Castor, Cambridgeshire
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Castor today is a small village lying at c. 24m OD on the north-facing slope of a limestone ridge 8km west of Peterborough. It has been known since the nineteenth century that the village contains substantial Roman remains, possibly of a small town. A nunnery, founded at Castor in the seventh century, is thought to have been located near the present church and was reputedly destroyed by the Danes in 1010AD. Castor today is arranged either side of two approximately parallel streets, which diverge at the eastern end, possibly originally in order to respect a precinct enclosure around the area of the present church. More recent settlement extensions lie to the north, south and west of the earlier village core. To the west, Castor is now almost conjoined with the neighbouring small village of Ailsworth.
Local Information Websites
2009
Five test pits were excavated in 2009 in Castor, widely spaced across the present village. With so few pits dug to date, it is of course impossible to make any meaningful observations regarding the disposition or development of the settlement in the past, but the presence of some finds of Anglo-Saxon and medieval date can be noted. One sherd of Early/Middle Saxon hand-built ware (AD450 - 650) was found in the pit near Manor Farm. Sherds of St Neots ware and Stamford ware were found in four of the five excavated pits in quantities likely to be indicative of settlement nearby. The exception is CTR/09/05, which appears to lie beyond the limits of both the later Anglo-Saxon and the medieval settlement. A similar pattern was apparent in pottery dating to c. 1100- c.1400 AD. Notably less material was found dating to the later medieval period (c.1400-c.1540), hinting at the possibility that Castor may have experienced some significant level of decline in this period.
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
2010
Ten test pits were excavated in Castor in 2010, bringing the total to fifteen. As in 2009, Roman pottery was found widely, now from a total of six pits. No further finds of early or middle Anglo-Saxon date were made, but several pits produced ceramic material of later Anglo-Saxon date. This has now been found in all parts of the present village except for the sites east and south of the church. The pattern at present is thus of two discrete areas of activity, one along the present Peterborough Road and the second in the very north of the present village, in an area of predominantly 20th century housing north of the High Street. Nearly all the test pits have produced material of early 12th to mid-14th century date, but there is considerably less evidence for activity in later 14th to 16th centuries, hinting at a significant decline in the settlement at this time. Interestingly, those sites which do produce material of this date seem to do so in larger quantities that for previous centuries. Manor Farm remains notable as the only site to produce ceramic material for all periods from the Roman onwards, including early and middle Anglo-Saxon ceramics.
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
2011
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Pottery Report |
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Test Pit Location Map |
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Photographs: To view photographs from your field academy, type the following address into the address bar at the top of your browser window: http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca/******/ (Replace '******' with the unique six-character code you were given for your site during the field academy. Important Note: Make sure you write your code in capital letters. And don't forget the forward slash at the end of the address!). |
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Pottery Distribution Map |