Baile Hill, the motte of The Old Baile at York, was the Royal Archaeological Institute Research Committee's choice as a site for excavation to demonstrate the nature of a castle built within a year or two of the Conquest. The mound, tree-covered and denuded, crossed by the 14th-century city wall and remodelled as a Civil War gun battery, is by no means an ideal site, and the bailey has largely been destroyed by 19th-century houses.

Yet the choice was almost inevitable; of the 34 or so castles for which an early date of construction is demonstrably from historical sources, most have either been equally demonstrably remodelled later or destroyed. The Old Baile, however, was apparently disused as early as 1268, and since the 14th century it has been an open space owned by York Corporation.

Attacked by Danes

Ordericus Vitalis records the building of William I's first castle at York in 1068 for a garrison of 500 picked knights. This castle, attacked early in 1069, was supplemented by a second before Easter of that year. An Anglo-Danish force captured both later in 1069 and, heedless of their value in what was presumably an alien type of warfare, destroyed them. William's wrath, and the horrific general consequences of his return to the North, are well known.

At York, where he spent Christmas of 1069, the castles were repaired. Most historians agree in identifying the two castles as the two mounds Clifford's Tower and Baile Hill, equidistant north and south of the river Ouse to the east of the medieval town. The motte below Clifford's Tower was the focus of York Castle throughout the Middle Ages. Early excavations and a full documentation indicate it had a complex later history, and an attempt to show its earliest form seems out of the question at present. The Institute's hope is that Baile Hill may yield the evidence more economically.

The 1968 excavation was a limited reconnaissance to show whether the present mound represents the first castle on the site and whether enough remains of the early structures to justify a larger-scale excavation. After a detailed contour survey, a trench was cut into the side of the mound, and one quarter of the motte top was stripped.

A series of steps

The trench located the original surface of the mound, masked by some 2 metres of material eroded from the upper parts, and revealed a narrow berm and massive encircling ditch at its foot. A series of steps, so fresh that they may originally have been faced with wood, ascended the face of the mound.

They may represent the means of access to the motte top from the now destroyed bailey. If this interpretation is correct, access across the ditch was presumably by means of an horizontal bridge rather than by a flying bridge of Bayeux Tapestry type. For a proper understanding of the steps and of the putative bridge, much more extensive excavation would be needed. There was some evidence for a timber kerb at the foot of the motte.

In the final phase of the excavation, the steps were cut away to reveal that this part of the mound at least had been constructed in more or less horizontal layers, and had sealed an old ground surface containing occupation debris including Saxo-Norman pottery in wares of Stamford, Thetford and York type. A pit with a 4th-century coin and pottery was also sealed beneath the mound. There was no pottery demonstrably later than the 11th century, and this at least corroborates, if nothing more, the idea that Baile Hill is a primary structure of early Norman date.

Leafy bower

The top of the motte proved to be of a more or less uniform brown sandy clay with occasional pebbles and stones. It was meticulously pared down in 10-centimetre spits in the hope, vain in the event, of locating timber structures. The process did result in the recovery of a wealth of post-medieval bric-à-brac and small change. Presumably the many 18th-century pennies and ha'pennies came from the pockets of those promenading in the leafy bower created on the castle by Alderman Pawson in 1726. Some of the 17th-century objects perhaps arrived there when the mound was remodelled, as its indented top suggests, to take cannon for the city's defence in 1642.

Both the top and sides of the mound were peppered with late medieval arrow tips, indications in this case not of war, but of preparation for war. Musters were held in The Old Baile in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the mound must have served as a butt in the demonstration of prowess demanded of an archer. Pottery was found in quantity, preponderantly 11th and 12th century in date, but always including later sherds. Various fragments of limestone, ashlar, plinths and undressed material could be equated with the construction and recorded periodic repair of the city wall, which still runs across the flank of the mound.

Cobbles

The care lavished on the elucidation of what turned out to be the trivia of Baile Hill's later history left little enough time for the examination of 11th- and 12th-century castle structures when, at a depth of a metre, they were finally located. A preliminary study showed systematically laid cobbling of varying character over most of the quadrant excavated. The cobbles were absent in a broad area at the point where the steps on the side of the mound would have reached the top, perhaps suggesting the position of an entrance. On and among the cobbles were 11th- and 12th-century sherds and objects, and in a thin sandy layer above, apparently an old soil, there was 13th- and 14th-century material. The brief reconnaissance ended at this point, with the clear possibility that the cobbles represent part of an original structure on top of the mound, and that they, and the structure they represent, were abandoned by the 13th century.

The excavation has shown the comparatively early date of Baile Hill, and there is at least a strong possibility that it represents one of the castles of 1068-9. Eleventh- or 12th-century structures are clearly well preserved on its top. The Institute therefore hopes that the continued forbearance and goodwill of York Corporation and its officers will enable it to resume the investigation in 1969.


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