Tim e-mailed me at Tisbury to say that the long trench G would stay open over the weekend.
Peter needed time to draw the sections and there was no rush to backfill… as long as the deep hole was fenced off at night to protect the unwary.
I drove over at 5 and found that the smaller trenches no longer existed.. the soil had been returned and the machine had compacted it. The turf had been replaced. Soon the scars would be hidden by the new spring growth.
Fantastic May was working its magic at Stourhead and the every plant seemed to be showing off. Particularly the gloriously colourful rhododendrons.
I walked over to Peter.. working with pencil, drawing board and tape measure. Head and shoulders visible. Down the long trench, out in the park.
A pleasantly-mild and over-clouded evening. Perfect for archaeology …. and the ground drying at last… the swallows had returned … and now flitted again… back and forth over the grassland.
‘Lorraine came today. She said the pottery found this week compared well with that from last July’
‘Did she identify anything medieval?’
‘Just the odd piece…the one sherd we were pretty sure about turns out to be Iron Age’
‘ I guess with all the earth moving and landscaping done over the years something earlier must have been disturbed. Martin and Anne, who did the geophysics last year, thought there might be a ring ditch in the park. Perhaps a levelled Bronze Age burial mound ‘
‘Most of the ceramics, as we’d expected, can be dated to the17th-18th century. A nice tobacco pipe bowl circa 1650’
‘Anything new today?’
‘Very little digging, mostly cleaning for photographs and recording the archaeology in the trenches.. before things got buried again. The Greensand lumps in Trench I might just be a land drain. One of the visitors suggested it.’
‘That makes sense’
‘None of the stones were mortared and it doesn’t follow the alignment of the other walls’
‘Did you check the line of the wall corner in trench H with the long wall in this trench?’
‘Yes we marked it out.. ‘old-school’.. with ranging poles, and found that the walls align with each other. It seems likely that they mark the west edge of a through route’
‘Then the 2025 sewage pipe will follow the trackway line abandoned 300 years ago.. between the North and South gates of Stourton Castle. It works for the archaeology…. can’t be certain …but it’s a good story.’
Peter smiles.
‘It’s always good to have story. It can be flexible and can be revised if anyone goes deep enough to see the Castle again. Anyway, we’ve proved that all the Stourton Castle remains will be protected below the line of the new sewage pipeline when it goes through next year. Only the top of Colt Hoare’s brick sewage culvert will be breached by the pipeline’
‘Thanks Peter. That’s what we needed to know… and you found the northern edge of the Castle’
‘Just as well we shifted the original trench location to the north’
‘Well.. it’s been brilliant. Do you need the tools any more?’
‘No, we’ve finished with them now. They’re stacked by the railings’
So I walked across the park….loaded up the car and drove away.
Today there was a 3pm meeting of the sewage pipe project team.
I brought my tape measure to check the depth of archaeology.
Peter showed us around and we chatted to everyone working on the site..some working on finds in the finds tent, some giving guided tours for visitors, some working in the trenches.
The diggers need ladders now… the trenches are deep.
If they work hard…. they can have the ladders back for tea break 🙂
From south to north. Here are the results from the trenches for day 3.
The 1.5m square trench J in the stable yard: Below the turf, a band of compacted gravel and stone, then a 20cm layer of clay and rubble then the natural clay. Chris, the engineer was pleased… no archaeology to get in the way of the sewage works there.
Trench I in the grass triangle on the north side of the stable yard gateway: There had definitely been a north to south wall here. It ran across the east half of the 2m by 1.5m trench. The footings were all Greensand rubble but the upper courses had been robbed out down to 1.1m below the surface.
The cutting of the robber trench through the natural clay was clear in the section. The 1720s demolition gang had removed the upper structure of the wall that might have impeded the 2025 pipeline. Chris gave this trench a thumbs up too.
Next we walked to Trench H at the park railings. This was 1.4m deep at the south end and 1.1m at the north edge of this 6m long by1.5m long trench. At the north end was a right-angled piece of cut stone walling bonded with white lime mortar.
This might be one side of a gateway leading from the outer to the inner courtyard but the trench is too small to be sure. Tomorrow’s excavation will reveal more details.
The main thing is that these structural remains of the Castle are over 1m deep so beyond the depth of the proposed sewage pipeline.
The last long trench which was located to pick up the northern boundary of Old Stourton House …had come down onto a trackway it seems… gravel and chunks of stone at a consistent level 1.1m-1.2m down from the surface and directly below a layer of black soil which contained lots of occupation debris.
