The view across the park looking NW The castle from the SW The view across the park looking SW
Research
Plan
Introduction
Broughton Castle is one of Oxfordshire’s most significant medieval and later buildings and its accompanying park remains accessible and free from development. However, despite recent high profile archaeological events: the Oxford Archaeology/Time Team Roman villa dig and the discovery of a cache of seventeenth-century coins , little has been published about the castle, the history of the Fiennes family or particularly, the archaeology of the park. The definitive account of the castle building remains Gordon Slade’s 1974 paper (Slade, H. G. (1978). Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire. Archaeological Journal, 135(1), 138–194) but the only published work on the park appears to be Beeston’s brief article from 1984 on, ‘Hedge Dating on the Broughton Estate’ Nick Allen’s 2010 volume on ‘Broughton Castle and the Fiennes Family’ is a useful outline but his paper on ‘Royalist Artillery at Broughton Castle 1642’ is particularly relevant to this study.
A preliminary examination of the LiDAR coverage for the park reveals an extraordinarily complex network of earthworks representing multiple periods of occupation. The initial study area is bounded by an ‘L’ shaped earthwork (F010 on LiDAR image below) and comprises around 6.25 hectares of sheep pasture with parkland plantings. Discussions have been undertaken with the committee of the Banbury Historical Society and the property owner, Martin Fiennes, to obtain their support for the proposed work.
Research Aims
The Solent-Thames Research Framework suggests several topics that could be examined through the work at Broughton:
Late medieval
16.4.2 The character and organisation of ridge and furrow; field drainage.
16.4.6 The management of water resources: water meadows and leats for mills.
16.4.7 The location of fishponds and fisheries; their relation to weirs and mills/ bridges.
16.6.12 The character of manorial sites (moated, relation to village plan).
16.12.5 More investigation should be made of the relationship of castles and their landscape setting as manors with adjacent villages
Post-Medieval
18.3.2 Environmental evidence needs to be collected routinely to gather information on the origins of fields and changes in agricultural practice, which may have occurred at different times in different areas.
18.3.4 Studies of significant gardens and parks, particularly those which are not on the Register of Parks and Gardens, should consider social issues, such as their roles as status symbols and in competition between members of the elite, as well as their design components.
18.6.1 Investigation should be carried out to test whether the nature of the built environment reflects differences in settlement patterns.
18.8.1 The many sites connected with the Civil War, including garrisons, skirmishes sieges and defences, should be identified and their archaeological potential assessed.
Methodology
An initial phase of survey work will be undertaken involving examination of existing sources, especially estate maps, historical mapping from the Ordnance Survey and others, aerial photographs both historical and current, recent LiDAR coverage and HER records. Images will be collected and cross-referenced using appropriate GIS software (QGIS).
Fieldwork will begin with a detailed planning exercise for all earthworks within the study area. This will involve basic survey techniques including, triangulation, off-setting and profile drawing using an optical level. Drawings will be produced on drafting film before being scanned to create digital images for further processing. This will be backed up by further digital mapping using a Geode 30cm Receiver and processed using appropriate GIS software (QGIS). In addition all identified features will be photographed in detail with appropriate photographic scales and low level vertical images will be captured with a light-weight drone.
Community Engagement
Part of the rationale for the project is to provide opportunities for the local community and especially the membership of the Banbury Historical Society to become involved in archaeology in a practical way. Access to the programme will be controlled through a process of application and a rota prepared to give all interested individuals time on site. Full instruction will be given in the relevant survey techniques. It is envisaged that at some point public presentations will be made of the programme’s key findings and we would expect to publish updates in the Banbury Historical Society’s Journal Cake and Cockhorse.
The lead archaeologist, Dr. Stephen Wass (Polyolbion Archaeology) will be responsible for liaising with the property owner and the Society and will carry appropriate Public Liability, Employee Liability and Professional Indemnity Insurance. A detailed Risk Assessment Method Statement (RAMS) will be prepared and health and safety briefings carried out at the outset of each period of field work with a qualified first-aider and appropriate first aid kit available at all times.
Future Work, Publication and Archive
This is a programme of non-intrusive archaeological field work and analysis based on available data and survey results. To further understand aspects of the field work future investigations may be considered alongside the property owner and the Society. The most obvious of these would be to commission a geophysical survey of the study area. Further information may be acquired through a carefully set up and managed metal detector survey although we acknowledge that this would be an intervention in the ‘below ground’ archaeological resource.
The Project Begins - Autumn 2025
Our starting point was an examination of the available LiDAR data that was used as a basis, following a walk over survey, to begin to identify and label individual components of what was clearly a very complex landscape.
Having recruited, through the good offices of the Banbury Historical Society, a number of helpers and, most importantly, obtained the permission of the current Lord Saye and Sele, Martin Fiennes, for the project to go ahead we began a programme of training and survey work on some of the more manageable monuments, specifically pillow mounds (rabbit warrens) F017 and F018.
Levelling and planning by offsetting on the pillow mound F017
The procedure was to work on plans and profiles simultaneously, plotting all measurements in pencil directly onto drawing film on site and then adding annotations and in the case of the plans, the hachures, also in the field. Back in the office these drawings were scanned onto a desk top computer and then traced out to create digital images for further processing. Survey techniques used were pretty straight forward and indeed basic with plans produced primarily by off-setting from a base line and profiles drawn with an optical level and a levelling staff, again along a suitable baseline. However, the positions of the baselines were established using a Geode 30cm GPS Receiver and QGIS mapping software
Mapping with QGIS showing OS topography, shading from Open Street Map and fixed points located using GPS as of November 24th. 2025
Finished drawings of the two pillow mounds surveyed as part of our initial training programme.
We were particularly fortunate in being able to access the castle to examine and photograph an impressive series of estate maps, framed and displayed on the walls,. as well as a series of canon balls dredged from the moat.
Canon ball collection The estate map from 1685
Moving on from the pillow mounds we examined another discrete earthwork (F019) that proved a little more challenging to master. Its complex form probably related to a buried structure, almost certainly the small two bay building with central chimney stack and hipped roof shown on the 1685 plan. We conjectured that this was potentially the site of a residence for those responsible for caring either for deer or rabbits or possibly both! Once work here was underway we got set up to tackle the northern arm of the large boundary bank that defined our study area (F010). The first step was to drive in wooden pegs as temporary fixed points at intervals of 50m and then record their location using GPS.
The ruins of a rabbit keeper's cottage?. If I had a hammer', fixing the fixed points
Recording the boundary bank in profile, plan and with a series of photographs including ranging rods to act as suitable scales.
Field drawings of profiles and 50m section of bank
Finished drawings with plans and profiles of the first 100m of F010.
The team in action, plotting and planning but in a good way, not conspiratorial at all!
The work continued through fair weather and not so fair weather and was helped enormously by being able to drive up into the park with our small 4 x 4 'toolbox on wheels'. A pity that when the sheep saw it coming they thought that breakfast was being served. As planning progressed so did the complex nature of this large earthwork become clearer, probably initially the boundary of a small deer park attached to the west and north west sides of the castle but possibly adapted as a defensive work during the Civil War.
Introduction
Broughton Castle is one of Oxfordshire’s most significant medieval and later buildings and its accompanying park remains accessible and free from development. However, despite recent high profile archaeological events: the Oxford Archaeology/Time Team Roman villa dig and the discovery of a cache of seventeenth-century coins , little has been published about the castle, the history of the Fiennes family or particularly, the archaeology of the park. The definitive account of the castle building remains Gordon Slade’s 1974 paper (Slade, H. G. (1978). Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire. Archaeological Journal, 135(1), 138–194) but the only published work on the park appears to be Beeston’s brief article from 1984 on, ‘Hedge Dating on the Broughton Estate’ Nick Allen’s 2010 volume on ‘Broughton Castle and the Fiennes Family’ is a useful outline but his paper on ‘Royalist Artillery at Broughton Castle 1642’ is particularly relevant to this study.
A preliminary examination of the LiDAR coverage for the park reveals an extraordinarily complex network of earthworks representing multiple periods of occupation. The initial study area is bounded by an ‘L’ shaped earthwork (F010 on LiDAR image below) and comprises around 6.25 hectares of sheep pasture with parkland plantings. Discussions have been undertaken with the committee of the Banbury Historical Society and the property owner, Martin Fiennes, to obtain their support for the proposed work.
Research Aims
The Solent-Thames Research Framework suggests several topics that could be examined through the work at Broughton:
Late medieval
16.4.2 The character and organisation of ridge and furrow; field drainage.
16.4.6 The management of water resources: water meadows and leats for mills.
16.4.7 The location of fishponds and fisheries; their relation to weirs and mills/ bridges.
16.6.12 The character of manorial sites (moated, relation to village plan).
16.12.5 More investigation should be made of the relationship of castles and their landscape setting as manors with adjacent villages
Post-Medieval
18.3.2 Environmental evidence needs to be collected routinely to gather information on the origins of fields and changes in agricultural practice, which may have occurred at different times in different areas.
18.3.4 Studies of significant gardens and parks, particularly those which are not on the Register of Parks and Gardens, should consider social issues, such as their roles as status symbols and in competition between members of the elite, as well as their design components.
18.6.1 Investigation should be carried out to test whether the nature of the built environment reflects differences in settlement patterns.
18.8.1 The many sites connected with the Civil War, including garrisons, skirmishes sieges and defences, should be identified and their archaeological potential assessed.
