Last night I was at Clyro Village Hall for a meeting of the Cusop History Group, where archaeologist Tim Hoverd was giving a progress report on the findings from the Cusop Castle Dig this summer.
I don't think I've ever been in Clyro Village Hall before. There is no parking attached to the hall, unlike Cusop Village Hall, but the friend who gave me a lift was able to park close to the entrance because we arrived early for an informal meeting of the committee. I'm pretty sure the hall used to have a stage - at the end where the speaker stood there is now a flat wall, but on either side there are doors up a short flight of steps, so it looks to me as if there is a stage area behind that wall. I picked up on this because the junior school I went to had done the same thing, to fit an extra classroom in where the stage had been.
They also have a very well stocked drinks cabinet in the kitchen - probably because the hall hosts a pop up pub!
Tim was able to report that the three pieces of medieval pottery that were found near the bottom of Trench 3 have been sent off to the specialists in Birmingham for analysis. One piece is part of a cooking pot, there's a jug handle, and a piece of glazed pottery which would have been better quality and more expensive pottery.
He also showed slides of the coin that was found - a Charles II farthing - and a piece of iron with a small iron frill with holes in it along one side, which was a purse clasp. The holes were used to attach the fabric of the purse. These were from a later period that we were hoping to find, but the site has had an interesting history after the medieval period, including a substantial building and allotments, as well as a marl pit (used to spread on the fields of nearby farms) and a rubbish tip (filling up holes like the marl pit, when it went out of use).
The ramparts on the side towards the church were also much more substantial than they now appear (more Victorian pottery and animal bones showing that the ditch was also used to dump rubbish). The trench outside the rampart didn't get to the bottom of the ditch, and it went down 1.2 metres.
So, the castle probably wasn't a castle. It certainly was a defensive ringwork, but it seems not to have been used as a military site after it was built. The earliest evidence of occupation on the site was a building where metal was being smelted, possibly in the 12th to 13th century. This was quite common in the Marches - Mouse Castle was quite probably never finished as a castle, and the motte and bailey at Longtown was built and then never used, because the military activity had moved on further into Wales. The reports of old people in the area remembering a stone gatehouse on the site, which were written down by a Victorian antiquarian, are probably memories of the 17th century stone building when it was demolished - and it was never part of a castle.
The evidence provided by the dig has been very useful in showing the actual use of the site, and has also thrown up new questions such as: What was the building shown on the 1772 map? Why was it built so it cut into the rampart nearest to the church? Who was dumping their rubbish there? Why was the road across the site re-routed around the outside of the ramparts?
The full report should be ready by Christmas - but it's only one of the projects that Tim has been working on this year. He's also been busy with the Arthur's Stone dig, the Snodhill Castle dig, and the Dorstone community dig.
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