GGAT News Archive
15th February 2010
Archaeologists discover more about history of Aberystwyth school site
As part of the works to build an extension to Plas Crug Primary School in Aberystwyth, an archaeological watching brief has revealed a fascinating structure, which was actually under the existing school building.
Historical documents (Brut y Tywysogion) dating back to the twelfth century talk about storming and burning a castle called ‘Aber-rheidol in 1164. Although we don’t know where this castle was, we thought it might have been on the site of Plas Crug School. The school is close to the mouth of the Rheidol River, between Llanbadarn Fawr and the medieval town of Aberystwyth, as described by the documents
Before the school was built, there was a farmstead on the site, and there are lots of paintings, drawings and early photographs to show what it looked like. It was a fortified mansion, with a square tower. The tower was quite famous during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and was an attraction for people sightseeing in the area. They describe a ruined, fortified building on an outcrop overlooking the floodplain of the river. Their drawings and paintings show battlements on the top of the tower, and the entrance on the first-floor entrance. These are features we would expect in a medieval building, possibly even going back to the twelfth century. On the other hand, it might have been built or rebuilt during the later eighteenth century by the Powells of Nanteos as a folly. By the end of the eighteenth century, it had been incorporated into a farmhouse.
We found two quite substantial walls and part of a third wall, forming three sides of a square building. They might have been built in the medieval period, as the stones look as though they were bonded with clay, which is typical of medieval structures. However, mortar in some parts of the wall appears to be of quite a late type, showing that the walls were rebuilt much later. We were able to dig to check the width of one of the walls, and it was found to be 0.82m thick. The building originally had a cobbled floor, though later on a concrete floor had been laid on top. It appeared to have been used at least into the nineteenth century, as the walls had been covered in plaster on top of an earlier layer of whitewash. There was also an iron boiler in the corner of the room.
Having finished the excavations, we think that the walls we found are the base of the tower. It seems to have medieval origins, but was extensively rebuilt at a later date, and we still don’t know whether its appearance in the paintings and drawings is how it looked in the Middle Ages.
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18th January 2010
Hammerscale samples taken during excavations at Cardiff Castle
The processing of hammerscale samples taken during excavations at Cardiff Castle has revealed some interesting and surprising finds! Before the castle was built a series of four Roman forts were built on the site, one after the other. The first was constructed around AD55-60 and the last was occupied into the 5th century AD. The medieval castle was built in the 11th century using some of the previous Roman defences, inlcuding walls. During the late 19th and early 20th century the 3rd and 4th Marquesses of Bute commissioned considerable reconstruction of the medieval castle. Some of the hammerscale samples were taken from the location of the present Interpretation Centre building before it was built, to the east of the Barbican Tower which is part of the main gateway into the castle. The excavation revealed part of a Roman road and evidence of industrial activity, such as kilns and pits of hammerscale and slag. Hammerscale are the scale-like fragments of metal, which break off when striking a heated metal object with a hammer in ordered to shape it.
In order for the hammerscale samples to be analysed by a specialist they must first undergo wet sieving. Initially the samples are submerged in a bucket of water and swirled around by hand to loosen the hammerscale from any other material in the sample. Then the mixture is poured through two interlocking sieves placed one above the other, the sieve with the finest mesh being at the bottom to collect the smaller scales, leaving the lager scales and other objects of similar size (including stones) in the top sieve. The process is helped by rubbing the finer material through the upper sieve with fingertips, much in the same way as you would when sieving flour but a lot rougher on the hands and nails! Pouring water into the upper sieve helps the finer scales to pass through the mesh to be collected on the lower sieve. Once this stage is complete the material in each sieve must be kept separate and dried in order to be sent to a specialist for further analysis.
During the wet sieving of these samples some burnt bone fragments, a copper bead and Roman pottery were found. The pottery sherds include Samian, Black-burninish, and greyware, one piece of which is decorated with an incised design. But perhaps the most intriguing find was a bright green tooth that appears to be human! It is open to debate how the tooth came to be there, but it is likely that the unusual colouring was caused by the copper waste. The tooth and pottery sherds are particularly interesting they came from an area known to be associated with the earliest Roman fort at the site, dating to the 1st century. We are looking forward to the results from the specialist’s analysis, so watch this space!
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