Page 27 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

At this point it might not be inapposite to mention that I
believe that a sculptured head in the Rutland County Museum
belongs to the westernmost minstrel in the north arcade. When it
first came into my hands, I clambered up a ladder and tried it on
all six of the minstrels, and I feel pretty certain that my
assignation is correct despite grudging agreement from Mr S E
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Rigold on stylistic grounds. The head was recovered from the
debris moved from the moat when the foundations for the Post
Office were being dug out in 1953-54, and its discovery was
quite fortuitous.

Figs. 32 & 33. The head recovered
from the moat, and the musician
on the west column of the north
aisle to which it may belong,
photographed c1980
(Rutland County Museum).

Although Mr P W Gathercole was ‘watching’ the site on behalf of the then Ministry of Works, the head
escaped his notice and was carted off in a lorry in the usual manner. But this particular load was not dumped as
levelling material for the Roads and Bridges department of the County Council, but found its way to the garden
of Pickwell Rectory. The driver of the lorry in question lived in this village, and the rector at the time had asked
him for a load of good soil for his rose-beds. It was whilst spreading this unofficial load of soil that the rector
came across the sculptured head, luckily little further damaged than when first severed from its body. We do
not of course know who decapitated the musicians (Cromwell’s men perhaps?), but what more natural than to
toss the loose heads into the moat? (In general perhaps Cromwell’s men did less harm in this than in many
others, although we presume it was the Puritans who were responsible for the decapitations in the Castle, and
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we know that Oakham School’s library was ‘rifled’ during the Civil War (Wase Papers – pp107-113). This
happier state of affairs is usually attributed to the personality of Fairfax, the Commonwealth commander in the
area, and to the fact that he was father-in-law to the 1st Duke of Buckingham. No doubt also he exerted some
influence in seeing that Buckingham regained his land at the Restoration).

7. Loose masonry within the hall
In addition to the beastie mentioned at an earlier point, there are a number of pieces of Roman masonry
preserved. There was no room for them in the Oakham School Museum, and I won permission for them to be
lodged in the Castle. They came from some rescue excavations conducted for the Ministry of Works by Mr E
Greenfield to the north of the Market Overton to Thistleton road, and were probably part of a large villa or even
a temple complex. The stone with a hole in it was a column base with a secondary usage as a well-head, whilst
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the remainder are column drums.

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8. The horseshoes
This is a subject about which I know very little, and throughout my enquiries about the Castle it has been the
subject that least aroused my interest. Having said that, I feel disposed nonetheless to make just three
observations. Firstly, I do not believe that Queen Elizabeth I ever visited Oakham nor that the ascription of a
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large horseshoe to her is correct: she may never have come nearer to Oakham than Burghley House.
Secondly, over the doorway into the petty sessions room is a small horseshoe, to which is attached an amusing
little story.

25
Emmerson (1981) is in accord with JLB on this matter.
26 See J L Barber, The Wase Papers in the Bodleian Library, Rutland Record 6 (1986), 212-13.
27 This Roman masonry is now in Rutland County Museum.
28 See T H McK Clough, The Horseshoes of Oakham Castle (1999).
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Indeed the horseshoe referred to is now thought most likely to have been put up by Edward IV in 1470 (Clough 1999, 8-10).
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