men: The East Midlands School of Church Carving. Self-published ebook.
Weir, A. & Jerman, J., 1986 (1993 edition), Images of Lust – Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches. Routledge. London.
Woodcock, A., 2012, Gargoyles and Grotesques. Shire. Botley.
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures about mediaeval building myths. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
This article is a guest post for History Extra. A big thanks to Elinor Evans for commissioning the piece. The text can be found by clicking the link below :
James Wright (Triskele Heritage) is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who frequently writes and lectures on the subject of mediaeval building myths. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
The universal appeal of secret passage stories has led to rumours that the undersides of entire townscapes including Exeter, Northampton, Peterborough, Newark, Shrewsbury, Carmarthen, Dublin, Norwich, Sheffield, Knaresborough and Edinburgh are absolutely littered with secret tunnels connecting a myriad of buildings. There does not seem to be a corner of the British Isles which does not have tunnel folklore attached to it – literally every hamlet, village, town and city can provide an example of the genre.
We have already covered two such stories on this blog. Initially, we tackled reports of a secret passage between a mediaeval priory and manor house at Stone (Staffordshire). Latterly, we interrogated the recent discovery of an underground feature at Tintern (Monmouthshire). At the risk of becoming ‘that secret passages blog’ (which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing – we’ll almost certainly return to the subject again), I shall be collaborating on this post with my dear friend Sophie Garrett, an avid local historian and photographer, to look at claims relating to subterranean Guildford.
Guildford: A Honeycombed Town?
First settled in the early mediaeval period, Guildford occupies a strategic position at a narrow gap in the North Downs. The River Wey flows through this gap, and while the initial settlement would have been based near the banks of the river, rapid expansion during the mediaeval period created a compact town centred upon the lower slopes of the North Downs ridge.
The geology of Guildford is complex – the town is spread across bands of chalk, gravel, sandstone and London Clay, along with superficial silt and sand deposits – but the majority of the historic centre stands upon solid chalk, and it is this very material which has spawned so many of the myths surrounding the subterranean world of the town.
In common with many parts of the North Downs, the landscape around Guildford is pitted with chalk quarries. Towering cliffs of white chalk invite the passer-by to consider the fact that our ancestors were prone to excavating this landscape. Meanwhile, the hilly topography and firm bedrock of the town centre invites questions of what may lie beneath.
True to expectations, there is genuine evidence of underground chalk quarrying on the fringes of the historic town centre. Guildford has an extensive system of mediaeval quarries at Racks Close and there are also later excavations at Foxenden Quarry (which were converted into air raid shelters during the Second World War). Both sites have been well documented, and while the quarry tunnels are extensive, they are not as wide-ranging as local tales would have us believe. Nor do they connect up with any kind of interlinked system of secret passageways beneath the town – as commenters on social media often claim.
Racks Close quarry cliff face (Picture Source: Sophie Garrett)
Comprehensive maps, made in 1871, show the relatively limited extent of the Racks Close quarry tunnels, as well as their footprint beneath the surface, but speculation continues. There has been no public access to Racks Close since the Second World War and, since 2008, the entrance has been sealed with concrete and buried beneath undergrowth. However, despite the known history, both of the genuine quarry excavations in the town (and a host of entirely imaginary tunnels) have been variously explained as relating to escape routes from the castle, passages to assist the movements of persecuted Catholic priests and the transportation of prisoners, shelters from invading forces, ‘pilgrim tunnels’, smuggler’s delvings, shortcuts to the local pubs, a quick route for delivery of cordite from Chilworth gunpowder mills (as the river was ‘too slow’), easy access to King John’s wine cellars, and, most colourfully of all, routes to allow the mistresses of the aristocracy to visit their paramours!
Interpretative map from 1871 showing the relationship between Racks Close and Guildford Castle
The castle has been intimately linked to Racks Close in the popular imagination. However, whilst the castle keep is located relatively near to the tunnel entrance (around 140m as the crow flies), the entrance is located outside the castle walls. There is no evidence of an underground link between the tunnels and the castle grounds. The tunnels themselves are at a datum level over 50 metres below the castle’s great tower and they do not even come close to extending beneath it.
Another common focus of discussion is the historic High Street itself. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the firm clunch chalk from the Racks Close quarry was used in the construction of undercrofts or cellars beneath the buildings. As semi-basement spaces, these undercrofts were used as merchants shops and two well-preserved examples remain beneath numbers 72/74 and 91 (the Angel Hotel) on opposite sides of the High Street. While they undoubtedly have a mysterious atmosphere – with the Angel Hotel undercroft frequently being mischaracterised as a ‘crypt’ – there is no evidence of these spaces having been interlinked by any form of passageway beneath the street.
