Rendlesham: 1,400-year-old royal hall unearthed

A royal hall of “international importance” that dates back 1,400 years has been unearthed on private land. The Hall of the first Kings of East Anglia was discovered in Rendlesham, Suffolk, over the summer.

Prof Christopher Scull said it was the “most extensive and materially wealthy settlement of its date known in England”.

It was discovered by a community dig as part of Suffolk County Council’s Rendlesham Revealed project.

The authority said the hall was “recorded in the writings of The Venerable Bede of the 8th Century”.

The hall, which was 75ft (23m) long and 33ft (10m) wide, was set within a larger settlement of more than 124 acres (50 hectares).

For 150 years, between AD 570 and AD 720, it was the centre from which a major province of the East Anglian kingdom, focused on the valley of the River Deben, was ruled.

Bede’s writings identified Rendlesham as the place where the East Anglian King Aethelwold stood sponsor at the baptism of King Swithelm of the East Saxons, between the years AD 655 and 663.

Prof Scull, the project’s principal academic advisor, said: “The results of this season’s excavation are of international importance.

“Rendlesham is the most extensive and materially wealthy settlement of its date known in England, and excavation of the hall confirms that this is the royal residence recorded by Bede.

“Only at Rendlesham do we have the wider settlement and landscape context of an early English royal centre, together with an assemblage of metalwork that illuminates the lives and activities of its inhabitants across the social range.”

The work was a “major advance in our understanding of the early East Anglian kingdom and the wider North Sea world of which it was a part,” he added.

The excavations also revealed a perimeter ditch enclosing the royal compound, remains of food preparation and feasting that showed the consumption of vast quantities of meat – mainly beef and pork – and dress jewellery, personal items, fragments of glass drinking vessels and pottery.

Traces of earlier settlements from the Roman period (1st Century AD) and the early Neolithic period (4th Millennium BC) were also found.

Conservative councillor Melanie Vigo di Gallidoro, the authority’s cabinet member for protected landscapes and archaeology, said: “It can’t be underestimated how important this part of Suffolk is to understanding our local and national heritage.”

The area is close to Sutton Hoo where an Anglo-Saxon burial ground was founded in 1939.

More than 250 volunteers, including young adults from Suffolk Family Carers and Suffolk Mind, and primary school children from Rendlesham, Eyke and Wickham Market, were involved.

The excavations are finished in the summer and an analysis of the finds is expected next year.

Footprints Reflect Ecosystem Change in Prehistoric England

“It’s about 8,200 years old,” says Dr Alison Burns, pointing to a perfectly preserved human footprint pressed into ancient mud on Formby Beach. It is one of the hundreds of newly discovered ancient footprints here.

The sandy stretch of the northwest England coast is already known to be home to one of the largest collections of prehistoric animal tracks on Earth.

As well as adding to that collection, researchers found the oldest prints were formed much earlier than thought. The first date back almost 9,000 years and the youngest of the prints are medieval – about 1,000 years old.

These findings, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, tell the story of a coastal environment that transformed over thousands of years, as sea levels rapidly rose and humans settled permanently by the water.

The size and shape of the picture-perfect human footprint that Dr Burns has found suggest it belonged to a young man – perhaps a teenager. Strangely, this adolescent foot had the very distinct protrusion of a bunion on its little toe.

“It’s a tailor’s bunion,” Dr Burns explains. “They were habitually barefoot, so when they sat down, the little toe would have rubbed on the ground.”

The indentations, pressed into the mud as people and animals walked across stretches of tidal mud flat, were baked in the sun and buried for millennia.

“The oldest ones date to a time when the coastline was 30km away and the tidal muds here were teeming with animals – aurochs, herds of red deer, roe deer and also predators like wolves and lynx that are now extinct in the UK,” explains Prof Jamie Woodward from the University of Manchester.

He and Dr Burns, along with their colleagues, verified the ages of the tracks by carbon-dating seeds extracted from cores of this ancient, compressed mud.

Altogether there are 31 footprint beds, which point to a period of dramatic change in this ecosystem. “Up to about 6,000 years ago, there was a very diverse landscape with all those animals,” says Prof Woodward. “Then after about 5,500 years ago, we see lots of human footprints, some deer and dogs, but not much else.

“So what we’re seeing – through the footprints – is a landscape transforming with sea-level rise, and also with the arrival of agriculture that probably put a lot more pressure on this ecosystem.”

