posted 02-01-2000 02:43 PM           

This piece of interesting castle news is brought to us via Britain's Castle
Studies Group. The full article is found in the group's 1999-2000
newsletter. I encourage those of you who have not already visited the CSG
web site to do so in the near future, and discover what the CSG all about
and learn what's going on in the field of castle study and research in
Britain today!

http://www.castlewales.com/csg.html

HEADLINE: Earliest castle doors in Britain discovered at Chepstow Castle

At a conference in April this year organised by the Chepstow Museum on
recent research at Chepstow Castle, Cadw announced that dendrochronological
dating had revealed that the average tree-ring felling date range for the
timbers used in the pair of oak doors, which had hung until 1964, in the
outer gatehouse of the castle, was between 1159 and 1189. Dan Miles of the
Oxford Dendrochronological Laboratory described how he has used a
micro-boring technique to obtain these dates. He had also dated the oak
doors between the barbican and the upper bailey of the castle, in this case
by measuring tree rings visible in the end-grain of the horizontal planks.
This demonstrated that the doors were made sometime in the middle of the
16th century. Similarity in their design to the elm doors between the middle
and lower baileys and that at the entrance to the Marten's Tower suggests
that they were all approximately contemporary replacements for earlier
doors.

Dan Miles' analysis of the carpentry used in the gatehouse doors had shown
that they were also remarkable as representing the earliest use of timber
converted through sawing and of developed mortice and tenon joints to be
identified anywhere in Britain or northern France. Added to this, externally
the doors had been sheathed in wrought iron for extra protection against
attack. Finally, and critical to our understanding of the significance of
the doors to the dating of the gatehouse, they were constructed from green
or unseasoned oak within a year or two of felling, and had been built as
one, not from re-used timber.

Richard Avent was faced with the task of reconciling these dates with the
previously accepted dating of the outer gatehouse to William Marshal's sons
sometime between 1219 and 1245. He argued that the gatehouse could not have
been constructed before the castle came into William Marshal's hands through
his marriage to Isabel de Clare in 1189, as Richard de Clare's estates had
been in the wardship of the Crown since his death in 1176. Another piece of
corroborative evidence came in the form of a Henry II silver Short Cross
penny, minted sometime from 1183 onwards and subsequently deliberately cut
in half, which Kevin Booth had found in the construction levels of the
gatehouse during his excavation of 1991. If the gatehouse had been built as
Marshal's first work at the castle, it would have been the earliest rounded
medieval twin-towered gatehouse in Britain, but that might well accord with
the advance techniques used in the construction of the doors.

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Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them, Psychiatrists charge the rent, art therapists do the interior design and nurses clean out the garderobes!
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