Dunstanburgh - Week 3

To jump ahead, click on the day you want: Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15 (final day!)

Monday - Day 11
 Staying up here last night after yesterday's guided tour has gained us an extra half day of fieldwork, so Trev and I decide to start at dawn and use the time to check everything we've done so far, before Stewart arrives by train this evening. The new information passed on to us yesterday by local residents has raised lots of important new questions. For example, the harbour: it's now vital to know if all the sandstone fragments we noticed in Week 1 were actually dumped in 1929, because we thought at first that their presence was a key piece of evidence suggesting the harbour was built in 1313. So, while the tide's still out, we look again at the jetty area. And we're reassured by what we see: almost all the fragments lie very close to the jetty, and some are jammed in tight between the boulders. We plot the precise position of every single one, just to make sure. It's very unlikely that the waves would've spread the dumped rubble in this pattern. But we're now suspicious of those two blocks of finely worked stone blocks on the beach - this could well be the result of conservation work carried out only 75 years ago by the Ministry of Works.

Next, we move on to the area of the western gatehouse in the outer perimeter. Last week, we could tell very little about it, because most of the area we wanted to look at was covered in gorse. Now that this has been cleared away by Kevin and the National Trust volunteers, it looks as though what we hoped might be a medieval foundation exposed in the side of a modern ditch is more likely to be a bit of 19th-century work. It's disappointing, but we're still confident there was a stone gatehouse here.

   Yesterday, several people on the guided tour asked where Harry's track - the one that approaches the castle from the west - might be coming from. At the time, I wasn't sure - I thought it probably came from Embleton, the next village north. So today Trev and I looked again more closely at the humps and bumps we mapped on Friday. And we now realise that what we interpreted last week as a terrace created by medieval ploughing is actually the course of the medieval track, leading - as suspected - towards Embleton. We follow its line westwards, just to see if we can find anything important. The route takes us past a rocky outcrop facing towards the castle - the kind of place that ought to have been signposted 'Castle Viewpoint 100m ahead'. There would have been fantastic views of the castle walls reflected in the artificial lake that we're now calling the North Mere. But, unfortunately, there are no signs of any buildings that might've been sited to take advantage of the view.

In the afternoon, we take a train into Newcastle to give a talk to our colleagues in the North-East Regional Office, to tell them exactly what we're discovering. Dunstanburgh Castle is just one of many historic properties in the North East that they look after, but it's becoming clear that it's potentially one of the most significant. It's important to discuss our findings as early as possible, so that we can decide what to do next: how can English Heritage and the National Trust work together to make best use of the new information? Do we re-write the guidebook immediately? Or do we carry out more research? There are many issues that need to be thought through carefully, to ensure that we do the best for visitors, and for the castle itself. And there are Kevin's beloved amphibians to think about: they need the Meres, which are protected as Sites of Special Scientific Interest, to remain boggy in order to breed successfully. But is this the best thing for Jacqui's deposits of 5,000 year old peat? While they're still debating all these problems, Trev and I quietly make our escape!

Tuesday - Day 12
It's another incredibly still day and at low tide the North Sea's as calm as a sheet of glass. With all three of us in action, we decide to take this chance to examine the strip of shoreline east of the castle, where the basalt outcrop shelves gently down to the sea. It feels like a real no-man's land, stranded between the sea on one side and the castle wall on the other. There turns out to be very little of archaeological interest - but lots of good wildlife, including tame eider ducks and a stoat gathering seaweed! On some of the aerial photographs, I'd noticed a sheer-sided channel that looks like it might be a defensive ditch cut through the rock across the end of the promontory, but it turns out to be just a geological feature. Walking back and forth along the castle's east wall gives us plenty of time to look at the masonry more closely. If you can call it 'masonry': no mason would be proud of this - compared with the high-quality workmanship elsewhere, this wall's a real amateur effort. It's faced with small lumps of limestone, not the beautiful red sandstone blocks used elsewhere. The wall seems to have been built in sections - there are several straight, vertical joints in the facing - and the guidebook suggests that this might be because it was built by the local peasants as a piece of DIY for Earl Thomas. We notice a few other interesting things: a little 'back gate', built to a much higher standard in sandstone, has been added into the wall near the very tip of the promontory. This is a popular fishing spot today - perhaps that's why the gate was added in the first place! And we also notice that at some point, the original walkway along the top has been filled in and the whole wall's been raised. This work was done in the local black basalt rock, so the difference with the whitish limestone stands out very clearly. In other words, this wall's clearly got a long and complex history!

