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Excavation

Date 1988 - 1989

Event ID 547060

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/547060

Excavation on this site took place between March-August 1988 in advance of a leisure complex development by East Lothian District Council. The edge of the defensive ditch of the French fortification of 1550 was located, surrounding a sizeable broken stone courtyard. An earlier courtyard possibly of 12th or 13th century date was revealed below the French fort. This courtyard overlay a 2.5m wide sandstone wall running on a NW-SE alignment along the cliff top. An external path or yard was found on the W side of this wall. This wall possibly represents a W curtain wall around Dunbar Castle which lies some 85m E of the excavation.

The levels below the wall overlay the demolished remains of two stone and one timber building. The most completely recovered building was a rectangular structure with an internal paved walkway and the suggestion of a curved S end-wall. Finds from levels associated with these structures include two Northumbrian styca coins and an Anglo-Saxon sceatta. Other finds include decorated spondle whorls, whetstones and a decorated bone pin beater. There is the suggestion that these finds are all residual and do not indicate a date for the stone buildings.

The buildings had been erected on a large area of cobbling that formed a yard surface at the E end of the excavation trench. Below this yard the ground plans of two timber structures were located. The later of the two structures was represented by 3 linear beam slots, one of which contained a gilded bronze book clasp, as yet undated.

Further excavation took place on this site between October 1988 and March 1989. The W ends of two timber halls of possibly Anglian date were revealed. These halls overlay an earlier stone surface which sealed two substantial ditches running across the headland. C14 dates of 116 AD-449 AD were obtained from charcoal samples taken from the stone surface.

Excavations at Castle Park, Dunbar continued under the direction of Philip Holdsworth. An extensive gravel surface sealed the remains of a medieval stone rampart which had never been completed. Evidence of two more timber structures was uncovered, one of individual post-hole construction, the other of trench and post construction; both may date to the Anglian period.

D Hall and P Holdsworth 1989.

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