Herold, H. 2014, 'Review of Christie, N., Creighton, O., with Edgeworth, M. and Hamerow, H., Transforming Townscapes: From Burh to Borough: The Archaeology of Wallingford AD 800–1400, London: The Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2013' European Journal of Archaeology 17, 748–751. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The surviving ramparts of Wallingford Castle betoken a once formidable castle, ‘most securely fortified’, but almost nothing of its walls remain. Recent archaeological investigation, both non-invasive and invasive, has revealed rich stratigraphy, going back in places to the late Iron Age. A two-volume history of the town that made some use of documents to produce a useful narrative of town and castle was published in 1881. Even so, it fell far short of a narrative of the castle as both a local and a national institution and the roles it played through the centuries before its demolition, and gave virtually no account of its physical evolution as a fortress and residence. This paper attempts to make good both deficits by exploiting a range of medieval documents to reconstruct the stages of the castle’s evolution and its role in national affairs, as well as in the local economy, discussed respectively in the first two and the fourth sections of the article. The third section explores for the first time unpublished material, principally annual audits and building accounts, in order to understand the castle and its constituent buildings.
Archaeological Fieldwork at Norham and Ladykirk, 2012 - 2015.pdf
Flodden Legends and Legacy: The Findings of the Flodden 500 Projec, 2016
Fieldwork carried out at Ladykirk with the aim of deducing whether the Scottish army of James IV besieged Norham castle from the north side of the Tweed, or crossed the river to besiege it from the English side, has proved inconclusive. Although fieldwalking recovered good quantities of medieval pottery from a field south-east of Ladykirk church - itself reputedly built as a defensible structure by James IV at the turn of the 16th century – no indication of 16th century military activity was found during fieldwork, which included excavations, within and close to Ladykirk village itself. And while some ordnance of the late medieval period was found by metal detecting in fields almost opposite the castle on New Ladykirk grounds, geophysical anomalies explored by excavation there in September 2015 proved to be natural in origin. While inconclusive, the process of carrying out fieldwork at Ladykirk has helped to narrow down options for further enquiry and prompted discussion about the sort of (probably quite ephemeral) remains that would be expected to survive following use of 16th century artillery in the field. In particular, the site of an earthwork of presumed medieval date, overlooking the Tweed just over a kilometre from Norham Castle, is now thought a likely point from which the siege of the castle may have begun, while fording points for the army have been identified at the present bridge and close to the castle itself. Excavations carried out following geophysical survey on the south side of Norham Castle uncovered signs of later medieval and post-medieval activity there, suggesting that all or most of the current large pasture field there functioned, from as early as the 12th or 13th century, as a kind of outer ward of the castle, perhaps brought into use during periods of intense military activity or preparation. Areas of metal-working and, potentially, temporary settlement were identified in the central part of this site while in the west, where a complex of earthworks is visible, a number of military and domestic structures were dated to the 16th century and later, suggesting that the earliest remains were contemporary with the post-Flodden remodelling of the castle as an artillery fortress. The results of excavation at Norham suggest that the reordering of the castle in the wake of Flodden anticipated attack from the west (village) side and support the idea that the large area between the south side of the castle and the Mill burn was used, at various times, as an area for temporary billeting of troops and associated small-scale domestic and industrial activities. Its putative earlier origins as an iron age promontory fort remain unproven.
The chance discovery of a mid-twelfth century manuscript belonging to Holy Trinity Priory, Wallingford, containing a 17-line terrier on its final verso, permits a re-evaluation of the traditions concerning its origins as a cell of the abbey of St Albans. The text is completely independent of any of the chronicles and other material from St Albans. The priory was clearly a Benedictine reformation of an existing pre-Conquest English secular college, a process possibly begun c. 1086, but mainly pursued during the period 1087-1100, with final consecration and dedication early in the reign of Henry I. The St Albans traditions are largely vindicated, and the work is shown to have been essentially a collaboration between royal officials and the townspeople