 Midmorning: Stewart breaks off to meet Ian Brown, an expert on Second World War radar installations, with his own excellent website on the subject! He's also played an important role in the 'Defence of Britain Project', which has involved hundreds of volunteers around Britain searching out and recording 20th-century defence structures, from pillboxes to anti-tank ditches. English Heritage has its own team of specialists in modern military archaeology, and we'll be talking to them as well, to gather together as many expert thoughts as possible. At lunchtime, all four of us meet up. Ian's brought an old photo of an identical type of radar site at Ventnor on the Isle of White, when it still had its radar antenna (technically called an 'aerial array') standing on the roof. And he's been able to explain to Stewart exactly where different pieces of equipment would have stood around the interior of the building, where each operator would have sat and exactly what their job was. Suddenly, that grey concrete shell all seems much more alive.

 I look through the digital photos Stewart's taken; there's one of Ian examining a small concrete pillar. "What's that then?" I ask. Ian turns to me "Well, um, that's a little concrete thingummyjig. I haven't a clue." It's nice to know even the experts are stumped sometimes! Stewart and Ian discuss another problem. We know from the locals that towards the end of the war, when a German invasion was looking unlikely, the radar station was converted into a camp for Italian Prisoners of War. So how many of the buildings were part of the original radar installation and how many were huts for the prisoners? And were the two concrete buildings used in any way after the radar site went out of use? Were they adapted in some way? I'm thinking back to Trev's observation on Day 2: the building seemed to have been repainted at some point. "There are just as many questions about this radar site as there are about the castle", says Stewart. And now, at last, the moment I've been waiting for the last 12 days has arrived. "Well, Stewart, you've got just 3 days to find out!" Trev breaks into a rousing chorus of the Time Team theme tune, and Stewart tries to throw bits of his lunch at us.

There's one other question that's been worrying me a bit about the castle's meres. Where did they get their water? It's obviously naturally boggy ground, and must have been even wetter before all the drainage ditches were dug in the 19th century, but this doesn't seem enough somehow. After lunch, Trev and I set off to check out the only other possible source of water, a tiny stream that flows in from the west. Following it inland, we come to a point where the stump of a big earthen bank noses out into the stream valley: the remains of a dam? It looks as though most of it's been washed away or deliberately flattened. Judging by the height of the bank, the dam would've created a fairly deep pond. And running from the edge of the former pond is a narrow channel, which turns away from the stream's natural course and heads off down a second shallow valley, gently descending all the time, until it reaches the West Mere. This looks very like an artificial watercourse designed to divert the stream into the West Mere, which we already know was the highest of the three. From the West Mere, sluicegates could've controlled the flow into the North and South Meres. We follow the stream further inland till we reach its source. The spring must've been much stronger in the medieval period: the whole hillside has slipped away and the ridge-and-furrow fields were clearly laid out to avoid the area. So that's an excellent water supply: question answered!