Dr Burns, who led the study, explains that as the sea erodes away layers of this ancient, compressed mud, it can reveal new layers of footprints. The deeper the layers, the earlier they were formed.

Footsteps took thousands – even millions of years ago – have left tracks in many parts of the UK’s coastline, which scientists have been able to find, study and turn into a deeper understanding of our prehistory.

In May 2013, a storm exposed some indentations at Happisburgh in Norfolk, which researchers eventually confirmed to be 900,000-year-old human footprints. In 2015, Edinburgh University researchers found trackways on the Isle of Skye, left 170 million years ago by the largest dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth.

But the Formby footprints are particularly fragile.

“They can be washed away within weeks of being exposed,” Dr Burns explains. “Some of them will be reburied and preserved for another few millennia – it’s all a part of this changing coastline.”

The coast at Formby is transforming particularly quickly – its famous dunes are in constant motion – rolling inland by an estimated 4m every year. At one spot on the expansive beach, you can see the remnants of the old visitor’s car park that’s now been rebuilt further inland.

“What’s amazing here is that we’ve tracked a major ecosystem change solely by looking at the footprint record – with no bones or fossils.

“That could paint a picture for the future of our coastal biodiversity hotspots,” adds Prof Woodward.

“Many of the biodiversity hotspots now are in coastal environments. And those environments are threatened by rapid sea-level rise now, so there are lessons we can learn about how habitats can become degraded and disconnected, which will affect the animals that can survive there.”

Royal Shipwreck From the 17th century Is discovered Off the Coast of England

Off the coast of England, a royal shipwreck has been unearthed. The Gloucester, one of the most renowned ships of the 17th century, sunk 340 years ago while transporting James Stuart, the future King of England.

Since running aground on a sandbank on May 6, 1682, the wreck has lain half-buried on the seabed, its exact whereabouts unknown. It was found by brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, with their friend James Little, after a four-year search. The discovery is described by University of East Anglia (UEA) maritime history expert Prof Claire Jowitt as the most important maritime discovery since the Mary Rose.

The wreck of one of the most famous ships of the 17thcentury – which sank 340 years ago while carrying the future King of England James Stuart – has been discovered off the coast of Norfolk in the UK, it can be revealed today. The Gloucester represents an important ‘almost’ moment in British political history: a royal shipwreck causing the very near-death of the Catholic heir to the Protestant throne – James Stuart, Duke of York and Albany – at a time of great political and religious tension. Now a major exhibition is planned for Spring 2023, the result of a partnership between the Barnwell brothers, Norfolk Museums Service, and academic partner UEA. Running from February to July at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, the exhibition will display finds from the wreck – including the bell that confirmed the ship’s identity – and share ongoing historical, scientific, and archaeological research.

Prof Jowitt, a world-leading authority on maritime cultural history, is a co-curator of the exhibition. “Because of the circumstances of its sinking, this can be claimed as the single most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982,” she said. “The discovery promises to fundamentally change the understanding of 17th-century social, maritime, and political history.

“It is an outstanding example of the underwater cultural heritage of national and international importance. A tragedy of considerable proportions in terms of loss of life, both privileged and ordinary, the full story of Gloucester’s last voyage and the impact of its aftermath needs re-telling, including its cultural and political importance, and legacy. We will also try to establish who else died and tell their stories, as the identities of a fraction of the victims are currently known.”

The Barnwell brothers are Norfolk-based printers, licensed divers and Honorary Fellows in the School of History at UEA. Lincoln said he was partly inspired to search for the wreck after watching the lifting of the Mary Rose on television as a child.

“It was our fourth dive season looking for Gloucester,” he said. “We were starting to believe that we were not going to find her, we’d dived so much and just found sand. On my descent to the seabed the first thing I spotted was large cannon laying on white sand, it was awe-inspiring and really beautiful.

“It instantly felt like a privilege to be there, it was so exciting. We were the only people in the world at that moment in time who knew where the wreck lay. That was special and I’ll never forget it. Our next job was to identify the site as the Gloucester.”

Julian added: “When we decided to search for the Gloucester we had no idea how significant she was in history. We had read that the Duke of York was onboard but that was it. We were confident it was the Gloucester, but there are other wreck sites out there with cannons, so it still needed to be confirmed.

“There is still a huge amount of knowledge to be gained from the wreck, which will benefit Norfolk and the nation. We hope this discovery and the stories that are uncovered will inform and inspire future generations.”

