Clavering Castle

 

 

An archaeological investigation in the summer of 2025 has transformed our understanding of Clavering’s castle. Led by Simon Coxall, the dig involved just two trenches. The information that those holes in the ground revealed was enough to rewrite our understanding of the rise – and fall – of what must have been one of the most prestigious buildings in the local area.

 

Clavering’s castle stood on a moated site to the west of the parish church. Talking to Newport’s local history group in March, Simon explained how the present church was built adjacent to an earlier chapel dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The chapel marked the miraculous event said to have occurred when Edward the Confessor gave a valuable ring to a beggar, who turned out to be none other than St John the Evangelist. We know that the site was visited by Henry III in 1251.

 

Clavering was clearly an important medieval manor. Simon summarised the descent of the aristocratic families that had occupied the site. The castle was built by Robert Fitzwymarc, one of the few aristocrats from before the Conquest to survive and prosper after 1066. ‘Robert’s castle’ was constructed on a platform created by 30,000 square metres of soil thrown up from the excavation of the moat and from the adjoining fields in Clavering. The labour involved must have been immense – an indication of Fitzwymarc’s power.

 

The moat involved the re-engineering of part of the river Stort, which continues to flow through the village. Through close analysis of hydrological data, Simon showed that the current position of the ford in Middle Street had shifted from where it would have been prior to the castle being built.

 

Fitzwymarc’s property passed to the de Clavering family (after Henry of Essex was defeated in a trial by combat). From the de Claverings it passed in the 14^th century to the powerful Neville family, owners of huge estates in the north of England.

 

The castle’s final owner was Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, daughter of the Duke of Clarence (the unlucky brother of Edward IV and Richard III, who met his fate in 1478). Margaret was in turn executed by Henry VIII in 1541 as part of his attempt to annihilate all traces of the Plantagenet family line. Margaret’s execution was followed by the systematic razing of the castle at Clavering.

 

Any archaeological dig involves significant amounts of work both before, and after, the point at which any spade hits the ground. Driven by the Clavering Landscape History Group the investigation  began with geophysical readings taken in 2020/21, revealing the lines of earlier buildings on the site. This evidence was assessed to inform the placing of two trenches, one across the entranceway to what appeared to be one of the courtyards constructed on the castle platform, and the other in a spot less likely to have been disturbed by later periods of construction at the site.

 

Scheduled monument consent was required before any digging could commence. Investigation could not be carried out on the site of what would have been the castle’s main hall, since this part of the castle platform has now been colonized by a sett of badgers. Much of the dig involved disentangling evidence of the castle from the detritus left by the phase of its eventual demolition.

 

The dig, in the blazing heat of June 2025, produced almost no finds dating to later than 1550, demonstrating the complete erasure of the castle from the landscape at the time of its destruction. Equally, there was not a great deal of material from before c.1000 AD. Such early pottery as was found such as one fragment of a Romano-British mortarium had been brought to the site within the material used to construct the mound. A part of a human mandible (jaw bone) found in the gatehouse trench was likely to have ended up there as a consequence of an animal digging it up from the nearby churchyard.

 

The trenches produced more than two and a half thousand pieces of animal bone, and a great many medieval nails and roof tiles used in the construction of the (wooden) castle buildings (the castle probably resembled the still-standing Stokesay Castle in Shropshire). Oyster shells were found in significant quantities, being the medieval equivalents of builders’ packets of crisps. Trench one revealed the surface of the roadway leading into the castle, as well as part of the wall of the gatehouse.

 

The post-dig analysis has involved careful assessment of the stratification of the finds. This has enabled the reconstruction of the likely history of the castle. Augmented over time by a gatehouse and a double courtyard, the complex was then ordered to be destroyed. The demolition was swift and brutal, and involved the covering-over of whatever remnants of the building couldn’t otherwise be removed and reused. A metre’s depth of archaeology reflects 500 years of occupation. Since c.1550, when this act of destruction took place, a thin layer (c16cm) of top soil has accumulated over the platform, which otherwise reveals no immediately visible clues to its past.

 

Just two holes in the ground, therefore, and a great deal of effort on the part of Simon and his team of volunteer archaeologists, has thrown new light on Clavering Castle, a building that stood for just 500 years.

 

We were thrilled that Simon came to Newport to tell us the story. Perhaps one day archaeological investigation might solve the mystery of whether Newport ever had a similar castle – said by some to be located on the site of what is now the Joyce Frankland Academy.

 

 

Ben Cowell