The Corfe Castle Arrowheads

We found our first arrowheads in the West Bailey in 1987… deep beneath the 1970s concrete base… made for the telescope which once gave visitors a magnified view of the Dorset countryside.

Back then, the ground surface continued over the curtain wall. The edge of the Castle was lost. Our mission was to show off this 13th-century structure by lowering the ground by a metre.

We started in April and finished in June… digging through Twix wrappers and Victorian coins, traces of an 18th century garden… then, through thick 1646 demolition rubble.

Once, on a wet day, a visit to Swanage hospital.. a block of stone slipped from my hand and crushed it against the wheelbarrow.

Beneath the rubble… were the musket shot of the 1643-5 Civil War sieges …and then, below theTudor roof tiles…. we were ready to lift the lid on the medieval period.

It was then that we found our first arrowheads.. two on a gravel surface and one in a dark soil. They lay just above the cutting of the foundation trench for King John’s curtain wall. 

Royal accounts describe the building of this wall between 1201-1204… so our arrowheads came to rest in the later 13th century and lay undisturbed until we dug them up 700 years later.

In 2023, the Corfe Castle collection was photographed and catalogued and placed on the National Trust’s collections management system.

………..

It is now available for anybody… which tends to be someone with a specialist interest …and a desire to examine Corfe artefacts to link them with evidence from the wider world…joining the pieces, to build our knowledge … about all sorts of things.

That’s why Will contacted me and introduced me to Hector who together came to our Tisbury office on Friday …to examine our seven arrowheads and a crossbow bolt.

They are both arrowsmiths. Will brought a set of replica arrows he’d created from the finds drawings and photographs. However, nothing like seeing the real thing they said.

‘Wow. These are so good to see’. Each is medieval and different.. but only the 1987 arrowheads come from a medieval context, the rest were found in ground churned up by the English Civil War.

First our 1987 ones.

1.A long needle bodkin .. an armour piercing military arrowhead, perhaps case hardened by plunging when hot into a horn and hoof powder mix, then, to infuse the carbon, dousing in cold water… to fix the chemical reaction.

2.A short military arrowhead .. they were fascinated by the welded wings and ridge.. how were the fletchers able to make it quickly? The skill of the arrowsmith was to mass produce to order. This one, not armour piercing …but still an efficient killer.

3.The next was a strange inverted crescent type head. ‘This one’s for hunting’ they said for despatching rabbits and birds. If you miss.. this arrow won’t disappear into the ground but will bounce of the surface.. easy to recover.

What else ? A couple more armour piercing bodkins.. but smaller.. sharp, lean and nasty.

Then an impressive barbed and tanged classic looking arrowhead. Broad and mean. Hector said it was good for hunting red deer. A longbow arrow like this would judder into the beast creating a wide wound…designed to increase fatality.. the barb would stop it from falling out.

I mentioned that Corfe Castle lies at the centre of the Purbeck forest. A hunting ground loved by King John. The 1586 map of the ‘Island’ shows many red deer, prancing around the northern heathlands. None in Purbeck now.

‘This one’s a crossbow bolt’ Will said. ‘It has a heavy triangular head. A cross-bow is more maneuverable.. it can be fired from an arrow loop. The longbows are best used from the wall tops to fire the arrows further, arcing out…up to 300m out from Castle Hill.. down onto any attacker.

They measured and discussed how each would have been made in the smithing workshop, the type of iron… how it was heated and hammered into a die.

The last one seemed less interesting.. a flattened pointed blade. Found in the great ditch beside the bridge leading up to the 13th-century South West Gatehouse.

“We love this one” said Hector “It’s Norman, a type used at the Battle of Hastings, 10th-11th century, a typical warhead of its time”

It was good to meet them, particularly to gain an understanding of these finds through an arrowsmith’s eyes.

‘There’s only two of us that recreate medieval arrows’ said Will.. ‘I’m still learning from Hector.. but now that I’ve seen your Corfe Castle arrows … the ones I made aren’t good enough yet. I’ll go back to forge and make them better for you’.

Next time we’ll meet at Corfe Castle. Stand in the 3rd Tower of the Outer Bailey and consider King Stephen’s siege-work through the narrow western arrow slit.

Try to re-imagine the thoughts of a medieval archer.