Lord Dannatt, Norfolk Deputy Lieutenant and longstanding resident of the county are lending his skills and support to the historic rescue project. As the former head of the British Army, he works with charities and organizations that have links to the armed services.

“This is going to be Norfolk’s Mary Rose,” said Lord Dannatt. “Julian and Lincoln have touched history, history that could have changed the course of this nation. It’s such an amazing story to tell. Our aim is to bring that story to life and to share it with as many people as possible.”

The Gloucester was commissioned in 1652, built at Limehouse in London, and launched in 1654. In 1682 it was selected to carry James Stuart – who later became King of England and King of Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII – to Edinburgh to collect his heavily pregnant wife and their households. The aim was to bring them back to King Charles II’s court in London in time, it was hoped, for the birth of a legitimate male heir.

The ship had set sail from Portsmouth with the Duke and his entourage joining it off Margate, having travelled by yacht from London. At 5.30 am on May 6, the Gloucester ran aground some 45km off Great Yarmouth following a dispute about navigating the treacherous Norfolk sandbanks. The Duke, a former Lord High Admiral, had argued with the pilot for control over the ship’s course. Within an hour the vessel sank with the loss of hundreds of the crew and passengers. The Duke barely survived, having delayed abandoning the ship until the last minute.

As well to the Duke of York, the Gloucester carried a number of prominent English and Scottish courtiers including John Churchill, later the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys, who witnessed events from another ship in the fleet, wrote his own account – describing the harrowing experience for victims and survivors, with some picked up “half-dead” from the water.

Together with their late father Michael, and two friends including James Little, a former Royal Navy submariner, and diver, the Barnwell brothers found the wreck site in 2007, with the Gloucester, split down the keel and remains of the hull submerged in sand. The ship’s bell, manufactured in 1681, was later recovered, and in 2012 it was used by the Receiver of Wreck and Ministry of Defence to decisively identify the vessel.

Due to the time taken to confirm the identity of the ship and the need to protect an ‘at risk’ site, which lies in international waters, it is only now that its discovery can be made public. As well as the Receiver of Wreck and Ministry of Defence, the wreck has been declared to Historic England.

Following the discovery, the brothers completed an underwater archaeology course with the Nautical Archaeology Society. Artefacts rescued and conserved include clothes and shoes, navigational and other professional naval equipment, personal possessions, and many wine bottles.

One of the wine bottles bears a glass seal with iconography that connects it to a passenger onboard, Colonel George Legge, Master of Ordnance and Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke of York. Legge was the son of Elizabeth Washington, and the Washington crest on the wine bottle, with its distinctive ‘stars and stripes’, links it and the ship to the most famous member of the family, George Washington, the first US President.

The accompanying historical research project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Prof Jowitt, will explore not only the failures of command at sea before the Gloucester sank but conspiracy theories about the tragedy’s causes and its political consequences. It is also hoped that UEA’s scientific expertise and facilities will be used to analyze some of the finds from the wreck.

The Ministry of Defence’s position is that all artefacts remain the property of the Ministry of Defence; however, where items are positively identified as personal property, ownership will then default to the Crown. Alongside UEA, Norfolk Museums Service, and the Barnwell brothers, foundational partners in the project are the Alan Boswell Group, Ministry of Defence, the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, York Archaeology, the Leverhulme Trust, and Maritime Archaeology Trust. The project is also being generously supported by Birketts LLP.

A new paper titled ‘The Last Voyage of the Gloucester (1682): The Politics of a Royal Shipwreck’ by Prof Claire Jowitt offers a comprehensive academic analysis of the disaster and its political implications and legacies. It is published in the journal English Historical Review on Friday, June 10.

1,000-year-old coin among finds in Cork archaeological dig

The discovery of the coins has fuelled speculation that a castle may have stood on this site much earlier than expected

Two silver coins, one almost 1,000-year-old, and a tax token which was later used as a board game piece during the Middle Ages have been unearthed during archaeological excavations as part of the multi-million restoration of a landmark tower house.

The discovery of the coins by archaeologist Tony Miller, who is excavating the medieval Carrignacurra castle near Inchigeela in Cork, has fuelled speculation that a castle may have stood on this site much earlier than expected.

The ‘jeton’ or chequer piece, used for accounting and later as gaming pieces, has been unearthed following excavations at Carrignacurra Castle in Cork.

The tower house, which dates from around 1570, was one of three such tower houses built by the O’Learys. It is the only one left standing.

It was built on a high rock outcrop to defend an important ford on the river Lee, and was originally the seat of the O’Leary family before it was captured by the O’Sullivan clan and eventually fell derelict.

Its most recent owners made a start on renovations but abandoned the work before it was finished.

American owners

The imposing protected structure was bought last year by an American couple, Shawn and Tom Carlson, both pilots, who embarked on an ambitious €2m restoration project.

Ms Carlson, née O’Leary, is a direct descendant of Cornelius Ó Laoghaire, who fled to America in 1773 after he fatally shot the sheriff, Morris, to avenge the death of his brother, Art Ó Laoghaire who was immortalised by his widow, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, in the epic Irish lament, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire.

The Carlsons hosted a site visit of around 75 people who were in the Lee Valley this month to attend the O’Leary clan gathering.

Mr Miller, who briefed them on the archaeological finds, told the Irish Examiner that his excavations have been concentrated around the tower base and the ground floor.

“During the excavation of the ground floor, a cobbled floor was uncovered in one corner as well as a rectangular base for storage bins or a workbench against the northern wall,” he said.

Pipes and pottery

He has unearthed clay pipes, one of which was made in Bristol, leading to speculation that it could have been left by Cromwellian troops when Roger Boyle knocked the castle under orders from Cromwell, as well as a small amount of domestic pottery dating from around the 16th century, animal bones, mostly pig bones, a small bone bead and lead musket balls, mostly unused, with evidence that they were being made on site.

But among the most interesting finds were two silver coins — one known as a groat featuring Henry 111 and dated to 1270, and the other featuring Edward IV, dating from the 1470s.

A musket and pistol ball with a small ingot of lead was found during excavations at Carrignacurra Castle in Cork.

Mr Miller said this coin was uncovered at a level near bedrock at the very foot of the castle and is a century older than the generally accepted date of the tower house.

But he said the most unusual find was an exchequer piece or ‘jeton’, made in Bavaria around 1620, which was commonly used for calculating taxes, and which was later used as a board game piece in the Middle Ages equivalent of draughts.

The token carries a motto with a religious reference meant to keep the user honest. One of the clay pipes, dated to the first half of the 17th century. It dates from a time when tobacco was expensive and therefore features a small bowl.

Only a handful of these tokens have ever been found in Ireland. They are usually found in Britain nearer to London.

The finds feature in one of Cork County Council’s latest heritage books.

Mr Miller said further excavations will be undertaken on what is presumed to be a medieval ramp and wall on the south side of the castle, as well as carbon dating remnants of basket weave used to create the vault on the interior of the structure.

17 people found in a medieval well in England were victims of an antisemitic massacre, DNA reveals

The remains of 17 people, mainly children, found in 2004 during a construction project in Norwich, England, are probably those of medieval Jews massacred for their religion, according to a new study.

Genetic analysis of the remains indicates the dead were all Ashkenazi Jews — that is, the descendants of Jews who had established communities in northern Europe, mainly in what is now Germany and France, during the early medieval period. (Many Ashkenzai later moved from these regions to eastern Europe, after the 11th to 13th centuries.)  And other research suggests the dead people in Norwich were murdered during an antisemitic massacre in the city in 1190, by crusaders who had pledged to campaign against Muslims in Jerusalem.

The study gave researchers a rare opportunity to analyze Jewish remains — religious laws usually prohibit disturbing Jewish graves — and reveal that a “genetic bottleneck” among Ashkenazi Jews probably happened centuries earlier than thought.

And the findings finally offer a solution to the mystery of just who the people were and why they were murdered.

“They weren’t known to be Jewish when they were unearthed,” Mark Thomas, a professor of human evolutionary genetics at University College London, told Live Science. “The only reason we strongly believe they were Jewish is that we did the genetic analysis.”

Thomas is one of the senior authors of a study published Aug. 30 in the journal Current Biology that describes the latest research into the remains. The first bones were found in 2004 during excavations for the construction of a shopping centre in Norwich. The discovery led to a full archaeological investigation of the site, which resulted in the unearthing of a medieval well that held the commingled remains of at least 17 people.

