Minster, Manor and Town: Excavations at Berkeley Castle 2004-2019

 For our second talk in February, we were lucky enough to welcome Dr Stuart Prior who talked about excavations at and around Berkeley Castle where he was Co-Director over a 14 year period. The background to the project, up until the current day when they are launching a new community collaborative project at Lower Hazel can be found here.

I looked up the village of Berkeley on Wikipedia and it gave me the following information:

 'Berkeley is a small town and parish in Gloucestershire, England. It lies in the Vale of Berkeley between the east bank of the River Severn and the M5 motorway, within the Stroud administrative district. The town is noted for Berkeley Castle, where the imprisoned Edward II was murdered, as well as the birthplace of the physician Edward Jenner, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The parish includes the village of Berkeley Heath, which runs along the A38 Bristol to Gloucester road and the adjacent B4066 towards Berkeley.' 

Stuart started by saying that it was important to understand minsters, and their role in the birth of christianity. There are lots of minsters in the area of Gloucestershire where Berkeley Castle is situated, they are generally a days walking distance apart which I think Stuart said was 14 miles. The Norman feudal castle became a minster in 660AD, before this Berkeley lay in the Kingdom of Hwicce which means witch. Berkeley is a double house minster, housing monks one side and nuns on the other side, and is the longest continuously occupied building in England.

There is evidence of a Roman wall in the excavations, there were Roman villas nearby and it's not far from the Fosse Way. The photo below shows where the wall was situated if you click on the link above:

I was more interested in what artefacts were found, to a beginner like me, this seems to be the most exciting part of archaeology. There were something like 20000 artefacts discovered, some were displayed in the windows of people's houses in 2016 leading to the team receiving an award for Archaeology Research Project of the Year

I made a note of 3 artefacts: a high status ring from 9-10th Century, an astel, which is a page turner so the reader doesn't get the paper greasy, and a whetstone.

The talk was videoed and appears on our website where you can find quite a few of the talks we have had. If the talk doesn't appear on there, it's because the speaker was new to Zoom and requested that we didn't video it.

I've added these two photos, the first is an aerial view and below another photo of people working on the dig.

If you are interested in being involved in working on the Lower Hazel dig this summer when restrictions are lifted, then please contact me, and I'm hoping we can visit in person later on in the year. I'm not setting dates yet...

 

Two Talks in February

It's easy to miss what's going on at the moment, so here's a reminder about our two February talks. The first one is next Wednesday 17 February at 7.30pm when we are very pleased to say that our Friend's Patron, Dr Desmond Morris will talk about various things, including:

My family history in Swindon, the start of the local newspaper and the Swindon Museum. 1930s - my early childhood in Swindon (1933-39) the Swindon cinemas

Wartime in Swindon – my private lake, now Queen’s Park, Groundwell Road bombed.

My discovery of surrealism in 1944

Diana Dors and my painting of her in 1946 (now in art gallery)

First solo exhibition in Swindon in 1948

Chiseldon Army College and the Bomford Collection

London show with Miro in 1950

Leave Swindon in 1951

After Swindon- The Naked Ape and body language

 Today at the age of 93

A reminder of the paintings we have of his in the Swindon Collection:

This 'Girl Selling Flowers' painted when Desmond was 18 and going out with Diana Dors.The painting below is called 'The Mysterious Gift'

This promises to be a very special evening, a Zoom link will be sent beforehand to all members of the Friends.

Our second talk, a week later, on 24 February at 7.30pm, is by Dr Stuart Prior of Bristol University, well known as Co-Director of the Berkeley Castle excavations from 2004-2019.

This Zoom Talk will investigate the 15-year-long University of Bristol excavations and landscape research at the Berkeley Castle estate in south Gloucestershire. The excavation project aimed to build up a detailed picture of the history and archaeology of the castle and the associated settlement of Berkeley. The focus for the project can best be described as ‘Minster, Manor and Town’. By combining the results of detailed archaeological fieldwork with information contained in the castle’s impressive collection of 20,000 historical documents, the project adds to the knowledge and understanding of the early medieval period and the subsequent changes in landscape and society that occurred with the coming of the Normans and the erection of a castle on the former minster site. Dr Stuart Prior will cover many aspects from the excavations around Berkeley Castle and town and will also include a look at the trenches excavated in the Jenner museum garden as well as aspects of Community Archaeology undertaken with the Berkeley residents.