Oysters, animal bone, stone roof tiles mixed with some pottery and window glass.
The brick culvert that was revealed yesterday cut through this surface but there were no walls in this long trench.
On Monday morning I’d wavered and decided to shift trench G to the north. The aim was to capture the original position of the north gateway…
I think I should have left it where it was…. general agreement from the assembly. It now seems that it lies under the grass a couple of metres to the south….
But the layers can be seen dipping in the section (perhaps sinking into a robber trench?) at the south edge of G.
I arrived at Stourhead Park early and Peter was watching the mechanical excavator which was about to start Trench J within the Stable Yard.
In the 17th century, this was the outer courtyard of Stourton Castle.
The main late medieval and Tudor buildings were demolished in 1720 and their location forgotten, buried under over a metre of clay and rubble.
They were rediscovered last July under Stourhead Park, directly in front of Stourhead House.. which had been built by 1722.
The next trench I, cut into the triangle of grass in front of the Stable Yard had the line of the rubble footings of a robbed Greensand wall could now be seen here cutting the natural clay just over 0.5m down. The archaeology is much shallower on this southern end of the proposed sewage pipe route.
At the park railings, trench H had just come down onto a trackway cobbled with stone. This was probably the route from the courtyard to the now demolished Dairy and Home Farm shown on the 1785 map.
I was interested in the big trench G and as we walked toward it I could see that this had been dug almost a metre deep by the machine.
Across the centre had been cut a feature containing a round brick culvert about 0.8m diameter. Peter had carried out a watching brief for the ground sourced heat pump installed at Kingston Lacy House a couple of years ago and this culvert looked very similar to the brick structure encountered there.
The culvert in trench G headed straight for Stourhead House and fell away to the east. We agreed that we had probably come across the early 19th century sewage conveyance for the mansion.
Sewage seems to be the theme of this dig. All very necessary of course.
The circular brick culvert had cut through black soil with large numbers of oyster shells mixed with animal bone.
I feel that, in G, the dig is now poised above Stourton Castle.
Looking down onto the cleaned stone walling in trench F … I spot an abandoned trowel… used as a scale last night.
The fencing is undone and I jump down to retrieve it.
‘Are you pleased with the last dig Dad?’
‘It was satisfactory Simon. We found what we were looking for….. It definitely had a golden glow to it.’
Janet puts the trowel in her bag and we walk towards the tournament.
Part of the medieval encampment at Stourhead House
……………
Day 12: The last day. Everything needs to be recorded before its end and this is our final chance to uncover the walls in our trenches.
Lots of grey mortar rubble still in trench A.
The trench locations A-F 1722 map on LiDAR Stable Yard (bottom), Stourhead House (left)
We pass round the mattocks, deploy a couple of wheelbarrows and five of us attack it.
The wall footings begin to emerge within half an hour.
By mid morning, the east end of the trench can be seen as two rooms divided by a wall with traces of a robbed stone floor … but generally, the surfaces that survive are only the olive green sandy mortar that the recycled floor was bedded on.
The walls at the east end of Trench A
The finds tray becomes full of smaller animal bones. Rabbit sized?
There are Tudor records of the Stourton manor warren with its keepers lodge on White Sheet Hill… which overlooks our excavation.
In trench F, beside its east wall face, Pete is finding deer-sized bones. Perhaps fallow deer from Stourton deer park. The specialist report will tell us.
The east wall face of Trench F, the ranging pole 0.5m divisions lies along the wall face with a stone path along its outside edge.
Lydia uncovers the star find.. in the dark soil between the mortar and the olive sand. A broken pewter spoon.
In trench C, I have levelled the line and strung out the tape to draw the layers of the section
Brian walks by ‘I see you’ve found a newel stair’
I look blank.
‘Like the ones going up Alfred’sTower’
I hadn’t spotted that.
But I climb down into Carol’s trench B and take a look.
There it is.
Upside down but the front edge of the step clearly worn by the many feet that ascended it ..before it was cast down.
Bottom right is part of the stone newel step; upside down but the worn surface is clear. Numerous feet must have used the spiral staircase it was once a part of. In the corner of the fireplace was a wine bottle of c.1700 style.
Was there a tower nearby? Perhaps the one shown on the only drawing we have of Stourton Castle, sketched by John Aubrey during his visit in 1674.