For a while, the remains were stored by the Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service. But following growing suspicions the victims might have been Jewish, based on historical accounts of antisemitic massacres, they were reburied in 2013 in a Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Norwich, BBC News reported. Anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, a professor at Liverpool John Moores University, used the remains to create reconstructions of two of the victims’ faces.

Christians massacre Jews

Initial radiocarbon dating indicated the bones were from the 11th or 12th centuries, study senior author Ian Barnes, an evolutionary geneticist at the Natural History Museum in London, told Live Science. Scientists initially believed the remains came from victims of an epidemic outbreak of disease or a mass famine, and that the bodies had therefore been disposed of quickly, he said.

But the latest research suggests they all had similar genetic ancestry to today’s Ashkenazi Jews. And historical research links their murders to a massacre of Jews in Norwich in 1190 by crusaders that was described by a chronicler of the times, a churchman called Ralph de Diceto.

“Many of those who were hastening to Jerusalem determined first to rise against the Jews before they invaded the Saracens [a term medieval Christians used for Muslims],” Diceto wrote in his Imagines Historiarum(opens in new tab), which was published in about 1200. “Accordingly, on 6th February [in 1190 AD] all the Jews who were found in their own houses at Norwich were butchered; some had taken refuge in the castle.”

Medieval Norwich had been home to a thriving community of Jews since 1137, many of whom lived near the well where the victims were found, BBC News reported; and the latest study reported the historical finding that they were likely to be descended from Ashkenazi Jews from Rouen in Normandy who were invited to settle in England by William the Conqueror after 1066, supposedly so he could obtain their taxes in coins rather than in the agricultural goods usually given as taxes in his new kingdom.   

The researchers now think the 17 people found in the well were victims of this outbreak of violence, perpetrated on Jews who lived in medieval England by crusaders pledged to campaign in the Holy Land of what’s now Israel.

During the First Crusade, Christian armies conquered Jerusalem in 1099 after defeating the city’s Muslim rulers; and several more crusades were launched from Europe to the Holy Land in the years that followed, the last of which ended in the 1290s.

Such antisemitic massacres were relatively common in England and other parts of Europe in the medieval period, according to Britannica(opens in new tab); and the massacre of Jews at Norwich in 1190 was brutal. At least 11 children were among the victims found in the well, and three of the victims were sisters — one aged between 5 and 10 years, another aged between 10 and 15 years, and a young adult. Barnes said that the people found in the well seem to have been dead before they were thrown into it, as there was no sign that any of them tried to break their fall. 

Genetic bottleneck

The researchers were able to conduct a full genomic analysis of the DNA from six of the individuals found in the well.

There’s no “genetic test” to determine whether a person is Jewish or not, but analysis of the genomes of those six people shows they shared the same genetic ancestry as many Ashkenazi Jews living today, which suggests they were also Ashkenazi Jews, Thomas said.

The modern Ashkenazi population has a greater-than-usual incidence of certain genetic disorders, such as Tay-Sachs disease and some hereditary cancers, he said; and the genetics of four of the people in the well in Norwich showed the same frequency of such disorders, although there’s only a very limited number of victims from which to draw such conclusions.

The cause of these disorders was thought to be a “genetic bottleneck” probably caused by a drop in the population between about 600 and 800 years ago, he said. But their frequency in the victims meant the genetic bottleneck must have happened much earlier, possibly as early as the late stages of the Western Roman Empire from the fifth century, he said.

The findings are important not only because of the historical questions about the remains but also because there is so little historical genetic data about modern Jewish populations and the particular genetic disorders they face.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a flood of ancient Ashkenazi or Jewish genomes in the future, but I think that where more data does become available, it will be probably through a similar route to what we’ve done,” he said. 

“That is, they identify human remains where there is no evidence to suggest that they are Jewish or anything else, and then somebody does the genetic work and gets an indication that they are,” he said.

19th-Century Coal Chute Uncovered in Nova Scotia

When digging began on the Cogswell Interchange project near downtown Halifax, some unique discoveries were bound to be found. The British established the Town of Halifax in 1749 and that history resurfaces from time to time. Recent excavations to add a new detour road in the area revealed a small part of daily colonial life.

“It was discovered at the time of us finding an old building foundation made of brick and stone,” said Donna Davis, project manager with the Cogswell District project. 

“Basically it is a cavity that was used to store coal, so it’s called a coal chute or coal port.”

Davis said coal chutes were common in the 1800s to provide heating fuel and it’s believed coal was dumped into the chute through a grate at road level.

