This is our third selection of our 15 most favourite projects which is the community archaeology partnership project at Cresswell Pele Tower, Northumberland.
Cresswell Tower, a 14th century stone-built pele tower, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, a Grade II* Listed Building and it is also on Historic England’s ‘Heritage at Risk’ Register. Pele towers are peculiar to Northumberland, Cumbria and the Scottish Borders and are miniature castles built in response to raids by the Border Reivers. Cresswell Pele Tower is a relatively well preserved but roofless structure and is the only surviving structure of the Medieval seat of the Cresswell family. In the mid 18th century it became part of a mansion house. This house itself was demolished in the 19th century and by the late 1960s the tower was derelict.
The tower has been the focal point of the village for over 500 years, but it is inaccessible in its current state. The wish of the local community is for the tower to be restored and made accessible so that it can become a valued and appreciated heritage asset for current and future generations. In 2014 Cresswell Parish Council was awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund Start Up Grant to carry out preliminary work on the tower. This work inspired the council to seek funding to fully restore, interpret and open the tower while using the opportunity to broaden community involvement, including local schools, through a community archaeology and archive project.
Since 2014 ARS Ltd has worked on the project by completing a wide range of archaeological studies including excavations around the tower. Some of the earliest evidence for occupation on the site was found when one of the evaluation trenches uncovered the remains of two intercutting Early Bronze Age burial cists that had been buried by an ancient sand dune formation.
As well as evidence of the 18th century mansion, some of the trenches revealed evidence of an earlier, pre-Pele Tower Medieval building, as well as evidence for a barmkin for the Pele tower itself together with late medieval lean-to buildings subsequently added to the Pele tower. Further excavations in 2018 uncovered more evidence of this building which was confirmed by the presence of medieval pottery within the fill of a drain which was cut through the wall foundation of the earlier building.