Angel Hotel, High Street, Guildford (Picture Source: Sophie Garrett)
Despite this, one of the more frequent myths surrounding the town is that of ‘tunnels beneath the High Street’. The origin of these myths is clear to see: in addition to the undercrofts and a subterranean space beneath numbers 50-52 which is believed to be the remains of a 12th Century Jewish Torah reading room, several of the High Street shops do indeed have cellars which extend beyond the shop front and beneath the pavement. Undoubtedly many of the High Street buildings would also have had coal holes, although sadly very few of these remain visible on the surface, with most having disappeared beneath the modern paving slabs.
Reports are plentiful from residents who have worked in the shops on the High Street and remember seeing ‘blocked-up doorways’ or ‘dark, barred passageways’ heading beneath the street. Some have even gone so far as to claim that they’ve heard of ‘a whole street’ running beneath the High Street with road signs on the walls: ‘even a square with a market cross’. However, despite archaeological investigation of many of these cellars, renovation work on buildings, and regular excavation of the High Street itself over the decades – including extensive works in 2016, during which the cobbling was relaid and drainage system replaced – no evidence has ever been found of tunnels crossing beneath the famous setts.
While discussion of secret tunnels has simmered on social media over the years, it was truly reignited in early 2020 with the discovery of a mediaeval cave shrine at St Catherine’s Chapel, 1km to the south of the town centre. St Catherine’s lies upon different underlying geology. The soft sandstone of the hill lends itself to natural weathering, and the ground is pitted with an assortment of nooks, crannies and shallow caves, giving a rather ‘Swiss Cheese’-like impression to the passer-by. While some of these caves are deep enough to climb into, only the cave revealed by the 2020 landslip has been confirmed to be of man-made origin. Yet even the caves of St Catherine’s aren’t immune to the powers of urban myth, with one social media commenter memorably asserting that they are part of a 6 kilometre cordite-transportation tunnel all the way from Chilworth Gunpowder Mills to Guildford town centre.
St Catherine’s Hill (Picture Source: Sophie Garrett)
A Voice of Reason
The threads of Guildford’s discussion forums are punctuated with the knowledgeable commentary of Philip Hutchinson – a dedicated local historian, author and the custodian of Guildford Castle. Philip has relentlessly articulated that the reality of subterranean Guildford is rather less romantic than many of the stories seem to indicate. Along with the features mentioned above, other verified ‘tunnel-like’ features in the town include former public toilets, a Victorian ice-house vaults beneath Quarry Street which are now in use as a Millennium time capsule, and a very short overground passage (more of a covered alleyway) leading between the Guildhall and the former police station on North Street.
Millennium time capsule vaults under Quarry Street, Guildford (Picture Source: Sophie Garrett)
Despite these rather mundane realities, many still remain beguiled by the potential for lengthy underground secret passages. The most protracted of these is a supposed tunnel stretching between the early seventeenth century Abbott’s Hospital and the greensand mines known as the Smuggler’s Storehouses at Compton. This proposed passage would be approximately 4.6 miles (7.5 kilometres) long and would have to drop around 50 metres in contour to be driven beneath the River Wey before rising to a similar height on the opposite side of the valley. The impracticality of such a construction project is staggering. Why would such a tunnel actually be required? How would such a vast construction project be kept secret? Where would the spoil be put? How would the passage be maintained, ventilated and kept dry? How on earth would pre-modern engineers have managed to tunnel beneath the River Wey to drive a passage to Compton – almost five miles away – on the other side of the river?
Regardless of such critique, some remain puzzlingly belligerent in the face of the sheer unlikely nature of the tales. One user of a discussion forum stated outright that: ‘Many experts have unfortunately a linear way of thinking… Experts believe they are never wrong and don’t like it when they are.’ Shades of Michael Gove’s now-infamous (and debunked) anti-intellectual statement here.
Philip Hutchinson may have a tough time of firefighting secret passage stories, but he was still keen to discuss the legends of Guildford tunnels when contacted during the summer of 2020. He related that ‘Guildford owes much of its historical flaws to the historian and eventual honorary ‘Town Remembrancer’, George Williamson’, going on to say that, ‘He was a prolific author on the history of Guildford and a great deal of his writings were fanciful to say the least. With no accurate records to rely on, and in an era where the romantic always triumphed over the factual, the legends were printed as fact in the absence of anything tangible.’
