The Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project

Welcome to the Project website.  Here you will find links to the various components of the three year (2008-10) project which has investigated the buried, built and potential archaeology of Wallingford, alongside re-analysis of documentary and archive data.  We detail here current and previous excavations, surveys and studies, outline the garden archaeology programme, and provide links to our team and meetings.

About the Project Project Team Pilot Work Excavations History of the Castle Garden Archaeology Events and Meetings Steering Committee Posters Publications Links Videos

Final Season

Our final full season ran in 2010 - see the outline of results and images at these two links:

EXCAVATIONS APRIL 2010 

EXCAVATIONS JULY 2010 

The photo shows work in progress on the large curving stone wall found in the Queen's Arbour, July 2010. 

2011 work - latest news!

Even after the formal close of the funded AHRC project, the team have maintained an active exploration of Wallingford, teaming up with The Wallingford Historical and Archaeological Society again for a two week season in July-August 2011 to excavate at the possible barbican site at the castle.

However, for once the medieval deposits remained elusive - but instead we uncovered fascinating evidence for a major mid-17th-century Civil War gun emplacement designed to defend both North Gate, castle and town. Notable was discovery also of a remnant portion of the late Saxon rampart, buried beneath the layered make-up for the Civil War platform (see image above). Clearly the scale of Civil war work (and later 'slighting') was enormous at the Wallingford castle site.

In the meantime the Project team are writing up the overall results and discussion for a monograph to be published in the Society for Medieval Archaeology monograph series.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENGLISH HERITAGE 'PRESENTATION OF HERITAGE' AWARDS 2010