The drawing of Stourton Castle dated 1674 showing the tower (centre left) which looks like the Sharrington Tower at Lacock. Another tower is shown on the right.
Our step could be a long way from its origin but it rests beside the carved breast-piece of the fireplace which still lies where it fell.. beside its hearth.
Who knows…our trenches are just small windows into the extensive ranges of rooms that surrounded the Inner Court of the Castle. We know of the large open hall and the passage leading to the kitchen. There would have been a parlour, pantry and buttery and various other offices and chambers. The chapel with its tiled floor is mentioned. Aubrey writes of tiles bearing the initials WS for William Stourton.
Despite my specific requirement for a WS tile, the digging team…. has not supplied one! Though, to be fair… we’ve had some glazed floor tiles and I am consoled by a geometric black and yellow encaustic tile from C… as the next best thing.
Gemma and Ollie have arrived for the BBC and we are miked up. Later, Ben arrives from National Trust central office and we are miked up again. He is filming the filming for a film of the film.
Gemma and Ollie interviewing Pete in Trench F for ‘Treasures of the National Trust’
It was good to see him again. We last met on the closing day of the Cerne Abbas dig… just before lockdown. We were glad of his coverage then.
A wine bottle is found in the corner of B’s fire place. Here are also found bent grey cames and glass from a diamond leaded window. A long iron object..a window catch?
I walk to A to draw it. Elegant Stourhead House stares down on us disapproving. The rolling green serenity of the park is now seemingly industrialised – archaeologically pockmarked with holes and heaps of turf and spoil.
But Edward and Audrey Hoare visit us. They are delighted and congratulate us on our discovery.
It’s OK, Tim will make everything right on Monday. Gradually the turves will knit back together and… in the years to come the sites of our trenches will become mere dimples in the grass.
It is a time of departures. The visitors, then our volunteer excavators, finds team and guides. So many wonderful people gave up their time to help… including staff, conservation and visitor services, rangers, gardeners, curators, collection managers..lots
Ben makes me a coffee and says goodbye. Gemma and Ollie retrieve their microphone and thank us for the story.
Just our Time Team now.
We were of a different era and methods than Colt Hoare, Cunnington, the Parkers and.. my favourite, the surveyor and artist Philip Crocker of Frome.
This National Trust team of archaeologists has randomly…for a while.. washed up together on the same shore.
We’ve done some stuff !…. such memories!.. and long, long after our beginnings at Corfe Castle.
The bodies at Bottle Knap Cottage, the Roman fort at Budlake, our socially distanced trenches on the Giant, the Neolithic antler impacts at Max Gate. That smell of the burnt mound on the cliff edge at Seatown and …of course, the glass, the marble and the 5th century mosaic at the Villa.
Pete fixes the fencing round the trenches, Fay and Carol load the car with tools, Nancy gathers the finds. Rob has already returned to Devon to help with Jim’s work at A La Ronde.
One last photo then. Betsy does the honours. We hug each other and say goodbye.
I have hours of drawing ahead. Natasha brings me water as the medieval tents go up.
I finish at B as the light is fading. The diggers here have done wonders today. The fireplace hearth with its stone floor and surviving jamb decorated with pyramid chamfer and bar stop
The final excavated surfaces of the fireplace and south-east corner of a room in Trench B. The mortar debris (upper left below the ranging poles) is 0.3m lower than the fireplace floor. Perhaps the floor of the room has collapsed into a cellar.
The walls of the south-east corner of a Castle room are clear, though the differing wall fabrics suggest several phases. The fireplace is a later insertion and …where is the floor of this room? At the deepest limit of today’s digging, the mortar rubble is at least 30cm lower than the level of the fireplace hearth.
Perhaps the floor has collapsed into one of the cellars of Stourton Castle.
I climb out of the trench at last with my bucket of measuring and drawing implements.
Perhaps it was in this cellar that Charles Stourton got his cronies to hide the body of his ex-steward William Hartgill in 1556.
The sun is beginning to set as I walk to the car.
Who knows?
We found the answer to the main question but, as always, there are many many more.
The gateway into Stourhead Park. Sir Richard Colt Hoare moved and rebuilt it here in the early 19th century. The 1722 map shows that it was originally located on the south side of the Stable Yard, approximately where the two dormer windows can be seen in the distance to the left of the left gateway tower.
The phone rings as I drive through that gothic gateway at the entrance to Stourhead Park- the one Sir Richard had shifted from the Stable Yard.
