Page 69 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

springing from corbels 3 or 4ft. above the capitals. A corbel in this position occurs on the wooden posts of the 12th
41
century hall in the Bishop’s Palace at Hereford, and its scale, similar to those carrying the arches of the arcade,
suggests that it carried a heavy arch rather than a brace. The existing gables are partly rebuilt with the ornamental
copings reset.
Patching and fragmentary remains at the west end show that there was a two-storied solar block of the same width
as the nave of the hall. It was entered through a door in the end of the north aisle and seems to have been flanked by a
pent roofed passage on this side.
Mr Gathercole, who recently conducted excavations for the Ministry of Works on the site of the new Post Office,
informs me that Stamford ware and a little St Neots ware of late Saxon type was found both in the material of the
south bank of the bailey and on the old surface soil below the bank.

References:
VCH, Rutland, i, 115-7, ii, 8-10.
Arch Journ, xc, 398-9; xcii, 201-3 (with references to older literature).

Conjectural line of pre-Conquest bank

Fig. 1. Oakham Castle. Motte shown at SE corner of Court
(based on the Ordnance Survey second Series 25 inch map, 1904).

41 Ibid, Herefordshire, i, pl 24.

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