Castle Garth, mortar mixer

HER Number

17253

District

Newcastle

Site Name

Castle Garth, mortar mixer

Place

Newcastle

Map Sheet

NZ26SE

Class

Industrial

Site Type: Broad

Industrial Building

Site Type: Specific

Mortar Mixer

General Period

EARLY MEDIEVAL

Specific Period

Early Medieval 410 to 1066

Form of Evidence

Find

Description

A semicircle of stake holes (circa 3.50m in diameter) with a core amd surround of burned mortar and extensive spreads of limestone fragments was located on the Anglo Saxon cemetery surface immediately below the clay that formed the 1080 Castle rampart. It has been suggested that this is a mortar mixer. Other Anglo Saxon examples have been found at Wearmouth and at St. Peter's Street in Northampton. The mortar mixer may have been used to create the stone buildings, most specifically the presumed stone chapel (HER 13528).

Easting

425000

Northing

563800

Grid Reference

NZ425000563800

Sources

John Nolan with Barbara Harbottle and Jenny Vaughan, 2010, The Early Medieval cemetery at the castle, Newcastle upon Tyne, Archaeologia Aeliana, Fifth Series, Vol XXXIX, pp 172-3 and 257-8; C.P. Graves and D.H. Heslop, 2013, Newcastle upon Tyne - the Eye of the North, An Archaeological Assessment, p 83; R. Cramp, 2005, Wearmouth and Jarrow Monastic Sites, Vol 1, pp 93-5; J.H. Williams, 1979, The mortar mixers in St. Peter's Street, Northampton, Excavations 1973-1976, Archaeological Monograph 2, pp 118-133