Indeed, this could not be shown more clearly than in the popular legend of “King John’s Wine Cellars” which can only be traced back as far as Williamson’s 1930 book The Guildford Caverns. Williamson devoted an extensive section to historic records of wine being transported to and stored at Guildford Castle, asserting that the thirteenth century cellars – reportedly being located ‘near’ to the castle rather than directly beneath it – were surely the quarry tunnels at Rack’s Close. However, precedents from contemporary sites including Clarendon Palace (Wiltshire) would suggest that it would certainly be safer and more convenient to locate these cellars within the castle walls rather than outside them. Wine was, after all, a very valuable commodity.
Guildford Castle Arch (Picture Source: Sophie Garrett)
With the Rack’s Close quarry being the only known subterranean space near to the castle, it is easy to see how Williamson may have leapt to his conclusion at the time of writing. However, investigation of the castle grounds in more recent years has provided a reality check: excavations in 1993 uncovered the remains of a vaulted thirteenth century chamber beneath Castle Cliffe Gardens, just inside Castle Arch. This, rather than the quarry tunnels, is now believed to be the wine cellar of legend.
This particularly boozy myth is not the only one to arise from Williamson’s book. During a section on the Great War he recounted that it was ‘suggested’ that the Rack’s Close quarry tunnels might have been used for the storage of munitions. He stated that a tunnel ‘might be made from the Northern side of the Hog’s Back to connect at a level with the caves and bring them into practical use’ (Williamson 1930, 18). Needless to say, this proposed tunnel – which would have had to descend from the ridge of the Hog’s Back, dip beneath the soft silt of River Wey, and travel 2km to rise again to reach the level of the quarry on the other side of the valley – never came to fruition. However, the myths of secret passageways connecting the castle to places on the other side of the river valley persist to this day.
A Family Affair
Tunnel stories are not rare, but the vast majority are reported second hand. It is very rare for the person that claimed to have found a genuine secret passage to be the one who reported it alongside hard evidence. Anecdotal reports of discoveries include: ‘a neighbour recalled seeing some form of tunnel in the garden of an adjacent house’ which apparently linked a mediaeval house to a priory a quarter of a mile away. Family members and those close to us play an incredibly strong role in the transmission of such stories – examples of this include the report of: ‘my sister’s friend’ having discovered a tunnel which allegedly connected a Hertfordshire house to a castle; or of a West Midlands tunnel said to run between two manor houses which: ‘According to my nan, there was an entrance, since collapsed, in her garden.’ Hutchinson has noted that these types of tales are ‘firmly adhered to by certain proponents who appear to value their archaic family stories over fact: “Grandad couldn’t be wrong – how dare you!”’
One of the great issues with such accounts is that they are not from primary sources and are usually given a long time after the proposed events. There is a distance in time prior to the repetition of the story that is repeatedly encompassed by phrases such as: ‘someone that I know has a memory of playing in the tunnel as a child’ or ‘someone who lived there as a child remembered walking along part of it’. The great cataloguer of secret passages, Jeremy Errand, noted that: ‘The existence of many passages is vouched for only by the memories of boyhood exploration’ (Errand 1974, 105). This takes us right back into an age of frolicking innocence as opposed to sound archaeological evidence.
Buildings Archaeology
Buildings archaeology is key here. The discipline relies upon the careful observation, recording and assessment of the physical remains of material culture which are considered alongside documentary sources (where available). While documentary evidence does exist of the genuine subterranean spaces mentioned above, none of the multitude of other stories of tunnels wandering between various landmarks around Guildford can be seriously authenticated through reference to hard evidence.
It is completely accepted that underground structures do exist in many settlements. However, when the reality of a tunnels is tested, it usually proves to be extremely practical. A number of supposed secret passages have been investigated in Eastbourne (East Sussex) by archaeologist Jo Seaman. He found their origins to be variously a coal bunker, privy shafts, drains and a merchant’s cellar. Investigative work at other towns including Taunton and Frome (Somerset) have very much aligned with Seaman’s prosaic findings and include rediscoveries of wells, ice houses and public toilets rather than secret passages.
