Last Tuesday’s lecture at Hull History Centre (s.p.b.) reminded me to check-out a booklet have had for years entitled Hull Castle Excavation 1970 (Hull Museum’s Bulletin No. 6, March 1971). The map above comes from this booklet and is entitled ‘Site of Tudor Fortification shown in relation to existing Victoria Docks’, 1970 – that is before the South Orbital Rd. Myton Bridge and the Deep etc. were built and before Victoria Dock was in-filled.
It states that ‘all three forts survived into the nineteenth century’ and that the ‘ruinous North Blockhouse was demolished in 1802 but not before an excellent drawn survey had been made of it, giving both plan and sections’ (Gough maps 35, f.24.v., The Bodleian Library, Oxford). The Castle and the South Blockhouse were demolished in 1864 – the archaeologists here use the term ‘Castle’ to define the middle Blockhouse. The writers note that a sewerage trench dug in 1969 showed the South Blockhouse to be identical to the North, so they decided to concentrate on the ‘Castle’ (the more recent excavations discussed in the lecture were mostly of the South Blockhouse). Both the ‘Castle’ and the south Blockhouse were later incorporated into the ‘Citadel’ (see later).
For the 1970 excavation a long 10 feet wide trench was dug across the site of the ‘Castle’ and lots of detail about the fort’s lay-out was discovered. As to building materials ‘the Castle was found to be built of fine textured hand-moulded red bricks’, a sample specimen brick being 8 and a half inches by 4 by 2 inches. ‘Exposed angles of the central tower’ plus door and window jambs were cut from oolitic limestone and thick walls were built of a brick-skin ‘bonded back into the core composed of clunch and limestone rubble’. All the brick-work was coursed in English bond.
In conclusion the writers hoped that a fully excavated ‘Castle’ might become a visitor attraction, but clearly this never came about. Perhaps the present-day archaeologists will be more lucky in revealing the South Blockhouse.