Excavation

Date 21 January 2003 - 30 January 2003

Event ID 1034301

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1034301

Under the terms of its P.I.C. call-off contract with Historic Scotland, Kirkdale Archaeology was asked to monitor excavations at Edinburgh Castle in the SE corner of Crown Square, the central courtyard area of the upper citadel. This was a continuation of a trench that was dug under archaeological supervision at the beginning of 2002, in the Square’s SW corner. The original excavation had a twofold purpose: to allow the insertion of a large service trench, big enough to take further services in the future as required; and to allow the insertion of a clay membrane, to alleviate problems with water seeping into the vaults below. This second phase of work involved only the digging of the service trench, so a narrower area, 8.90m E-W, by 1.90mm N-S, was opened up, although due to the large paving slabs covering Crown Square an area of 10.00m by 2.75m saw its paving removed. The trench was mechanically dug using a mini-excavator with an archaeologist present at all times

Crown Square today is a large paved area on the summit of the Castle rock, with the Palace forming its E side, the Great Hall its S side, the Queen Anne Building its W side, and the Scottish National War Memorial its N side. The square slopes down to both S and E, and sits partially upon an elaborate series of vaults, the most substantial lying under the SW corner, but smaller systems running under the S edge of the square, and under the Palace block to the E. Parts of the Palace block, which sit on their own independent system of vaults, date back to 1440, and the Great Hall, which lies above much of the main series of vaults, is thought to date to the years immediately after 1500 AD.

The trench was near the SE corner of the Square, orientated E-W, parallel to, and some 3.40m to the N of, the Great Hall, with its E end some 4.00m W of the Palace (Fig. 1).

This trench produced some very similar results to those uncovered in the previous work, although with a number of new points being raised. The bedrock encountered showed clear signs of quarrying along the N side of the trench, presumably to facilitate the construction of the vault below, which at this point is the eastmost accessed from the ‘Devil’s Elbow’, now used as a boiler room. This is in contrast to that at the E end, where it rose smoothly towards the Palace, indicating that at least the W side of this structure sits on a ridge of bedrock, dropping again on the E side of the Palace, where another series of vaults underlies it. F018 may be the uppermost stonework of the boiler room vault, but too little was exposed to be certain of this. The wall F015 is a continuation of that found in the previous trench, then forming the back wall of the two vaults that the trench was dug over. This wall was thought to have been reused as the N wall of the vaults, due to its substantial size, and ragged, evidently reduced upper surface. The damaged E end to F015 supports this, although the wall has never been bottomed, and may continue E of this below the base of the trench.

The substantial (at least 1m thick) sequence of dumps on top of these is also closely paralleled in the previous excavation, including the use of midden, sand, rubble and clay-rich soils. This all presumably reflects a large scale levelling operation, once the vaults had been constructed, to create Crown Square. This operation was carried out on a considerable scale, although presumably the deepest parts of this would have been along the S side of the square, and the different contexts noted need reflect little more than the discrete sources used in this operation. What, or rather where, these sources were is a question of some interest, especially in light of the rich artefactual and ecofactual assemblages recovered from the midden deposits. It seems likely that much of this material will have been imported in specifically for the job from outside the Castle, although presumably the considerable quantities of waste left by a large-scale building operation such as the construction of the vaults will have been used. There is no evidence of any hiatus in this operation, apart from the possible temporary surfaces near the E end of the trench, until F004, the crushed white sandstone at the top of the sequence. As noted above this seems likely to be a deliberate bedding deposit, for some kind of surface, now removed, the truncation of which seems to increase towards the E, implying that this end once stood higher. It is unfortunate that the three cuts in the top of F004, all of which were sealed by the modern paving, produced no dateable finds, as their significance must remain uncertain.

G Ewart 2003

Sponsor: Historic Scotland

Kirkdale Archaeology