Goltho Manor

Description

Early medieval settlement, motte and bailey, and medieval village consisting of a moat, and crofts with buildings, seen as cropmarks and earthworks. Excavation revealed an early medieval ringwork and medieval motte and tower. Roman features have been recorded separately (TF 17 NW 37). The motte and bailey has been levelled and the site cultivated. (PastScape)

The chronology of the site has been given as follows: A Romano-British settlement of late 1st and 2nd century date, including a substantial Roman building. An unenclosed settlement of middle Saxon date, including timber and clay buildings, predated the development of a serise of fortified enclosures. A stave-built hall, bower, kitchen and weaving shed were constructed around 850, surrounded by a defensive rampart and ditch. A sequence of rebuildings was followed by a replanning in the period around 1000-1080 within a larger enclosure, again surrounded by a rampart and ditch. Around 1080 a motte and bailey castle was constructed. The motte lay in the north east of a rectangular earthwork enclosed with a gatehouse and a bridge located to the east side. Two successive single-aisled halls of clay with vertical posts provided domestic accomodation. In the mid 12th century the bailey banks were pulled in to create a flat-topped mound for a timber aisled hall and ancillary buildings which was adandoned shortly afterwards. By the mid-12th century the manor is believed to have been in the hands of the Kyme family. Aerial photographs show the site both before and after it was levelled with the ditch showing as a cropmark following the destruction of the site. The site of the motte and bailey was formerly contained within a scheduled area including the earthwork remains of the medieval settlement. The whole site was descheduled in 1982. (PastScape–ref. Drury, D. 14-SEP-1998 English Heritage Alternative Action Report)

Paul Everson suggests that the finds and documentary evidence supports a later dating - at the earliest in the late 1130s; with a possible enforced slighting of the earthworks in c. 1217 (Lincolnshire HER)

This is a site than has undergone a rare extensive and detailed excavation and was found to have had a complex history. This started as a Saxon defended manorial site and had the earthworks modified on several occasions (and timber buildings rebuilt) including use as a Norman castle. The excavation of this site was utterly destructive turning what looked to be a straightforward motte and bailey into a cropmark, undetectable on the ground. However without such an intense excavation the earlier Anglo-Saxon manor and the development of the site from a Ringwork to a Motte and Bailey is unlikely to have been understood or even known. One of the most important sites in castle studies but, as can be seen by the limited online information, one little known outside academic fields.