Methodology
An initial phase of survey work will be undertaken involving examination of existing sources, especially estate maps, historical mapping from the Ordnance Survey and others, aerial photographs both historical and current, recent LiDAR coverage and HER records. Images will be collected and cross-referenced using appropriate GIS software (QGIS).
Fieldwork will begin with a detailed planning exercise for all earthworks within the study area. This will involve basic survey techniques including, triangulation, off-setting and profile drawing using an optical level. Drawings will be produced on drafting film before being scanned to create digital images for further processing. This will be backed up by further digital mapping using a Geode 30cm Receiver and processed using appropriate GIS software (QGIS). In addition all identified features will be photographed in detail with appropriate photographic scales and low level vertical images will be captured with a light-weight drone.
Community Engagement
Part of the rationale for the project is to provide opportunities for the local community and especially the membership of the Banbury Historical Society to become involved in archaeology in a practical way. Access to the programme will be controlled through a process of application and a rota prepared to give all interested individuals time on site. Full instruction will be given in the relevant survey techniques. It is envisaged that at some point public presentations will be made of the programme’s key findings and we would expect to publish updates in the Banbury Historical Society’s Journal Cake and Cockhorse.
The lead archaeologist, Dr. Stephen Wass (Polyolbion Archaeology) will be responsible for liaising with the property owner and the Society and will carry appropriate Public Liability, Employee Liability and Professional Indemnity Insurance. A detailed Risk Assessment Method Statement (RAMS) will be prepared and health and safety briefings carried out at the outset of each period of field work with a qualified first-aider and appropriate first aid kit available at all times.
Future Work, Publication and Archive
This is a programme of non-intrusive archaeological field work and analysis based on available data and survey results. To further understand aspects of the field work future investigations may be considered alongside the property owner and the Society. The most obvious of these would be to commission a geophysical survey of the study area. Further information may be acquired through a carefully set up and managed metal detector survey although we acknowledge that this would be an intervention in the ‘below ground’ archaeological resource.
The Project Begins - Autumn 2025
Our starting point was an examination of the available LiDAR data that was used as a basis, following a walk over survey, to begin to identify and label individual components of what was clearly a very complex landscape.
Having recruited, through the good offices of the Banbury Historical Society, a number of helpers and, most importantly, obtained the permission of the current Lord Saye and Sele, Martin Fiennes, for the project to go ahead we began a programme of training and survey work on some of the more manageable monuments, specifically pillow mounds (rabbit warrens) F017 and F018.
Levelling and planning by offsetting on the pillow mound F017
The procedure was to work on plans and profiles simultaneously, plotting all measurements in pencil directly onto drawing film on site and then adding annotations and in the case of the plans, the hachures, also in the field. Back in the office these drawings were scanned onto a desk top computer and then traced out to create digital images for further processing. Survey techniques used were pretty straight forward and indeed basic with plans produced primarily by off-setting from a base line and profiles drawn with an optical level and a levelling staff, again along a suitable baseline. However, the positions of the baselines were established using a Geode 30cm GPS Receiver and QGIS mapping software
Mapping with QGIS showing OS topography, shading from Open Street Map and fixed points located using GPS as of November 24th. 2025
Finished drawings of the two pillow mounds surveyed as part of our initial training programme.
We were particularly fortunate in being able to access the castle to examine and photograph an impressive series of estate maps, framed and displayed on the walls,. as well as a series of canon balls dredged from the moat.
Canon ball collection The estate map from 1685
Moving on from the pillow mounds we examined another discrete earthwork (F019) that proved a little more challenging to master. Its complex form probably related to a buried structure, almost certainly the small two bay building with central chimney stack and hipped roof shown on the 1685 plan. We conjectured that this was potentially the site of a residence for those responsible for caring either for deer or rabbits or possibly both! Once work here was underway we got set up to tackle the northern arm of the large boundary bank that defined our study area (F010). The first step was to drive in wooden pegs as temporary fixed points at intervals of 50m and then record their location using GPS.
The ruins of a rabbit keeper's cottage?. If I had a hammer', fixing the fixed points
Recording the boundary bank in profile, plan and with a series of photographs including ranging rods to act as suitable scales.
Field drawings of profiles and 50m section of bank
Finished drawings with plans and profiles of the first 100m of F010.
The team in action, plotting and planning but in a good way, not conspiratorial at all!
The work continued through fair weather and not so fair weather and was helped enormously by being able to drive up into the park with our small 4 x 4 'toolbox on wheels'. A pity that when the sheep saw it coming they thought that breakfast was being served. As planning progressed so did the complex nature of this large earthwork become clearer, probably initially the boundary of a small deer park attached to the west and north west sides of the castle but possibly adapted as a defensive work during the Civil War.