Page 47 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

Table 6. Analysis of the pottery from John Barber’s excavations.

The pottery has been given the following context reference numbers. For a concordance of these numbers and John
Barber’s context numbers allied to the written descriptions on the boxes see Table 3:

(1) Under north wall of kitchen
(2) Inside north wall of kitchen and under floor
(3) Floor of kitchen near north pillar
(4) Above kitchen floor
(5) Near well, pantry floor level
(6) Occupation level outside south wall of kitchen
(7) Destruction level to the north of north wall of kitchen
(8) From outside wall to the north of kitchen, footings level
(9) Destruction level kitchen, south wall
(10) Well: first 3 feet
(11) Well: 4½–5 feet down
(12) Well: below gravel, 6–7 feet down
U/S Unlabelled: cf. pot from kitchen floor (& bronze nutcracker)

Ref. No. of Weight
no. Fabric Ware sherds (gm) Comments

Pottery
(1) ST1 Stamford ware 1 1 4 random knife trimming exterior, c.1150-c.1250

(2) ST1 Stamford ware 1 1 2 speckled lead and copper glaze exterior, c.1150+
LY4 Lyveden/Stanion 4 6 98 hand built, all exterior sooted, 12th century
LY1 Lyveden/Stanion 1 2 17 hand built, later 12th/early 13th century

(3) BO1 Bourne Ware 1 29 336 minimum of two vessels, one a glazed jug, with an
externally thumbed splayed base, and a thumbed
pouring lip, c.1450-c.1650
CW/MB Cistercian/Midland 1 15 glazed ?cup fragment, c.1475-c.1650
Blackware

(4) MS Medieval Sandy 1 7 brown glaze exterior, ?14th century, links with (6)
ware and (9)
NO3 Nottingham ware 3 2 20 both green glazed (with black inclusions), lightly
reduced interior, later 13th century
LY4 Lyveden/Stanion 4 20 676 hand built, thickened bowl rim with interior
CS – Coarse Shelly thumbing with body & base fragments, similar to
pottery from Lyveden (Steane 1967, fig 8.a-b), a
simple everted bowl rim & body with external
sooting. Bowl paralleled at Northampton (McCarthy
1979, fig. 83.112) where dated from c.1100+, and
similar forms in Lincolnshire dated from later
12th/early 13th century (Adams Gilmour 1988, fig
47.35), so possibly residual here. Minimum of two
vessels, one with convex base & external sooting,
the other sooted internally & externally, all hand
built (min. 4 vessels in total)
LY1 Lyveden/Stanion 1 7 146 5 sherds glazed, 4 decorated also with vertical
applied white clay strips, one also with applied grid
stamped white clay pads; minimum of 4 vessels,
probably all jugs, all hand built, save a wheel thrown
jug body which joins with (8), later 13th or early
14th century (Bellamy 1983)
PM Potters Marston 1 10 hand built, 12th/13th century
BO2 Bourne ware 1 18 13th century +
MS Medieval Sandy 1 25 wheel thrown, red bodied, brown glazed, links with
ware (6) & (9)

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