Post-mediaeval service tunnel between the kitchen tower and great tower at Ashby Castle (Leicestershire)
In many cases historic tunnels provide access for the movement of goods. A short, brick-lined, post-mediaeval service tunnel connects the kitchen block to the great tower at Ashby Castle (Leicestershire). A similar tunnel allowed access to the kitchens at Wardour Castle (Wiltshire). At Wollaton Hall (Nottinghamshire) a rock-cut tunnel connects the wine cellars to a natural spring. Equally prosaic are the multitude of cellars, dwellings, malt kilns, tanneries, storage spaces, wells, drains and cisterns cut into the sandstone beneath many buildings in Nottingham (Waltham 1992). Some of the Nottingham caves started off as sand mines – analogous with some of the delvings noted at Guildford or elsewhere at Little Thurrock (Essex) where mediaeval chalk mines (known as deneholes) survive (Clayton 2015, 13).
If more exciting origins for subterranean passages are truly required, then the dedicated tunnel-hunter might look towards the archaeological evidence of mines excavated during the 1174 siege of Bungay Castle (Suffolk) and 1216 siege of Dover Castle (Kent). Most impressive of all is the extant mine and break-through of a defensive countermine from the 1547 siege of St Andrew’s Castle (Fife) (Wiggins 2003, 13-16, 26-28).
Myth vs Reality in the Age of Social Media
In summary, many ‘secret underground passageway’ myths are not without some kind of basis in fact. In Guildford, the quarry tunnels at Racks Close do exist. Many shops do indeed have small cellars which extend beneath the pavement of the High Street. St Catherine’s Hill is indeed pockmarked by small caves and crevices. It is an established fact that there are plenty of subterranean spaces in Guildford: quarry tunnels, caves, cellars, drains, wells, vaults and ice houses. Practical, useful spaces.
However, decades of imagination, word of mouth, schooldays tales and the more recent advent of social media have enabled these features to grow, beyond their rather mundane reality, into the realm of urban myth. Quarry tunnels, limited in their extent, become secret escape routes from the castle. Cellars become subterranean passageways. And in a town so interlinked by a fantastical network of underground pathways, why shouldn’t there be one connecting a pub with the church down the road, or providing a shortcut to the nearest golf course?
Ultimately, an element of reality has to be injected into proceedings. Why would the king store his wine in a still-operational quarry when ample money and resources were available to construct a dedicated cellar within the security of the castle walls? Why would a town need an entire shopping street beneath the High Street (complete with a market cross!) when plenty of space was available to construct one above ground? Why would these tunnels have been constructed and maintained? Would it have been worth all the effort?
In this age of social media, it is all too easy for rumors such as these to take flight, bypass urban myth status entirely, and become fully-fledged ‘alternative facts’.
References
Clayton, A., 2015, Secret Tunnels of England: Folklore and Fact. Accumulator Press. London, Hastings & Cosmopli.
Errand, J., Secret Passages and Hiding Places. David & Charles. London.
Waltham, T., 1992 (2018 edition), Sandstone Caves of Nottingham. East Midlands Geological Society. Nottingham.
Wiggins, K., 2003, Siege Mines and Underground Warfare. Shire. Princes Risborough.
Williamson, G., 1930, The Guildford Caverns. Woodbridge Press. Guildford.
About the authors
Sophie Garrett is a Guildford resident of 20 years and a keen local historian, with a particular interest in the evolution of urban myth in the age of social media.
James Wright is an award-winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
‘Have to say the romantic in me was disappointed that the castle is no longer there.’
‘I would not recommend going out of your way to visit it.’
‘What we call the castle now, actually isn’t’
‘…the poor excuse for a castle’
‘I hate the building inside’
‘…not much history is attached to this place.’
‘…found the whole place boring and disappointing.’
‘I hate the fact that there is a Georgian manor inside now’
‘…bit of me wishes that it had been demolished and replaced with a facsimile medieval castle.’
These are all actual quotes about Nottingham Castle harvested from online comment sections. OUCH. Feel that burn.
Now, I should start this post with a disclaimer – a registered interest, if you like. I am a buildings archaeologist. My primary field of research is mediaeval castles. I also live in Nottingham. On top of this I’ve worked at Nottingham Castle as both a conservation stonemason and as a historic stone specialist. I may have also written a book about the Castles of Nottinghamshire. Ultimately, Nottingham is my hometown castle and I genuinely have a lot of love for the place. I am also so pleased to see the site reopening, on Monday 21 June 2021, after the £29.4 million Nottingham Castle transformation project!
