Pontesbury Village Defences (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Pontesbury.
In the historic county of Shropshire.
Modern Authority of Shropshire.
1974 county of Shropshire.
Medieval County of Shropshire.

OS Map Grid Reference: SJ399060
Latitude 52.64912° Longitude -2.88874°

Pontesbury Village Defences has been described as a probable Urban Defence.

There are no visible remains.

Description

The name and plan of the village suggest that Pontesbury was a settlement of some importance in the Anglo-Saxon period. Pontesbury means the burh in the valley. An oval ring road, now known as Hall Bank to the N, Chapel St to the E, and Brookside to the SW, surrounds most of the older houses in the village. As no significant changes have been made in the alignment of the roads here since at least 1769, this ring road may follow the line of a defensive earthwork (VCH 1968).
An evaluation was carried out in May 1994 on land adjacent to Berwyn, Main Road, Pontesbury by Earthworks Archaeology Services prior to planned residential development of the site. A single trench was excavated back from the line of The Hall Bank, the road running directly north of the site. Beneath the remains of a 19th century features, possibly extraction pits, shown on cartographic sources, were the much truncated remains of at least two phases of earthwork defences. The earlier of two ditches was estimated to be over 2m wide, and may have been associated with the possible remains of a clay rampart on its south side. There was no dating evidence. The line of ditches is approximately 8 to 9m back from the line of the Hall Bank. The evaluation demonstrated that there were significant archaeological deposits underlying the site of the proposed development, and these remains may be associated with an Anglo Saxon defensive circuit running parallel to and perpetuated in the modern road. This report also contains a comprehensive explanatory section on the history of Pontesbury (Walker 1994).
The evaluation showed that there were significant remains but that they were unlikely to survive within 0.60m of the current ground surface. The HEG recommended to SABC that arrangements be made in the planning consent for a programme of archaeological supervision of the ground disturbance to be drawn up, and that any disturbance below 0.60m be agreed beforehand (Haigh 1994). (Shropshire HER)

Sources of information, references and further reading

County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 03285.

Books
- Creighton, O.H. and Higham, R.A., 2005, Medieval Town Walls (Stroud: Tempus) p. 266
  Bond, C.J., 1987, 'Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Defences' in Schofield, J. and Leech, R. (eds) Urban Archaeology in Britain (CBA Research Report 61) p. 92-116 online copy
  Gaydon, A.T. (ed), 1968, VCH Shropshire Vol. 8 p. 251
Periodical Articles
- Bond J., 2001, 'Earthen Castles, Outer Enclosures and the Earthworks at Ascott d'Oilly Castle, Oxfordshire' Oxoniensia Vol. 46 p. 67-8 (Appendix: Earthwork castles with attached village enclosures) online copy
  Barker, P.A., 1961-4, 'Pontesbury Castle Mound Emergency Excavations, 1961 and 1964' Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society Vol. 57 p. 206-223 (Plans, Photos)
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Haigh, David H., 1994, Correspondence, 06/06/1994. Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council.
  Walker, W.S., 1994, An archaeological evaluation on land at Pontesbury, Shropshire. Earthworks Archaeol Rep.

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

Data >		County HER
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio