Other sources used in Gatehouse

Gatehouse uses a number of varied sources to collate the data with makes up this gazetteer and the main function of Gatehouse is to give as full a 'bibliography' as possible. Apart from books old and new, periodicals, web sites, national and local monument databases and the statutory listed building and scheduled monument reports there are some other 'unpublished' or differently published sources that may contain information of value.

Academic Theses and Dissertations

These will always represent a lot of research and will have extensive bibliographies. The best will represent new understandings and challenge old presumptions. Some of these will get slightly modified for publication in book form. However the conclusions and interpretations of other theses may well be questionable and an universal quality should not be assumed. A copy of a thesis should be held by the academic institute that examined it and some theses are now available online via;

EthOS Electronic Theses online service. This is a British Library service with theses from over a hundred UK institutions (list of participating institutions) about half of which provide open access. However, not all institutions are participating in EThOS, notably Cambridge and Oxford.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).
DART-Europe E-theses Portal.
University digital repositories. A growing number of institutions have there own digital repository and newer theses will be in these, older theses are unlikely to be added to these. Most of these institutions will participate in EThOS.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - UK & Ireland (previously Index to Theses) is a comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland since 1716. Fifty thousand links to full text. Only available from subscribing institutions.
Archaeological Data Service has a small number of downloadable theses.
The Castle Studies Group has links to several theses of importance to castle studies.

Grey Literature

Reports published by organisations where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body. This is things like archaeological watching briefs and surveys made by archaeologists for various clients. Can be difficult to find but may contain original and recent work. (Wikipedia entry on 'gray literature'.) Probably the best place to actually find such reports would be the county Historic Environment Record holder (Welsh Archaeological Trusts) but this will normally require a physical visit. Some effort has now been made to make this grey literature more accessable and a number of online resources, databases and gazetteers are now available.

Television and Radio

Television has had a long standing relationship with archaeology and, more generally, with history. However, the media has been seen as transient and this has effected the form of television programmes and the accessibility of programmes for reviewing. Recent developments in digital storage does mean that TV programmes may start to become readily accessible as records.

Time Team: Have done evalution excavations at several castle and palace sites. Channel 4 site, Time Team Digital.
Castle: A TV series originally made in 2003 for Channel 4 presented by Marc Morris does not seem to be officially available although it may be found online at video sharing sites from time to time.
The Normans: Robert Bartlett's 2010 examination of the extraordinary expansion and unchecked ambition of the Normans. BBC web site for information, available commerically on CD.
Battle Castle: 2012 - Populist programme presented by go to 'military' historian Dan Snow. Wikipedia Page.
Castles: Britain's Fortified History: 2014 - A notable dull set of three programmes presented by martime historian (?!) Sam Willis. BBC web site for information.
Secrets of the Castle with Ruth, Peter and Tom: 2014 - A series of experiment archaeology programmes based at Guédelon in France. BBC web site for information.

The older media of Radio tends to produce programmes of greater interlectual rigor and rather more interest.

In Our Time has produced serveral discussion on medieval themes of interest over the years. The archive - past programmes are all downloadable.
The Fall and Rise of the British Castle an excellent series of five 15 minute talks from leading castellogists first broadcast 2014. Downloadable.

YouTube

YouTube (Wikipedia entry), the video sharing website, has two distinct sets of content in regard to castle studies.

The first is as a source for the above TV documentaries, although improved copyright control has now limited how much these can be found on the site. These TV documentaries vary in quality but usually have a professional academic as a consultant and are professionally filmed and edited.

The second are self-filmed, self-edited films by amateur film makers. The best of these take care to give sources (although sources given tend to be limited and elderly). The worst are unsourced, grossly emphasis warfare and bloodshed and really feed into the worst form of populism. These are clearly intended to produce income and/or boost the self-conceit for the maker rather than to inform the audience despite the stated motivation to 'educate' that is often given.

At the moment nothing Gatehouse is aware of published on YouTube is of interest to serious students of castle studies although some films of particularly castles have incidential visual content of interest.