However, whenever I (unwisely) step into the bottom half of the internet and read comments about the site (from locals and visitors alike) the castle seems to get a lot of vitriol slung at it. More so than any other castle that I can think of. Which in itself is curious. In this article I want to think about the history of the site, consider why people seem to feel so strongly about their experiences at Nottingham Castle and offer a defence of the dear old place.
The seventeenth century ducal palace
‘A Place Full Royal’
Nottingham Castle stands on the summit of a rock outcrop to the west of the city centre which is famously riddled with artificial caves and tunnels. It was fortified, with earth and timber, for William the Conqueror during the winter of 1067/8 and was then kept by his henchmen, the Peveril family. They struggled to hold the castle for King Stephen during the ‘Anarchy’ and the site changed hands several times in the mid-twelfth century until it was eventually taken into direct royal control by Henry II. He spent a lot of time upgrading the site and rebuilding in stone.
By this point the castle consisted of a royal citadel (Upper Bailey) on the edge of the rock, a large enclosure to the north containing the chapel, kitchens and great hall (Middle Bailey), a third area to the east (Outer Bailey) lay close to the Norman Borough and a fourth enclosure stood further to the north. Meanwhile, a Brewhouse and mills lay on the banks of the River Leen, to the south, and a deer park lay to the west.
The Outer Bailey, featuring the new orientation centre for the castle
Subsequently, the castle had a rich, vibrant and exciting history. Richard I successfully besieged supporters of his brother, John, in March 1194 and hanged a number of them for resisting. To continue this theme, after inheriting the throne, John also hanged 28 Welsh hostages from the walls in 1212. His son, Henry III ordered major reorganisation of the castle – he was responsible for the surviving Outer Bailey walls, towers, gatehouse and bridge. Edward I also lavished large sums on the castle and his son, Edward II, spent many long visits at what was now a palatial fortress.
One of the most famous episodes in the castle’s history took place, in October 1330, when the young Edward III crept through a tunnel stretching between the deer park and the Middle Bailey. He did so to surprise and capture Roger Mortimer, the presumed lover of his mother, who had deposed his father. Later in his reign, Edward had the captured Scottish king David II imprisoned at Nottingham Castle after the battle of Neville’s Cross.
Mediaeval walls and tower of the Outer Bailey
The royal visits and lavish spending continued throughout the fourteenth century, until the castle was taken over by the Lancastrians in 1399. Henry IV witnessed a dual between two Frenchmen in 1407. However, for much of the fifteenth century the castle was under the control of appointed constables such as Ralph Lord Cromwell. That is until the Yorkist Edward IV took a personal interest in the site and instigated the last major mediaeval building project – Richard’s Tower with its elegant suite of apartments in the Middle Bailey – at a cost of £3000 between 1476-80. The poet John Skelton described the castle at this time as ‘a place full royal’. In 1485, Edward’s brother, Richard III, gathered his forces at Nottingham prior to marching out to his doom at Bosworth.
‘Decay and Ruin’
The Tudors had relatively little interest in Nottingham. They seldom travelled so far north and were more interested in their fashionable brick courtyard houses in the south-east. When the castle was surveyed in 1525 it was found to be in ‘decay and ruin’. Although some repairs were ordered, the rot continued throughout Elizabeth’s reign and the site was leased to the earl of Rutland in 1622 and earl of Newcastle in 1641.
On 22 August 1642 Charles I declared opened hostilities on Parliament and chose the old enclosure to the north of the castle to raise the Royal Standard and launch the British Civil Wars. However, by the autumn, the castle had been garrisoned by Parliament – eventually coming under the governorship of Colonel John Hutchinson. Despite the dilapidated state of the site, Hutchinson set about making it defensible and successfully held it against royalist raiding throughout the war. In 1651, the new commander, Major Poulton, lobbied the Council of State to slight the castle which led to near-wholesale demolition between July and November of that year.
East elevation of the Ducal Palace, built in the 1670s
‘A Stately Mansion’
After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the castle was purchased by William Cavendish, now duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He hired stonemason Samuel Marsh and embarked on a project, between 1674-9, to transform the site into an Italianate Ducal Palace, later described by the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘a stately mansion’.
Although later owners had largely abandoned the house by the nineteenth century, opposition to the extension of voting rights in the Reform Act of 1831 by the 4th duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme sparked a riot in Nottingham which left the castle a burned-out shell. The site was then used as a military parade ground until it was purchased by the local authority. Architect Thomas Hine was contracted to remodel the mansion, between 1875-8, as the first art gallery outside of London in public ownership. The castle remains in the possession of Nottingham City Council, who have recently appointed a trust to oversee, manage and run the site. Comprehensive renovation began in 2018 and the site reopened to the public in June 2021.