Spanish Chestnuts indeed! Definitely a red herring.
Arrived early and left my aspirations with the team.
The potential for foundations across large areas still lay buried under a trenchscape of white mortar rubble.
Straighten those sections, shift that jumble of stony debris.
While I headed for the office and attended meetings…. an array of meetings.
Until the evening….
I returned at dusk for the zoom talk from Sir Richard Colt Hoares’ Library.
Thank goodness I had something to talk about.
The trenches lay silent.
In F, the black had gone and a path of stones could be seen running along the outside edge of the Greensand wall face.
Pete excavated the finds from this dark organic layer.
They included a near complete ‘onion’ shaped wine bottle (typical of the late 17th to late 18th century), part of a drinking glass, glazed roof tile fragments and a heap of animal bones.
Carol’s trench had developed nicely. The narrow wall could now be traced on three sides.
What are the chances?
Surely our trench had not centred itself on a hearth. Walls were emerging on all sides and one of the three large blocks of masonry was a chamfered Chilmark slab that now looked suspiciously like one side of the fireplace breast piece.
A lot to do tomorrow. One last day.
Jen and Betsy were in the Library to facilitate lighting and internet connection and l made the link with David in Wiltshire Museum.
So….below the turf of Stourhead Park, over a metre down.. we had found it.
But what exactly had we found in trenches A, B and F.
In the morning briefing, we considered what lay ahead.
There would be a clear transition from the demolition debris to the last occupation level.
The creamy sandy mortar layer would suddenly change to black.
This would be the organic occupation layer, full of rotted stuff and infused with bone, iron, glass and pottery.
Below that, the old floor levels…. if they survived.
Over 300 years ago, would the demolition gang have left the flagstones and the glazed tiles behind ?
The 1722 map of the newly built Stourhead House with Stable Yard to the south east overlaid and stretched to fit the LiDAR plot of the area. The red star in the centre was marked by Martin and Anne as their geophysical best location for Stourton Castle. The long blue rectangle north to south is the ground probing radar survey area carried out on 11th July which revealed features over a metre below the ground.
The locations of our 6 Trenches are lettered A-F in red. A; B and F hit walls, C had black soil and debris so on the outside edge of the site and D and E were far from its influence with just yellow brown soil and a few scattered fragments of pottery and brick.
It would be a day of troweling back and assessing the evidence.
In trench A, there was still a lot of cream coloured mortar rubble to shift but at the west end we found a wall made of brick and reused stone above the mortar.
The wall built out of reused stone from Stourton Castle at the west end of trench A with the thicker brick tax bricks above the cream-grey mortar rubble layer.
The bricks were extra thick…so from a period when there was a brick tax.. between 1784 and 1850… Brickmakers made them large to reduce the amount they needed to pay the government.
This wall was perhaps part of a garden, probably built in the time of Sir Richard Colt Hoare.
At the east end of the trench, the wall fragment we’d found the previous day had lost its wall face. A trench full of darker soil mixed with fragments of the thicker bricks could be seen cutting through the mortar rubble layer.
It was evidence that the old house became a quarry to supply stone for new structures.
Someone around 1800 must have known where to look.
That robber trench had brought up fragments from a deeper level …including 17th century blue and white Westerwald pottery and a green glazed ridge tile.
Within trench F, the old house had been demolished down to a level stone foundation with a black soil against the east side of the wall.
The black organic layer against the east face of the wall (left side of picture) in trench F
In trench B, large blocks of stone were uncovered pitched at various angles… and the top of what appeared to be a narrow stone feature.
The thin wall on the right and the large blocks of stone emerging from trench B
First thing in the morning… the new trench F had the last of the topsoil mattocked off.
It lies on the north side of trench A where all the large lumps of stone have been found ..though none, unfortunately, in a wall-like assemblage.
Trench F looking towards Trench A with the Stable Yard in shadow beyond the gazebos. The trenches have been carefully positioned to intercept the alignment of the Stable Yard east wall.
Both trenches follow the alignment of the east wall of the Stable Yard… and… in a perfect world … we would find a nice wall below the deep rubble.
This unyielding rubble which we have been grappling with for the last 8 days.
Further west, towards Stourhead House, trench C was also presenting increasingly sizeable chunks of stone.
At this rate…we were in danger of not finding Stourton Castle.
