First day of excavations at Oystermouth Castle!

Hi my name is Sven and I’m supervising in Trench 1. The first morning of the excavation was spent setting up the working area. We unloaded 92 security fences, which did not quite take as long as we thought it would, thanks to the diligence of the teams of students and volunteers present that day. They put up with unloading the security fences, the fence footings, and the bags of clips, carrying all of this equipment up the steep hill leading to the castle, setting the fencing up - and all this without complaining (at least not audibly).

The fencing was unloaded by ten, at which point we decided to have a welcome tea break, with tea and kettle arriving just on time accompanied by Rob (who’s in charge of work on site), the tools and the paperwork…

Despite having to cope with uncertainties involved in the start of a dig (or perhaps because of these unexpected challenges), the mood of the whole team was steadily upbeat, and the fencing was all up well before our official lunchtime. As we had to wait for the sheeting anyway, we had an early lunch, eating our sandwiches inside the castle walls.

The afternoon was then spent removing the turf layer over the three trenches that we plan to excavate during this project. Everyone participated eagerly, fighting for the six spades available. However, the spading lot was soon reduced to a handful of enthusiasts, who resiliently provided their teammates with fresh turf at a remarkable pace.

The team from Swansea Metal Detector Club managed to discover a few coins (unfortunately all modern thus far) . We needed special permission from Cadw to use metal detectors on our spoilheaps - without it we would have been liable for fines and having the metal detectors confiscated! We also found the floodlight cable that went through trench 1, while removing turf.

I am sure everyone will sleep well tonight.

Sven Egloff, Assistant Project Officer with GGAT

The Launch of the Dig!

After a week of hectic organisation everything is ready to start preparations for our excavation on Monday. We hope to be able to start opening our first trench by Tuesday morning, so keep your fingers crossed for some good weather. The Projects team of Rob, Andy, Sven and Ellie are looking forward to an exciting three weeks, hopefully full of interesting archaeology and glorious sunshine. See you all soon, lets dig!

Some Photos from the Evaluation..

Excavating Trench A Within the Chapel Block

Recording Trench B

A Summary of the Archaeological Evaluation Inside the Castle

Over a period of two weeks in mid-May a team from GGAT Projects excavated three trenches inside the walls of Oystermouth Castle, one in centre of the chapel block (Trench A) and two in the castle’s inner bailey (Trenches B and C). These exploratory trenches were dug in preparation for proposed visitor facility works to proceed in 2010.


The only structural remains found during the excavation were a well-laid cobbled surface, discovered in Trench A, 9cm below the gravel chippings that forms the buildings current ground surface. This surface was built from angular limestone cobbles varying in size between 19cm and 4cm. We think that the lime mortar bonding the cobbles together dates to the medieval period and that this surface may be the original floor of the chapel block.


Once the turf and underlying sub-soil in Trench B was removed a layer of loose demolition material was revealed, made up of fragments of limestone, broken slate and stone roof tiles, lime mortar and damaged masonry. This layer contained five sherds of medieval pottery; however these may have come from two earlier pockets of light brown sandy clay contained within the demolition material. As this layer was so loose and unstable we think that it may not be of any great age. If there were any medieval structures or signs of occupation in this area of the castle then they have been destroyed.


Below the turf and sub-soil of Trench C was a loosely compacted collection of shells contained within a light brown sandy-clay soil. An environmental sample from this layer was taken in order to identify the species that it contained. These were blue mussel (shown in grey on the plan), cockle, limpet (shown in light-green on the plan), whelk, oyster (shown in light-blue on the plan), periwinkle, pod razor and charcoal fragments (shown as black hatching on the plan). Underneath this collection of shells was a deposit of stone and slate building rubble; this deposit contained the base of a glazed jug made in Bristol dating to the 13th or 14th centuries. Scattered amongst the building rubble were numerous periwinkles, and a sample of these were taken for comparative analysis. The variety of shell species present in the first sample compared with the single species (periwinkle) in the later sample perhaps suggests that the local periwinkle population had been over-fished during the medieval period between the times when the two layers were formed. This theory is supported by a comparison of the size of periwinkle recovered from both samples, with those from the later sample being of a more similar size.

In preparation for the Oystermouth Castle community archaeology project GGAT staff have been carrying out a topograhic survey of the grounds around the castle. This type of surveying technique measures the elevation of points on a particular area of land and plots the results as contour lines on a map. From this survey we can get a good picture of the varied topography around the castle which will also help us plan for future projects and possible excavations.

Helping us with the survey is a school student from Modena, Italy who is with us for two weeks on a work experience placement. This is an excellent training opportunity for Nina who hopes to study archaeology at degree level.