Medieval millstone-capped cesspit found at Newark Castle

Archaeologists excavating Newark Castle in Nottinghamshire have discovered a medieval cesspit covered by an old millstone. A team from Pre-Construct Archaeology are investigating the castle as it undergoes a major renovation. The cesspit was found at the outflow of the 13th/14th century garderobes (toilets that were basically niches built into castle walls with open holes over a shaft that disgorged waste into a ditch or moat).

Rebecca Nichols, a senior project manager from Pre-Construct Archaeology, which is overseeing the works, said the team were “very surprised” when they made the discovery.

Ms Nichols said the team had found a cesspit or soakaway, capped with a worn millstone but added “we’re not quite sure which one yet”.

She said the facility was “pretty standard really, what you would expect”.

“But we weren’t expecting to find anything. We thought everything had been stripped away in the 19th and 20th Century,” Ms Nichols said.

Newark Castle was first built as the palace of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln in the first half of the 12th century. When construction began in 1123, it was an earth and timber fortification. By the end of the century, it had been rebuilt as a formidable stone castle.

King John of Magna Carta fame, brother of King Richard the Lionhearted, died at the castle in 1216 when he contracted dysentery during the First Barons’ War. He was in the middle of a campaign against the rebels barons, bouncing from Lincoln in the north, to King’s Lynn in the east (where he caught the dysentery that would kill him) then westward to Newark-on-Trent. He was hosted at Newark Castle and apparently ate so many peaches that when he died that night, the chroniclers blamed his peach binge for his death.

The castle was besieged three times by Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War. The castle held out, but when Cromwell’s side won the war, they took their revenge on the castle by having it slighted (deliberately destroyed) in 1648. It was left a derelict shell until the mid-19th century when it was reconstructed. The city of Newark acquired the castle in 1889 and inaugurated a new garden within its walls in honor of Queen Victoria.

In 2022, the district council began working on a redevelopment of the castle that would reopen its original Romanesque gatehouse, the most complete example of its kind in England, and create five new galleries inside the castle to explain its history. They also planned to create a viewing platform at the top of the tower to give visitors the best view of the area, and improve accessibility for people with mobility devices. The Victorian garden will be getting revamped as well, with new lighting installed and new native species planted.

Renovations finally began this year, and the archaeological investigation has revealed more of the early castle remains survived than they expected to find. In addition to the cesspit, a stone retaining wall was found that is of great significance.

After assessing the stone thickness and style, it is thought that this wall is part of the earliest phase of the stone Castle (the magnificent stone structure that currently stands was probably preceded by an earth and timber castle). This discovery has reshaped our understanding of how the Castle may have looked; the ditch seems to have only partially encircled the Castle.

* This article was originally published here