Wednesday - Day 13
 Archie the Custodian's back on duty today, and at last the time has come for us to make our first serious venture inside the castle walls. After spending the last two weeks tramping round the landscape outside, it feels like an important moment: the beginning of the end for our investigation! The sheer size of the space within the walls and the lack of standing buildings gives the interior a bleak, empty atmosphere. We start by dealing with the most obvious humps-and-bumps: the foundations of what appears to be a building, something like a big barn, overlooking a large rectangular enclosure, once surrounded by drystone walls that are now tumbled down and overgrown with turf. It looks as though these wall foundations are more obvious because they've been restored at some point, perhaps by the Ministry of Works in 1929? The whole thing lies in a nice sheltered spot and the guidebook interprets it as a medieval kitchen garden. And at first that seems a very reasonable theory.

 But by mid-morning, we've changed our minds completely. Most of the ground within the walls has been ploughed at some point - we're assuming that it's these ridge-and-furrow fields that were referred to in a document of about 1723 as being 'recently ploughed'. As the guidebook says, this arable agriculture's likely to have erased all trace of any medieval timber buildings that may have stood in the castle's interior. It soon becomes clear that every last scrap of ground has been ploughed, right up to the edge of the towering cliff that forms the castle's northern perimeter. So why didn't they just demolish the drystone walls and plough the kitchen garden too? We all three start to peer at the ground surface from different directions, and gradually it becomes clear that the plough furrows are also visible within the walled garden. In other words, the garden was built later than the ploughing. So now there are two options: either the walled garden was built after 1723, or the ploughing we're looking at isn't the stuff referred to by the document, in which case it might predate the castle. Either way, it's an important observation. So does this leave the interior without a single medieval building apart from the ones clustered round the gatehouse? Well, no, fortunately. All along the western wall, we find slight traces of what appear to be the buried foundations of buildings and yards. The ridge-and-furrow fields all stop short of the area, as though the foundations might be too large to bother trying to plough up, which tends to suggest the agriculture's more recent. These possible buildings looks like an excellent target for geophysical survey.

 After lunch, Trev and Stewart head off to the Cheviot Hills, where we've been working on and off for the last five years investigating Iron Age hillforts in the Northumberland National Park. We're more or less at the end of the project now, but Stewart and Trev are helping to tidy up a few loose ends. Which leaves me to wander round the castle by myself with no GPS equipment and nothing better to do than think. In passing, I also stop to chat to Archie the Custodian, and the legend of Sir Guy the Seeker comes up. Sir Guy was a knight who lost his way in a storm and was forced to take shelter in the ruins of Dunstanburgh. No sooner was he under the great archway than he was accosted by a ghostly figure who challenged him as follows:

"Sir Knight, Sir Knight,
If your heart be right
And if your nerves be firm and true,
Sir Knight, Sir Knight,
A beauty bright,
Endurance, waits for you."

Sir Guy followed the figure into a chamber beneath the castle, where a beautiful Lady lay spellbound in a crystal casket, with a hundred sleeping knights and their horses gathered around her. On the casket lay a sword and a hunting-horn. The ghostly figure informed Sir Guy that he could only release the Lady from her endless sleep by making the right choice: the sword, or the horn. At length, Sir Guy made his choice, grabbed the hunting-horn and blew a loud blast. With that, the hundred knights sprang into life and rushed at Sir Guy, causing him to faint with fear. The last words he heard were:

"Now shame on the coward who sounded a horn,
When he might have unsheathed a sword."

When Sir Guy came round, he was lying alone outside the castle gate. He searched and searched, but was never able to find the chamber beneath the castle, or the beautiful Lady Endurance.

I've heard versions of this story elsewhere and again it sounds a bit like the legend of King Arthur, sleeping in a cave with all his knights around him, until the time comes when Britain needs him most. And, strangely, Dunstanburgh does have an underground chamber, cut into the hard basalt rock beneath one of the guard chambers of the great gatehouse. It's usually thought of as a dungeon, and it's now too dangerous to open to visitors. I'll have to return with a torch to take a look. Is the legend of Sir Guy just a Victorian fairytale, or is there some tiny grain of truth behind all these stories?

