More information : On the basis of documentary evidence, it has been claimed that a medieval borough existed within the outer ward of the castle (SE 11 SE 24) at Almondbury (1a). More recently, Stephen Moorhouse has suggested that it was in existence by 1294, and remained in use through the 14th and 15th centuries, but had been abandoned probably by the 16th century and certainly by 1634. The principal evidence for this is as follows. In 1294 Henry de Lacy II was granted a weekly market and yearly fair at Almondbury in the vill. The 1322 grave's accounts record the existence of a number of burgage plots in the castle, whilst later accounts show that certain plots were still occupied in 1420-21. A further reference in 1341 records the existence of eighteen and five-sixths burgage plots at Almondbury, but does not specify that they lay within the castle. The borough's precise location and the terminus ante quem for its abandonment are both given by a map of Almondbury in 1634, which has the words `The scite of towne' written across the area of the outer ward.
Moorhouse has further claimed that the main street, plus boundaries of individual burgage plots running off at right angles, survive in the castle's outer ward as slight earthworks. However, he also states that the area of the ward seems too small to have contained all the burgage plots recorded in 1341, and sugests that some of those referred to may therefore have been located in Almondbury village (area SE 1615) (1b, 1c).
Excavations and geophysical survey were carried out within the ward interior by WJ Varley between 1969 and 1972. Very few data have so far been published, but Varley states that the outer ward went of use as part of the castle about 1260, after which it was put down to agricultural use (1d). According to Moorhouse, one of Varley's trenches was sited across two tenement boundaries, and also located the post-holes of a timber building, a cess pit, and large quantities of 14th-century pottery, although Varley did not appreciate the significance of what he had found (1c).
The documented site of the town is already part of Scheduled Ancient Monument number West Yorkshire 58/RSM 13297. The essence of Moorhouse's claims have been incorporated within the latest description of the monument (1e).
The outer ward of the castle is centred at SE 1528 1411, and was surveyed by RCHME in 1995 as part of its overall survey of Castle Hill. The survey suggested that the earthworks within the ward's interior claimed as representing the layout of the borough are in fact a furlong of probably 18th- or 19th-century ridge-and-furrow ploughing cut by an area of modern wear caused by the passage of visitors to the site passing through the entrance to the outer ward of the castle en route to Castle Hill Hotel and the Victoria Tower via the gate into the middle ward. This interpretation of the earthwork evidence is supported by late 19th/early 20th-century Ordnance Survey map evidence (1f, 1g) which shows the outer ward as a series of enclosed fields, probably farmed from the now demolished Castle Hill Top Farm at SE 1533 1405. However, this interpretation of the earthworks does not disprove the identification of the ward as the site of the borough suggested by the documentary evidence; it simply means that there is no surface evidence to substantiate the siting. The area of the ward is under grass, and in use as a public open space.
Full details of the survey, including a plan at 1:500 scale, and a detailed earthwork account (1h), are contained in the full site survey archive in the NMR. (1) |