Unfortunate Comparisons
Given the incredible history of Nottingham Castle there is a real sense of loss – almost a trauma – that comes out as a visceral sense of injury, resentment and deficiency in people’s reactions to the site. For locals and visitors alike the site isn’t a “proper” castle. It doesn’t fit the popular image of a great mediaeval castle: towers, crenellations, dungeons, spiral stairs, portcullis, drawbridge or moat (although there is still surviving physical evidence for most of these).
When compared to Warwick, Bamburgh or Caernarfon the perception is that Nottingham doesn’t compete. From the exterior of the mediaeval Outer Bailey gatehouse the view looks promising but, on entering, the sense of disappointment weighs heavily for many visitors when confronted with a mansion house sitting in municipal gardens. Criticism of this building started early. Writing in the 1790s, the antiquarian John Throsby noted that: ‘as an object of admiration to the surrounding country, in union with the rock on which it stands, it falls very short of our wishes and expectation.’
Silhouette of Guy’s Tower, Warwick Castle
Yet Nottingham is not particularly rare in being a town or city lacking substantial remains of its mediaeval castle. Fifteen miles to the west is the city’s great rival – Derby – which had a motte and bailey castle that barely survived the Norman period. Similar stories played out in the county towns of Bedford, Buckingham, Ipswich and Stafford. The fenland castles at Peterborough, Ely, and Cambridge are now traced only by grassy mounds. Worcester, Leicester and Canterbury lasted longer, but only vestiges now remain. Elsewhere, Bolsover was taken down and rebuilt as a Renaissance pastiche of a castle in the early seventeenth century.
Many mediaeval castles suffered substantially during the British Civil Wars and only scant remains are left at sites including Bristol, Pontefract and Belvoir in Leicestershire. The latter was substantially remodelled in the sixteenth century, heavily damaged in the Civil Wars and comprehensively rebuilt as a Neo-Gothick mansion in the nineteenth century. Gloucester’s castle was lost beneath a prison. Northampton was swallowed beneath a rail station.
Losing a castle is not a rarity. So why do folk get so salty about the lack of mediaeval buildings at Nottingham?
The much-altered remains of the great hall at Leicester Castle
Outlaws of Sherwood
Distinct from all of the above, Nottingham Castle is one of the most renowned historic locations in the British Isles through its association with “Bad King John”, the wicked Sherriff of Nottingham and the heroic Robin Hood. The castle receives approximately 200,000 visitors every year – many of them hungry to explore the setting for the celebrated folklore of the greenwood outlaw. It is an intrinsic part of the world-famous legends of Sherwood Forest and, in the minds of many, the site doesn’t offer the expected levels of majestic romance portrayed on stage and screen.
Unlike the espousal of King Arthur’s mythic birthplace at Tintagel Castle (Cornwall) by English Heritage, there has been a historic resistance by Nottingham’s authorities towards effectively embracing the legendary associations of the castle. This is certainly changing, but throughout my lifetime Robin Hood has been kept strictly outside of the walls. Literally. His iconic statue is placed in what was once the castle boundary ditch. For over twenty years the principle city centre attraction linked to the outlaw – The Tales of Robin Hood – was a private enterprise which closed down over a decade ago. Inside the castle, the outlaw was largely absent from displays and interpretation. Materiality eclipsed intangible heritage. Was the Hooded Man just too flighty to be taken seriously in a formal museum setting?
Nottingham’s Robin Hood statue – located outside of the castle gates
If visitors flock to Nottingham expecting a sprawling mediaeval castle worthy of John, Robin and the Sherriff they are understandably disappointed. However, would they feel the same if confronted with picturesque ruins? There was once the potential for this. Daniel King’s view of Nottingham Castle, drawn after the slighting of the castle in 1660, showed upstanding mediaeval buildings. It is clear that these were cleared away prior to the construction of the Ducal Palace.
An Unwanted Palace?
