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Derby Museum and Art Gallery supported Channel 4’s Time Team for its dig at Codnor Castle, Derbyshire, screened on 6 January. The museum team helped Time Team with its research, provided volunteers and experts, particularly the museum’s finds liaison officer and keeper of archaeology, Rachel Atherton.
Rachel was delighted and surprised by the Time Team dig: "It was a great success and has massively increased our knowledge of the site – which has been rather overlooked in the past. It proved to be fascinating, far more interesting than I’d anticipated. At the start of the dig we were a bit worried that all of the archaeology may have been destroyed through mining, but luckily that wasn’t the case – walls were turning up everywhere.”
Codnor Castle (Cotenoure in Domesday) was the seat of the Lords Grey from about 1200 until the late 15th century. It may have begun its life as a Norman earthwork motte-and-bailey fortress, becoming a stone castle possibly in the 13th century. Today all that is left is an imposing, if ruined, three-storey chamber block.
The exact extent and layout of the castle has never been known. Eighteenth-century sketches hint at an impressive if ruined complex of buildings, something which the dig helped to prove.
Time Team discovered an array of exciting finds and facts. Rachel added: “There were some fantastic finds, including the Stamford ware pottery and, of course, the gold coin, which created quite a stir on the day. The coin was found by Jonathan Smith, one of the two metal detector users that helped out on the site – both of these have been reporting their finds to me as the Portable Antiquities Finds Liaison Officer, over the last few years – it was great to be able to involve them on such an exciting site.”
The coin found is a Henry V gold noble coin, a coin from 1413-1422, struck at the London mint in the Tower of London. The team also found three separate phases of construction of the castle at Codnor, including the drawbridge and great hall.
The finds will be going to Derby Museum and Art Gallery later in 2008 and will be going on display as many people are very excited to see them.
More information is available from the Time Team website.