 In the evening, Stewart pops into Craster to talk to Mr William Archbald and his sister Winnie. Both lived in the village as children during the Second World War. Their clearest memories are of the Italian prisoner of war camp: William remembers how the Italians had painted the huts with scenes of home, including a man sitting looking out across a lake at sunset. Winnie admits that all they ever found out about the Top Secret radar station was that it was "something to do with radio" - they were never allowed to go near the place. The whole coastline between the village and the castle was protected by three lines of coiled barbed wire, so they couldn't get down to the sea either. The last thing the Italians were ordered to do before they were released was to clear the wire away. But Winnie says they weren't too bothered about doing the job properly, so they just sawed through the metal posts at ground level, which explains those rusty stumps Stewart kept finding in Week 1. William and Winnie both vividly remember the day their dad accidentally wandered into the minefield while out shooting rabbits, and had to find his way out again very slowly and carefully. "Foxes kept going in there, too, and setting the mines off. And every time there was an explosion, we all thought the Germans had invaded!"

Thursday - Day 14
 Armed with lots of new information, Trev and Stewart head off to the radar station/prisoner of war camp, leaving me to mop up the last few bits that need finishing around the castle. After a couple of hours, Kevin, the National Trust Warden, turns up to keep me company. He's brought his saw to clear another patch of gorse, this time hiding the point where the water channel we discovered on Tuesday would have flowed out into the West Mere. But he's also keen to find out more about how we use the GPS kit, and he's got masses of questions about how he might be able to survey a sand dune that's gradually shifting and destroying an important nesting site for terns and other sea birds. We talk about how he can do this best: he's surprised to hear that the cheap, old-fashioned, low-tech 'level' he already has will do the job just as well as the GPS.

It's immediately clear that Kevin, like many people who spend lots of time outdoors, has got the knack of recognising slight humps and bumps. And it's  equally clear he's got exactly the curiosity that's needed to ask the right questions about what he's looking at. We survey part of a causeway that would have carried a track down from a quarry near the castle walls. I explain how I'd go about it, what types and colours of line I'd use to map the different slopes, exactly where I'd stand to see the more subtle differences best, why I'd take a measurement in one place and not another. Kevin has his own opinions, and within minutes we're having a useful discussion. "I'm only just realising now, this isn't really about the hi-tech equipment at all, is it?" he says. "It's so much more about doing the thinking than I'd realised before. I can see now that you interpret what you're looking at first and then paint the features with the lines to show how you've interpreted it". That's exactly right. And it's a real exchange of skills: I quickly realise that he 'reads' the behaviour of all the plants and wildlife the way I 'read' the archaeological humps and bumps. "It's interesting how the gorse bushes follow the archaeological remains - probably because all the soil's that little bit more acid on those banks".

At lunchtime, Harry, the National Trust's archaeologist for the North-East, arrives, bringing with him Katrina, a local poet, who's done lots of research into all the history and folklore connected with the castle. I bring up the subject of the legends that sound like they might be connected with King Arthur and ask her if that idea sounds a bit daft. "No, not at all! In one version of the 'Sir Guy the Seeker' story, it's actually Merlin who takes Sir Guy down into the chamber. And the first version of that story is recorded during the Wars of the Roses - mid-1400s - very early. And of course John of Gaunt was obsessed by King Arthur". I haven't said much about John of Gaunt in the last two weeks, have I? A man so rich he had his own special tax-bracket, who was definitely the power behind the throne in the 1370s, a political giant. And the man who, in the 1380s, altered Earl Thomas' great gatehouse almost beyond recognition, turning it into a strong keep at the heart of a more conventional military castle. Is it conceivable all these Arthurian legends tie up with John of Gaunt? "Why not?" says Katrina. "I don't think they're just 'fairy tales' - at the time they were definitely seen as quite dangerous political allegories. And the stories were deliberately used as status symbols, just like the ornamental features you're finding. It might all be part of the same package."

