Tregruk is one of the largest medieval castles in Great Britain - epic walls and towers surround a huge bailey. But the centre of the castle stands empty, so what on earth filled this fortress 600 years ago? Time Team had been called in to work out what made up the heart of this Welsh stronghold.
Until a few years ago the interior of the castle had been full of trees and although these had been cut down, the stumps still littered the site. This was going to be a problem for John Gater and the geophysics team as they had to try survey around these random stumps. What's more we didn't even know if their results would tell the difference between a wall and a root.
The inside of the castle was empty but there was no missing the huge defensive circuit around the outside. So Phil opened the first trench in the main entrance to work out the layout of the defences - for example; was there a portcullis, where was the drawbridge and how did you access the bailey?
Back in the centre of the castle we expected to find great halls, stables, kitchens, basically all the buildings needed to support the owners and their household. The geophysics certainly showed big anomalies, but were they buildings or the remains of the wood? Matt put in a trench on one of the best targets and found & absolutely no archaeology. Unperturbed he opened another trench on the next most likely target in the hunt for buildings.
In the gate trench, things were becoming complicated. Phil believed the original entrance was about 7 feet above the current ground surface. His theory was that there would have been a drawbridge leading out of the castle, but the only problem was there was nowhere for this high drawbridge to go, the land outside sloped away sharply - so what was going on?
Stewart Ainsworth provided the clue that began to unravel the mystery of this site. He'd discovered a series of Civil War defences surrounding the castle that were confusing our theories. Not only that, the castle had been remodelled in the 17th century to form a striking centrepiece for the grand gardens of a local manor house. All this work could have disturbed the archaeology. Stewart also dropped another bombshell, he didn't think we were digging the main entrance at all. He believed it was on the far side of site.
By lunch time on Day Three we'd opened three trenches in the interior and had only a roof tile and a robbed out wall to show for it. Despite all this we knew there should be buildings - the historical accounts clearly mentioned them. It seemed that Civil War and 17th century re-working had removed almost all traces of them.
At least Phil had solved the gate mystery; there had been a drawbridge and the ground level it led to had been quarried away during the Civil War. This history of this castle was more complex than anyone had realised. The later re-working had been extensive and had removed much of the evidence of the structures we hoped to find.
Stewart had also discovered the earthworks for what he thought might be the main gate. One trench later and finally we'd found something we were looking for. We uncovered two towers, one either side of a carriageway that would have acted as the main entrance into the bailey.
After three days of surprises Mick revealed yet another - this castle may have not been the defensive stronghold we'd thought but a medieval pleasance'. Instead of a fortress it was the pleasure dome of its day. Inside the imposing walls there could have actually been gardens, lawns, even fountains - no wonder our trench in that area hadn't hit any buildings!
By the end of the dig we hadn't uncovered any solid structures in the interior. Despite this we had reclassified the castle from stronghold to pleasance; basically when locals became restless, the owners could simply retire behind the mighty walls and enjoy the pleasure gardens of Tregruk Castle.
