Notes on Sir Alfred Clapham, architect and, it appears
an archeologist:
"one of the greatest authorities
on romanesque architecture and sculpture"...
<Http://www.benefice.org.uk/breedon-church-story/part_07.php>
- - 1912 - excavation of 'Barking Abbey' (a roman church founded 666 A.D.)
but didn't find the X [Cross?] for which he was looking. Later, in
1937 during development work around the site evidences of what he was looking
for were found, but not quite what he had been expecting to find.
- - 1910 - excavations at Barking Abbey to locate a Saxon Nunnery....
- - below excepts from Sir Alfred Clapham's book on the excavations
titled "The Castle"
ROMAN SIGNAL STATION, CASTLE, PARISH CHURCH
ROMAN SIGNAL STATION
The first occupants of the Castle headland formed a village settlement
in the early Iron Age, although the earliest visible remains are those
of the Roman Signal Station.
It was late in the Roman occupation, soon after A.D. 370 when the Signal
Station on the Castle Hill was built. These signal stations were erected
to cope with piratical raiders, but although manned by garrisons, their
prime purpose was not defence; they were intended as look-out stations
from which
warning of enemy approach could be sent along the coast
and to inland Roman garrisons.
(Source: Sir Alfred Clapham)
THE CASTLE
The remains of the
Castle dominate the town, and well illustrate the great advance in the
scale and skill of castle building effected during the latter half of the
twelfth century. The first ward is entered through a barbican, the second
across a bridge which was rebuilt in 1937-38; there was a third ward to
the north, and in the innermost, or bailey, stands the square keep, still
in part 80 feet high, with three storeys above a basement 55 feet square.
South-east of it, excavation in 1888 revealed foundations of a hall with
great chamber, kitchen, etc; and in 1921-25, Mr F G Simpson excavated the
plan of the chapel and other buildings near the edge of the sea-cliff.
The Roman Signal
Station was also excavated by him on this spot: it had consisted of a high
square tower within a bastioned curtain-wall, berm, and ditch, and belongs
to the well-known series of signal stations built on the Yorkshire coast
later in the fourth century, to give protection against Saxon and other
sea-raiders.
The excavations
here also revealed the pits of an Early Iron Age settlement, established
by immigrants apparently from the Low Countries at the very beginning of
the period probably within the fifth century B.C.
(Source: Mr P K Baillie
Reynolds)
The following are some landmarks in the history of the
Castle:
* Some 70 or more
years after Hardrada raided Scarborough, William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle,
who led the army of the Yorkshire Barons at the Battle of the Standard,
fought in 1138 near Northallerton, built the first Castle at Scarborough.
* King John visited
Scarborough Castle in 1201, 1210, 1213 and again in 1216. King Edward I
held court at the Castle in 1275 and, when Richard III visited Scarborough
in 1484, one of the towers on the curtain wall was occupied by the Queen.
* In all, the Castle
underwent five sieges, in 1312, 1536, 1557 and in 1644-45 and again in
1648.
* In the Civil War,
Scarborough was ultimately the only royalist port on the East Coast, and
it was not until 1645, with the garrison worn out and stores exhausted
that the Castle surrendered to Parliament.
* For more than
a year (1665-66), George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, was
imprisoned in the ruined Charles’ Tower of the Castle. Here he suffered
great hardships, before he was released by order of King Charles II.
* Construction
of barrack in 1746, following the alarm caused by the Jacobite Rebellion
the previous year.
* In
1914, during the Great War, the German fleet bombarded the town and Castle.
The keep was damaged and the 17th century barracks almost entirely destroyed.
PARISH CHURCH OF ST MARY
The Church of St Mary
belonged to the Abbey of Citeaux, but passed to Bridlington with the confiscation
of the property of the Alien Houses. The twelfth century church was probably
an aisle-less building and a must larger new church was begun around it
c.1180. The W. front, formerly with two towers, is the earliest part of
this structure and was followed by the nave arcades of which the arches
sit irregularly upon cylindrical piers. This may mean that the bays and
piers were inserted individually in the walls of the earlier nave. The
western part of the S. arcade has a thinner wall and a different type of
pier rather later date than the rest. The surviving S. transept was built
in the second quarter of the fourteenth century and late in the same century
the barrel-vaulted chapels were added to the S. aisle and a second aisle
was added on the N. The aisled chancel was rebuilt about the middle of
the fifteenth century. It was much damaged in the siege of the Castle in
1644-45, and ruined by the fall of the central tower in 1659; the N. transept
also fell into ruin. The present tower was built in 1669 and the outer
N. aisle in 1848-50. In a detached part of the burial ground is buried
Anne Brontë, who died on 28 May 1849 aged 28.
(Source: Sir Alfred Clapham) ??59 b. c.1491 Helpeston,
Peterborough, Northhamptonshire, England ?? |