Is there perhaps a sense of feeling cheated – particularly for the locals of Nottingham? A sense that if it weren’t for the construction of the mansion then there might have been something akin to Kenilworth Castle (which was also garrisoned and slighted during the Civil Wars) standing on Castle Rock? Try and visualise just how magnificent that would have looked. Imagine how impressed tourists would be. Contemplate the bursting pride that local people would feel. Ponder just how many hundreds of thousands more visitors would flock from all over the globe. Consider just how much more revenue would be generated…
The slighted ruins of Kenilworth Castle
For many people, the very act of building the Ducal Palace on the site of what had undoubtedly been one of the most spectacular castles of the mediaeval era adds an unbearably painful insult to an already excruciating injury. Yet compare this with the extensive destruction of Pontefract Castle in 1649 – there is nowhere near the levels of instinctive anguish over its loss – despite the fact that it was a demonstrably comparable site to Nottingham.
Aside from the lack of a legendary hero associated with the castle, Pontefract was not landscaped and rebuilt in an altogether new style. There was no perceived insult to the memory of the mediaeval castle where Richard II starved to death in the winter of 1400. There may be limited sorrow by local interest groups for the loss of castles like Pontefract or other royal palaces such as Woodstock (Oxfordshire), Langley (Hertfordshire) and Clarendon (Wiltshire) or occasional tutting about the destruction of monasteries during Henry VIII’s Reformation… but there just aren’t the same levels of collective outrage as expressed at Nottingham.
Pontefract Castle was also extensively demolished during the Civil Wars
Calls for the Ducal Palace to be itself demolished and replaced with a replica of the mediaeval castle occur online weekly if not daily. During the last decade there was even one ardent chap who used to regularly write letters in the Nottingham Post demanding this on behalf of the Nottingham 1485 Society (a mysterious, shadowy and secretive bunch who may or may not have comprised just a single member in the form of the compulsive letter writer).
The impracticalities of this are staggering. Aside from the fact that the entire complex is statutorily protected as a scheduled monument and the Ducal Palace is a grade I listed building – how on earth would such a project be funded? It’s difficult enough to raise money for the conservation of our existing historic building stock without adding to the problem. Where would all that stone come from? The Sherwood Sandstones and magnesian limestones of Mansfield are no longer extracted and reopening the quarries would be ruinously expensive. How about all of those mature oak trees needed for the floors, roof structures and timber-framing? Oak is a very pricey building material due to the rarity of 150-200 year old trees needed for construction. Which period of the castle’s history should the building be accurate to? Norman? Henry II? Henry III? Yorkist? Civil War? Additionally, what should the rooms be filled with?
The Ducal Palace during conservation work in 2018
The castle was an enormous complex of buildings and in the mediaeval period itinerant lordship means that most of the time it would have been largely empty. What would the purposes of such a rebuilding be in the 21st century? Would people really be interested in visiting such a pastiche instead of looking at the real thing at more complete castles at Alnwick, Dover or Stokesay? Is this just the wistful nostalgia of the Disney age without consideration of the cost and practicalities? I think it may be.
‘A major Baroque palace’
Which brings us round to finding new positive attitudes about what we do have surviving at Nottingham. Firstly, I will always remain an advocate for the architectural importance of the Ducal Palace. Not only is this Italianate palace a stunningly beautiful building, it is also exceptionally rare in this country. Compare it, for example, with William Talman’s design for the east elevation of Chatsworth House – which receives nothing less than worldwide acclaim. The baroque splendour of the Ducal Palace actually predates Chatsworth (it may have also been a model for the latter) and is located in a far more spectacular location.
It was also the catalyst for a tremendous spate of Neo-Classical construction throughout Nottingham in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. This fundamentally transformed the built environment of the town and included important buildings such as Newdigate House, St Nicholas’ parish church and Willoughby House. Yet it has only been in relatively recent times that architectural specialists have praised the quality of the building’s incredibly important design scheme with it being dubbed ‘a major Baroque palace’ in the pages of Country Life. Meanwhile, the historian Trevor Foulds concluded that: ‘It is an important feature in Nottingham’s cityscape with an honourable place in the city’s social and cultural history.’
Newdigate House on Castlegate – a direct contemporary of the Ducal Palace
Castle Museum & Art Gallery
The importance of the building goes beyond stone and mortar. Nottingham Castle offers a phenomenally important social history which reflects almost 400 years of turbulent class struggles. A new gallery, installed within the former service courtyard, will tell the history of rebellion in Nottingham. From the raising of Charles I’s standard at the castle which led inevitably to his fateful conflict with an incalcitrant Parliament, to the anti-establishment protestors of the Reform Act riots, to the opening of the house and grounds as a public gallery and park – Nottingham Castle has been a symbol of radical dissidence. In more recent years, that nonconformist air has been recaptured through the use of the site as a location for the film of Alan Sillitoe’s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a venue for David Walliams’ play Billionaire Boy and, until 2017, as the location of Nottingham’s beer festival.