Thursday night looms… when at 7.30pm, I am due to give an internet presentation from Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s library in Stourhead House. David Dawson at Wiltshire Museum in Devizes will talk of Sir Richard and show his archaeological collection. Then… I will tell of the helpful clues provided by Sir Richard which have now led to the discovery of Stourton Castle…… which so far, has not happened.
A bit awkward.
The mechanical excavator arrived again at 1pm.
It would stay until 5pm.
There was a lot a rubble to shift..
The digger began at the east end of Trench A…. where we hoped for a wall to be.
After a couple of scrapes the machine juddered. Stop ! Nancy said and trowelled where the bucket had been.
There it was… in the form of three, solid, mortared and level blocks of stone….
There was no doubt about it. It was actually a wall.
The TV cameras turned up.. pretty much on cue, and we were soon miked and saying to camera the exciting things we were feeling.
The digger in trench A with the bucket arm at the location of the newly discovered wall.
The machine then went to F and in an hour had emptied the rubble down to a large area of mortared stone. It had a convenient line of Greensand blocks marking a wall edge following the alignment of the Stable Yard wall.
The story was the same in C. A line of Greensand blocks at the east end of the trench.
Amazing.
The hunt for Stourton Castle is over.
We have found it!
And then….the afternoon turned into some kind of dream.
The mansion house looked down on us imperiously, while on the hill behind … a game of cricket proceeded ..oblivious to the excited visitors and triumphant diggers…. repeatedly being asked to repeat how pleased they were to camera.
And amongst us all …two well-to-do medieval ladies glided past to view the trenches.
On day 8 I returned and using ranging poles projected a straight line into the Park. This set on the alignment of the west exterior wall face of the Stable Yard.
I feel positive that the Stable Yard marks the position of the outer court of Stourton Castle
Therefore, the footings of the main manorial buildings should lie on its north side.
Trenches A and B are giving good vibes to support this idea.
Our last trench F will be a 4m by 3m excavation 50m north of the Stable Yard and across this east wall alignment.
The trench was stringed out and the deep turfs cut.
Into trench A, where the large stone blocks are jutting from the creamy lime mortar.
A morning removing the rest of the clay overburden to reveal the domed spread of the mortar and rubble.
In Carol’s trench B this mortar rubble layer had also been encountered.
At lunch I drew and photographed this layer in A
Then it was time to excavate Rachel’s block of Greensand which she had found in the rain on Saturday.
Surely, this was top stone of a magnificent Greensand wall face shrouded by the mortar rubble.
Five minutes of digging proved conclusively that…this was just another stone propped on some more rubble with a void beneath it. All the stones in this deposit turned out to be just a loose scatter of rubble……not a glimpse of a wall anywhere.
I walked over to Nancy, our ornithological archaeologist.
Next week we will be digging in Stourhead Park to find the medieval house that was knocked down to make way for Stourhead House.
Stourton House or Stourton Castle was a large double courtyard building demolished between 1718-1722. The Stourton family sold their estate and the Hoare family purchased the land and built their new fashionable residence.
There is a map of 1722 which shows the new house but no trace of the old.
Recent geophysical surveys by Martin and Anne of Tigergeo have homed in on the location of the old house and jettisoned the less likely places.
Martin and Anne’s geophysical plot with the most likely location marked by a red star.
It lies east of Stourhead House and north of the Stable yard.
This area has been re-landscaped on at least 3 occasions. It had an oval lake and garden court by 1722. It had been converted to a curvilinear funnel shaped garden by the map of 1785 and by 1839 the gardens were gone and the land was open parkland as it is today.
The 1722 map which shows the location of the red star with an oval pond, walls and gardens on the red star site. The area has been relandscaped at least twice since then.
A lot of soil has been shifted and any remains of the old house may lie deep ….so yesterday, Steve and John tried out the Ground Probing Radar kit.
Getting the GPR equipment ready. Checking the manual and remembering the training.
The hay crop had just been cut and the earthworks of the park were clear again.
House Martins swooped and glided around us.
We surveyed a line of north to south 20m grids. These run from the north front of the Stables yard across the front of Stourhead mansion.
As we pushed the machine across the park in 20m long slices we could see the stripes of contacts and signals. The geophysics programme picks out as red markers contacts that are likely to be archaeological. Some apparently up to 2m deep!
We managed 5.5 grids, held up by rain and then the tablet ran out of charge but it was a successful day. We wait with baited breath for the results.
I will string out the trenches based on the results on Friday.
At least the rain has softened the ground for digging.
Archaeology National Trust SW 