Burgh Castle
Burgh Castle is on an elevated site that slopes steeply towards the Waveney estuary . From the 3rd to the 5th century, the Roman fort built there was part of the fortress chain along the Limes on the British “ Saxon coast ”. From the middle of the 7th to the 9th centuries there was a monastic settlement on the site and a Norman moth in the 11th and 12th centuries . The fortification is now in the parish of Burgh Castle in the English county of Norfolk .
Origin of name
In Roman times the garrison town was possibly called Castellum Gariannonum , for which there is only one source: The Notitia dignitatum , a late antique directory of offices that was created around the year 400. Originally, this identification was considered certain, but experts now doubt it.
"Burgh" is derived from the Old English "burh". The word, which comes from the Germanic language area , was originally used for a fortified city or a protoburg, as in "Burgh Castle," and was associated with the verb "beorgen" (German: to hold, hold, make safe). Since many cities grew around castles, this part of the name can also be found in German city names, e.g. B. in Hamburg , Flensburg and Strasbourg .
description
Roman fortifications
Main article: Gariannonum Castle
The fort had an almost rectangular floor plan; the internal dimensions were approximately 205 meters × 100 meters. The walls on the north, east and mostly on the south side are almost intact and still around 4.6 meters high. Coins and pottery shards found in the fort indicate that it was occupied from the middle of the 3rd century, and Roman occupation continued until the beginning of the 5th century when it became a blending of the Roman and Saxon Traditions came.
monastery
After the Romans withdrew, the fort was settled by Anglo-Saxons. This is proven by the remains of wooden buildings and over 160 burials (700–900) that were excavated there between the 1950s and 1960s. Burgh Castle is often associated with the holy Fursa , a missionary from Ireland who was involved in the Christianization of East Anglia. It is believed to be the place where Cnobheresburg or Cnobheresburh , a previously unlocated fortified place in East Anglia, was where Fursa is said to have founded the first Irish monastery in southern England around 630 as part of his iroschootic mission - described by Beda Venerabilis . Historians find many arguments against this place, but cannot make a better suggestion. Fursa was given land by King Sigebert around 630 to build a monastery there. During the excavations between 1958 and 1961, the archaeologist Charles Green uncovered the remains of a wooden church in the southwest corner of the Roman camp, together with an intramural Christian cemetery a little to the north of it, the approximately 144 remains buried there and graves with reburied bones contained. Some oval huts (dimensions between 5 meters and 8 meters) in the northeast corner of the Roman fortress could be interpreted as monk cells or workshops. The monastery could also have stood in the nearby castle of Caister-on-Sea, where archaeologists also found many Anglo-Saxon burials. The early monastic communities in Great Britain often chose Roman fortifications as their place of residence, as they were considered the kingdom of the king. St. Peter and Paul Church is just north of Burgh Castle. It probably also comes from the later Anglo-Saxon period. Some reused Roman bricks are built into its walls. Finds of coins and " Ipswich " goods prove the occupancy well into the 8th and 9th centuries. But a detailed 1983 report by Stephen Johnson of the Norfolk Museums Service ( East Anglican Archeology 20 ) mentions that there is no conclusive evidence of a monastic settlement at Burgh Castle itself.
Norman castle
In the late 11th century a small castle was built by the Normans in the south-western corner of the camp ; the Roman enclosure wall served as the outer bailey for this construction . Only a flat elevation can be seen from it, the rest of an artificially raised hill on which a massive wooden tower ( Motte ) once stood. Archaeological excavations have unearthed its remains. A small courtyard was to the north and east of the moth. Part of the southern wall of the fort was also integrated into the fortress. The construction crews cut a breach in the Roman wall to build the moat and laid a wooden bridge over the moat that could be used to get into the moth. However, the construction of the castle caused the ground to sag, which in the course of time brought this section of the Roman wall into a dangerously inclined position. In recent years, the foundations of these wall sections have been stabilized to prevent them from tipping over. On the west side an earth wall with a wooden palisade was created as a parapet. You can still see where the moat broke through the south wall. In 1770 the hill was partially removed. In 1839 the hill was leveled and the moat was refilled. It is only clearly visible at the southern end of the fortress.
Reuse of materials
Close to the fort is the medieval church of Burgh Castle St Peter and St Paul , which was built using Roman bricks, believed to have come from the walls of the fortification.
In the 17th century, Sir Henry Spelman reported a rumor that the fort was inhabited by Jews and that the path leading away from Burgh Castle was referred to as the Jews' Way . This probably relates to the legend that an old but mysterious people once lived on the site and perhaps also to their use as a source of building materials.
Location
The site is west of the village and parish of Burgh Castle in Norfolk. It lies on the east bank of the southernmost part of Breydon Water , formed at the mouths of the Ant , Bure , Yare and Waveney Rivers . Today it is separated from the estuary by a watt . The Roman coastal fort Caister-on-Sea is a few miles to the northeast.
The open area is owned by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust ; English Heritage takes care of the walls .
Web links
- Burgh Castle Roman fort, vicus, pre-Conquest monastery and Norman motte and bailey castle . English Heritage.
- Burgh Castle . Norfolk Archaeological Trust.
Remarks
- ↑ a b c d e Burgh Castle . Pastscape. Retrieved January 15, 2016.
- ↑ Its dative singular and nominative / accusative plural "byrig" is sometimes based on today's place names and its dialectical variant is z. B. "castle". Sometimes it is confused with “beorh” or “beorg”, which means mound or hill; Alaric Hall: Old MacDonald had a Frym, eo, eo, y: Two Marginal Developments of <eo> in Old an Middle English in Selected Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic . Quaestic, 2 (2001). Pp. 69-70. Retrieved January 15, 2016.
- ^ DE Johnston 1977, pages 1, 3, 25, 29, 63 and 72.
- ↑ A fragment of the path in the adjacent Bradwell parish that has survived to this day is still called Jews Lane .
- ↑ Oliver Harris: Jews, jurats and the Jewry Wall: a name in context in Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society . Issue 82 (2008). Pp. 113-133.
- ^ Burgh Castle . English Heritage. Retrieved January 15, 2016.
Coordinates: 52 ° 34 ′ 57.4 " N , 1 ° 39 ′ 5.4" E