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Excavation
Date 17 April 2008 - 11 September 2008
Event ID 579098
Category Recording
Type Excavation
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/579098
NS 7899 9403 Two excavations took place between the 17 April–11 September 2008 as part of the Stirling Castle Palace Project (SCPP) in advance of restoration works.
SCPP-2008-04 & SCPP-2008-12 – Excavation between the Governor’s Kitchen and the King’s Old Buildings – The area to the NW of the main Palace block comprised three discrete spaces, numbered from W to E during the main investigation into the Palace as P19, P20 and S07.
Early masonry made up the N and W walls of the ‘Governors Kitchen’, as well as the ‘corridor’ running around the W end of the building. This phase may be summarised as consisting of an E/W rectangular structure, with a corridor built around at least its W end. This is thought to be the castle chapel dating back to at least the 12th century, with the corridor providing access to the W end of this building, an arrangement perhaps necessitated by liturgical reasons.
These apertures were later blocked and a substantial amount of material introduced across much of the site.
Most of these layers are characterised by a concentration of charcoal, although a number of dumps of crushed sandstone indicate demolition or construction material. A relatively large amount of bone was recovered from these deposits, but few other finds. Although divided into numerous generally thin layers, much of this material probably came from the same sort of source, possibly from middens within the castle. A
variety of later structural remains and modern services were also uncovered.
SCPP-2008-10 – Excavation above the vault of the Princes Tower – Three small trenches were excavated in the first floor (above vault level) Prince’s Tower. Trench 1 was in the NE corner of the room, trench 2 the NW corner and trench 3 along the S wall of the room.
Structures were identified that possibly pre-date the vault of the Princes Tower. The structures were all seen at or below the current ground level. The height of the structure of which they formed part is not known. The suggestion is that it continued down to where there is now a vault. However they may have continued upwards and been demolished immediately before the construction of the existing building.
The top of the vault was only seen in small parts of both of the N trenches, where it was an uneven surface and would have sloped steeply to the E and W. Levelling deposits raised the ground level by up to 400mm at the E and W ends of the vault but petered out in the central part above the crown.
Above this was a clay deposit, possibly a floor surface, although there was no surviving evidence of anything being laid on the clay. An earlier fireplace was glimpsed behind and below the current one in the N wall and includes a structure up to 230mm below the current floor level, at roughly the same level as the clay ‘floor’.
The current floor is dated to the 19th–20th centuries and the dusty loose deposits below it yielded a single coin of possible 17th-century French origin.
Kirkdale Archaeology
Funder: Historic Scotland
Alan Radley 2008