However, take more than a casual glance at the castle grounds and the visitor will be well-rewarded with in situ mediaeval remains. The thirteenth century eastern and southern curtain wall and towers of the Outer Bailey are preserved to a great height. The outer gatehouse is a very rare survival from Henry III’s building campaigns and features original drum towers flanking a vaulted portal – with portcullis slots and arrow loops – that is approached over a mediaeval bridge. Internally, there are sections of the twelfth century Middle Bailey curtain walls along with the thirteenth century Black Tower. A former drawbridge, built for Henry II, once led into the Inner Bailey and still spans an impressively deep and wide mediaeval ditch. The footings of Richard’s Tower still survive at the base of Castle Rock (although remain in private ownership).
Remains of the twelfth century Middle Bridge and post-mediaeval Service Tunnel
At the very summit of the castle are the enigmatic rock-cut tunnels known as Romylowe’s Cave, King David’s Dungeon and Mortimer’s Hole. The latter stretches all the way down to Brewhouse Yard and may have been an access to the castle’s brewery situated where the world-famous Olde Trip To Jerusalem now stands. These inscrutable underground chambers are part of a network of hundreds of caves of which Nottingham is rightly famous for and guided tours of them are a genuine highlight for visitors. At a micro-level the museum contains some incredible artefacts such as an internationally significant collection of mediaeval alabaster sculptures.
More recently, archaeological fieldwork by Trent & Peak Archaeology has revealed traces of the mediaeval rock-cut ditch between the Upper and Middle Baileys. Work by Triskele Heritage identified the fragments of Edward IV’s carved chimneypieces and an Anglo-Scandinavian grave cover which actually predates the establishment of the castle. Nottingham Castle is a site that is still giving up its secrets.
A fragment of a late fifteenth century chimneypiece that may have originated in Richard’s Tower
Conclusions
The very fact that the mediaeval castle has almost vanished is a vastly significant historical moment. It was not normal practice to deliberately demolish castles to this extent. Typically, the architectural focus of the site – usually the great tower – was partially slighted and the rest of the castle asset stripped; as happened at Helmsley (North Yorkshire), Ashby (Leicestershire) and Raglan (Monmouthshire). The wholesale demolition of the castles proved to be immensely time consuming and ruinously expensive for a war-torn state that was in serious debt.
However, even in the seventeenth century opinions were divided as to what the motives for such complete destruction were. Lucy Hutchinson, wife of the former castle governor Colonel John Hutchinson, stated that the latter was alarmed at Oliver Cromwell’s high-handed behaviour and himself wished to remove the military potential posed by Nottingham. Major Poulton apparently lobbied the Council of State, in the absence of Cromwell, for the demolition – stating concerns over the castle falling into the hands of royalist insurgents. Meanwhile it was reported that Cromwell himself was ‘heartily vexed’ at the loss of the stronghold.
It seems probable that concerns over the strategic location versus the weakened strength of the fortress were coupled to an emblematic demolition of the site where Charles I raised his standard in 1642. Gone were both king and castle in a monumentally symbolic moment of unprecedented politically-charged obliteration. The story of the loss of the mediaeval castle is therefore staggeringly extraordinary and deserves more nuanced and deeper appreciation.
Dr Paul Johnson, who led excavations at the castle for Trent & Peak Archaeology, outlining the research on the castle to students from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Nottingham in 2016
The redevelopment of the castle is an opportunity to retell these stories in new and innovative ways. As future generations engage with the site it is hoped that they will potentially experience it in a far less negative manner. Ultimately the significance of the huge moments of history that the castle has witnessed far outweighs the loss of the physical mediaeval architecture. Equally, what does survive must be rightly celebrated and positive impressions of the Ducal Palace should be renewed.
I have a great love for Nottingham Castle and I hope that you will be able to experience that for yourself.
About the author
James Wright is an award-winning buildings archaeologist who runs Triskele Heritage. He first worked at Nottingham Castle as a conservation stonemason in the early 2000s and later went on to run the Castles of Nottinghamshire project. Latterly, James acted as a historic stone specialist and buildings archaeology consultant at Nottingham Castle for Trent & Peak Archaeology.
He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