 By the end of the day, Stewart and Trev are looking very pleased with themselves. They think most of what they're discovering relates to the prisoner of war camp: in total, they've now found traces of 7 demolished buildings, and 9 weapons pits. And in the bottom of the quarry, they've found a mound of tangled rusty barbed wire - the remains of the defensive perimeter cleared away by the Italians? But they're also convinced they found the concrete foundations of a 'Gibson Box', a more accurate type of radar installed after the 'Chain Home Low' equipment. On our way home, we stop off in Craster to follow up a tip-off by William Archbold. Behind the village, at the back of an old basalt quarry (the source of most of London's curbstones) stands a building. Nothing special to look at, but it's important all the same: a 'Nissen Hut', exactly the type of hut the radar operators would have lived in, and the Italian prisoners of war after them. This one, however, was brought up by William from a nearby airfield in the 1950s.

 In the evening, another local, David, who was captain of the lifeboat for 27 years, shows us his collection of old photographs of Craster. One shows the tower at the end of the harbour pier that used to support the aerial runway that brought the basalt blocks down from the quarry. We've only seen a drawing of this before, in the pub, where it's labelled 'Towers of the old aerial runway at Craster, taken down about 1940 to prevent German bombers using them as a navigation marker'. Stewart's comment when he first saw the drawing was: "Navigation marker! What about the massive castle on the headland a mile further north? That might have helped them navigate a bit!" But now he thinks he understands what really happened. "That aerial runway would have been a serious problem for the radar - on the screens, the metal scoops moving back and forth would've looked like low-flying planes. I bet that's why they took the runway down - the 'navigation marker' story must have been put about as a way of hiding the truth".

Friday - Day 15 (our last day!)
 Time's running out fast, but the list of little bits that need to be checked and finished off just got bigger and bigger as we talked things over last night. So today, Trev joins me at the castle while Stewart carries on alone at the radar site. Kevin's around too, madly sawing gorse in the crucial areas where we still need to see more. The last job we've got to finish takes us back inside the castle walls.

As we're walking along the inside of the south wall, we spot the ridges of two strip fields that we missed on Wednesday, very close to the huge wall. Too close, much too close. The same thought hits us at the same time: are these fields actually earlier than the castle wall? On Wednesday, we assumed they all dated to about 1700, because of the document that talked about 'recent ploughing' within the castle. But was this land also cultivated much earlier, way back before 1313? We hurry back outside the walls, back to the ridge-and-furrow fields we looked at all those days ago on Day 1. Then, we thought that this ploughing must be fairly recent - only a few hundred years old - because it had obviously crept right up onto the big earthen bank that creates a ditch in front of the castle's south wall. But if the land was ploughed before 1313, and that ploughing had already partly flattened this bank, then what on earth is it? In a blinding flash, one idea comes into both our heads: is it part of Jacqui's Iron Age hillfort? On Day 6, I said I'd wait and see if there was any hard evidence to support her idea. The more we think about it, the more our theory seems to make sense. The south side is the outcrop's gentlest slope - the only one where the promontory's natural defences aren't so strong. So it's probably the only stretch where the prehistoric builders would have bothered to create any artificial defence - an earthen rampart. But when Earl Thomas came along in 1313, his masons would've wanted to build on solid rock, not earth. So they built behind the prehistoric bank and used it to create a ditch in front. It's all sounding like a convincing scenario… 