“We don’t know if the building would have been residential, commercial or industrial,” said Davis. “There were a mix of buildings in that area and our archeologist is continuing to find out more about the structure and what its origins might have been.”

It’s believed the coal chute would have been built in the mid- to late-1800s.

Davis said there are old maps that show the area near the Halifax waterfront was populated with numerous industrial and commercial structures in that era and some residential properties, too.

The work on the Cogswell Interchange is still in its infancy as the expected completion date is still four years away. Davis said there will likely be more interesting discoveries to come.

“When we come across something like that, construction stops and we have the archeologist come in to tell us what we’ve uncovered and to tell us how to proceed,” said Davis. “In most cases, we have to properly catalog what it is that we’ve found.”

Davis said a number of old, large brick storm sewer tunnels have also been discovered. 

A new construction project app will be rolled out this fall where pictures and information on the discoveries will be shared with the public.

The Cogswell Interchange was built in the late 1960s to early 1970s and officially opened in 1972. 

Much of the interchange is being demolished to make way for a new Cogswell District neighbourhood, connecting Halifax’s downtown and waterfront with the north end. It will convert the existing road infrastructure into a mixed-use neighbourhood.

Remains of up to 100 children were found during a dig at a holy site in Wales

The bodies of 100 children have been discovered in what is believed to be an ancient burial ground.

Archaeologists in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, made the grim discovery.

They had been excavating an area surrounding the mysterious St Saviours, a suspected friary which dates back more than 600 years.

Archaeologists found hundreds of skeletons at the historic site. Experts explained that ‘extraordinarily, one-third of these remains are infants under the age of four.’

A strange puncture wound was even found in one of the skulls excavated, the Western Telegraph reported.

The injury could have been caused by ‘projectile fired’ which could indicate ‘the first suggestion of medieval warfare in the town’.

St Saviours itself was stumbled upon by builders digging foundations for a new bar in Haverfordwest.

Head of the Dyfed Archaeological Trust, Fran Murphy, says financial transactions recorded by a local church indicate the existence of the friary.

There could be around 300 corpses at the ancient burial ground, but the Trust is hesitant on putting an exact finger on the total just yet.

‘We know it’s there because of a series of monastic references, mainly records about money,’ said Miss Murphy.

‘At its height, there were apparently eight friars who were part of the friary before it was dissolved and passed into private hands.

‘It was dissolved in the 1530s with one of the friars scrubbing his name from the list of friars at the priory which is peculiar and might have been a protest to its closing.’

The friary of the Dominican Order is believed to have stood in Haverfordwest for about three centuries.

The Dominicans, or Black Friars, had a different agenda than most monastic orders in that they went amongst the population, preaching, praying and teaching.

DAT Archaeological Services started work at the site known as Ocky Whites in February and is scheduled to be at the site until next January.

The old Ocky Whites building is currently being redeveloped into a three-storey local food and beverage emporium with a bar and rooftop terrace.

Remnants of Ancient Roman Turret Discovered at Hadrian’s Wall in England

Remnants of a turret from Hadrian’s Wall were unearthed by archaeologists during construction work for student accommodations in Ouseburn, near Newcastle, England.

Hadrian’s Wall was a defensive fortification that spanned 73 miles across Roman Britain. Sixteen stone forts were built every 1,000 paces, with 80-mile castles, turrets and 6 supply forts set in between.

Construction along the Stonegate Road route began in 122 CE and took seven years to complete.

The turret is the only known example of its kind found east of Newcastle. Additionally, the team uncovered a walled ditch and six berm obstacle pits. The finds were announced on Wednesday in a press release by Pre-Construct Archaeology.

Turret 3a, as the structure is now known, is roughly 39 feet long, with foundations that run as long as 8 feet wide.

No remnants of clay or flagged floor surface were found within the structure, and the archaeologists said this loss may have resulted from construction or levelling undertaken during the 19th or 20th century.

They did, however, find a single fragment of a tegula, a tile used in roofing by Romans, among the foundations of the northern wall. 

Six shallow pits recorded within the berm, the area between the wall and the wall ditch, would have held cippi, or sharpened branches.

Scott Vance, the site director for the find, said the discovery “has demonstrated that the potential for significant archaeological remains relating to Hadrian’s Wall can survive in the more built-up areas of urban Tyneside.”

The proposed student accommodations will be designed around the turret, which will be preserved.