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The Man Who Bought A Castle
Alderton, Northants
14 January 2001
A couple of years ago, local man Derek Batten was driving through the village of Alderton, near Northampton, when he was surprised to see a sign advertising a castle and moat for sale. He was intrigued because he didn't even know there was a castle in the area. He decided to find out more – and ended up buying what was believed to be the remains of a Norman castle, now almost completely covered by trees and vegetation. Unable to discover very much else about the site, he contacted Time Team. The Team's task was to find out who built it, when, and how much of it remains.
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Maximum information for minimum disturbance
The castle at Alderton is a scheduled ancient monument, so ordinarily Time Team would not be given permission to excavate the site. Because so little is know about it, however – and about this type of castle in general – English Heritage did on this occasion grant permission for the Team to dig in three specific areas. One of these was in the ditch surrounding the castle; one on the ramparts; and one inside the castle. The aim, according to Glyn Coppack, the English Heritage inspector with responsibility for the excavation, was to obtain 'the maximum amount of information for the minimum disturbance of the site'.
A visual survey of the site indicated that this was a ringwork castle, the less common of two basic types of Norman castle. The more familiar motte and bailey consists of a central mound – the motte – with a tower on top overlooking the bailey, an enclosure in which most of the castle buildings would have been located. The ringwork, in contrast, lacks the motte, being more of a flattened mound with buildings on top.
The castle had most likely been built in one of two periods. The first was in the years soon after the Norman Conquest in 1066, when England's new rulers, fresh from their victory over Harold at Hastings, were endeavouring to consolidate their control over the country. The second was during the civil war between Stephen and Matilda in the next century. Castles needed to be built quickly in both periods and the relative ease and speed of construction for ringworks would have been an advantage.
Mick the Dig's cliffhanger
Trench 1 (the 'moat trench') got quickly under way early on the first day. Located in the ditch enclosing the castle, in an area that had suffered least from dumping and other disturbance, it was hoped that this might provide dating evidence for when the castle bank and ditch were built.
Trench 2 (the 'rampart trench') was dug up the bank surrounding the castle and into the interior in an attempt to see how and when the rampart was constructed. This one was a literal cliffhanger, with 'Mick the Dig' Worthington having to set up climbing ropes and harness in order to work safely on the steep slope.
Trench 3 was dug inside the castle. Geophysics surveys were hampered by the many trees and their root systems, so the archaeologists had to rely on traditional methods of visual survey to decide where best to locate the trench. They settled on a raised platform area, which was likely to have been the base for a large building.
The team was also interested in a garden that backs onto the castle site because local rumour had it that human burials had been found there when a sewer pipe was laid a few years ago. It was some way from the church, so could this have been an earlier cemetery associated with the castle? Trench 4 (the 'garden trench') was dug here to try to find out.
A neighbourly dispute resolved
And then there was the 'gateway trench' at what seemed likely – because of a hollow in the ramparts – to be the castle entrance. Time Team hadn't been planning to dig it because of a two-year boundary dispute between Derek Batten and his neighbour, but Tony's charm helped to secure agreement to a 50/50 split of the disputed land and the excavation went ahead.
The team later had to resolve a dispute of a different kind at this trench, when the English Heritage inspector halted work because it had not appeared in the original Project Design that has to be submitted for all excavations at scheduled monuments. Eventually he permitted the digging to continue.
The knight's lost buckle
 In fact, as well as identifying the entrance to the castle, the gateway trench also turned up one of most exciting finds of the dig. This was a hinged horse harness buckle decorated with a coat of arms with eagle on it and a bar across. Closer examination under a microscope revealed some of its original bright colouring. Dating from the late 14th or early 15th century, it would have belonged to a knight and must have been dropped soon before the castle was abandoned because it was one of the most recent finds to be made on the site.
Pottery finds covered the period from about 200 BC to the early 15th century, suggesting fairly continuous occupation. The castle may well have been adapted from an earlier hillfort or Anglo-Saxon burh. As for when it was constructed, Trench 1 produced very little by way of finds to help date it but C14 carbon dating of an organic sample from the foot of the ditch suggested that it had originally been dug at some time between 1020 and 1270. Pottery finds from the rampart trench, meanwhile, all seemed to belong to the period just after the Norman Conquest.
Inside the castle interior at Trench 3, the archaeology turned out to be extremely complicated. Only a couple of post holes and one large timber slot capable of supporting a building were found here. It was thought that others must still be buried nearby.
In the garden trench, meanwhile, no human burials were to be found – only a large quantity of animal bones. There was a huge volume of other finds, though, including masses of pottery and an early Norman knife that would have been in use around 1100. Perhaps that had been lost by one of the first occupants of the Norman castle at Alderton just as the horse-harness buckle had been lost by one of its last.
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