Page 29 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

Fig. 37 (left). Indications of the slope of the roof
of a now lost adjoining lean-to structure.

Fig. 38 (below). A photograph of the Great Hall c1924 showing a small
gabled room at the west end of the south aisle (Jack Hart Collection,
Rutland County Museum).

A photo of the Castle taken not later
than 1924 shows a very small gabled
room to the west of the west end of the
south aisle, which although set back some
fifteen inches or so from the south wall,
has the string course below the windows
following through. It is constructed of
rubble ironstone with freestone ashlar
quoins, a Collyweston roof and a small
pointed window to the west. The
ironstone appears to have been of a better
quality than that which composes the
outer wall of the south aisle, and it may be
that this small room was no more than a
lavatory of comparatively late date and
had no connection with the original layout. It was in any case removed to make room for the present judge’s
robing room.
High up on the west wall, at about the level where the gable end takes off, is an ashlar bracket, which must
have carried a plate-beam for a roof sloping towards the west. (This is the arrangement whereby the roofs of the
two aisles are attached to the nave). Moreover the conformation of the masonry on the west wall at the same
level as the bracket (the single remaining bracket?) postulates a former roof line.
I imagine that this bracket (supposing that it really is in its original position in the obviously rebuilt gable
end) would be set high enough up in the wall to have allowed of Mr Radford’s ‘two-storied solar’, especially if
one takes into consideration several feet of destruction rubble and humus which overlie the area of the solar.
Some years ago a trench was dug in a long curved sweep from near the entrance to the Castle grounds to carry
a fuel-oil pipe to the boiler house on the north side of the Castle. This cut right across the ground where the
solar once lay, and revealed the same ‘destruction level’ stratification (rubble, stones, Collyweston tiles etc.)
that I myself had found earlier on the east end of the hall. From this it would appear that the ground floor rooms
of the solar would have been several feet lower than the existing level of the ground in this area. Indeed it could
be further argued that had the solar not been on two
levels, there would hardly have been space enough
between the west wall of the hall and the tail of the
surrounding bank for the inclusion of ‘four chambers’ on
the same level. The appearance of the ground cut
through by the above-mentioned fuel-oil pipe suggests
that scientific excavation on the west end of the Castle
could fairly readily solve any remaining doubts about the
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size and nature of the solar.

Fig. 39. The west wall, showing the one surviving bracket for
supporting a timber wall plate, which JLB thought was
evidence for the roof of a solar.

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Despite the efforts of Channel 4’s Time Team (which found a demolished wall with an adjacent floor) and others such evidence remains elusive.
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