 We're not quite finished when the mobile rings. Which is a miracle, because there's no signal around most of the site. And it's not brilliant here either: I can tell it's Stewart, and he's obviously excited, but I can only make out 1 word in 5. "….. prisoners..... Italy….. vineyards….." Vineyards? Has Stewart been working alone too long? Or did he get a taxi to the airport the moment we left him? Standing on the roof of the Landrover - always the best place - I can understand more of what he's saying. "Al - I'm on that steep slope at the back of the radar station, where the quarry is. Now that the National Trust's cleared all the undergrowth, you can see little walls all down the slope. It's just like the terraces you'd see for olives or vineyards in Italy. I'm sure now: they're tiny little gardens". For the last 3 weeks, we've been unlocking the secrets of a vast ornamental landscape nearly 700 years old, the dramatic setting for a castle that belonged to two of the richest and most powerful men in medieval England. Gardening on the mega scale. Now, in the final hour of our investigation, we're suddenly looking at the other end of the spectrum: the vegetable plots of Italian prisoners only 60 years ago, homesick and desperately trying to recreate a little bit of Italy in this remote part of Northumberland. And only moments ago, we were looking at the defences of a hillfort built 2,500 years ago. Time flies when you're having fun! 

 So, looking back over the last 3 weeks, what have we achieved? For one thing, it's been great working with so many different people: other specialists in English Heritage, the National Trust and - above all - the local people, who've been so generous in sharing their knowledge and memories with us. But right back on the morning of Day 1, I said that the big question for this investigation was 'Why was the castle built here?' I think we can now answer that question - or at least we've got a much better idea than we had on Day 1! It had very little to do with Scottish raids, or with practical military defence. It was built here because of what was already here, and what was not already here. It was built here because the natural outcrop already possessed all the strength and beauty essential for Earl Thomas' showpiece architecture; because the surrounding landscape already had natural potential for the creation of a stunning ornamental water garden; because it was close enough to flaunt its status to anyone passing by to Bamburgh Castle, the King's stronghold, Thomas' arch-rival. And perhaps because there'd been a far older stronghold on the outcrop, which - perhaps - Earl Thomas and later John of Gaunt were able to weave into their political stories about King Arthur, the greatest ever leader of the British people. And the castle was built here because of what was not here. The land was farmed, but in most respects it was a 'blank canvas' where Earl Thomas could construct whatever he dreamed of. Perhaps the castle eventually fell into ruins because it had begun life as a dream. There was an impressive harbour, but one that would've been useless in an easterly gale. There was masses of space to lay out a new town within the outer perimeter, but precious little evidence that anyone ever moved there. I said in Week 1 that it's important to remember that our heritage is made up of the stories of individual people. I think we're a bit closer now to understanding some of those stories: from the grand designs of Earl Thomas, to the homesickness of the Italian prisoners.

 But it's time to leave Dunstanburgh. So where next? Well, for Dunstanburgh, our own investigation's still got a long way to go. Jacqui's analysis of her 'sludge sausages' has only just begun. But we've already provided a springboard for future research. We've identified precise targets for geophysical survey that will 'see' beneath the surface: the gatehouse, the possible buildings inside the walls, the failed town in the fields south of the castle. There are questions even this won't answer: then is the right time to start thinking about excavation. So I'll be updating this website as things progress. And hopefully, by the time the guidebook's next reprinted, Dunstanburgh's story is going to have changed quite a lot. And for us, after Christmas we'll be starting an investigation on Beverley Common in East Yorkshire. Commons are places everyone can get to and spend time looking at, but also places where most archaeologists have forgotten to look. And I hope our investigation at Dunstanburgh has shown that just by looking and thinking carefully, anyone can make new discoveries and unlock some of the secrets of England's history. So get out there and do it! Bye!

Key to the photo:
Double red towers = Earl Thomas' great gatehouse, built 1313
Single red tower = the beautiful Lilburn Tower
Green line = timber palisade of the outer perimeter
Yellow towers = probable sites of outer gatehouses
Big blue lakes = ornamental 'meres', constructed 1313
Small blue rectangles = fishponds, for breeding fish to release into the meres
Blue lines = channels for managing the water supply
Orange dots = settlements probably dating to around 1750
Green dot = the ?medieval fishtrap and the Polish trawler wrecked in August 1958

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If you want to find out more, you can e-mail any questions to us at English Heritage's York office, where we're based: al.oswald@english-heritage.org.uk