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During the English Civil War, Sheffield Castle – a Royalist stronghold – was besieged for ten days by Parliamentary forces who ultimately seized control of the fortifications. Traces of this conflict have now been uncovered during Wessex Archaeology’s ongoing excavations on the site, in the form of defensive wooden stakes that had been installed in the moat, and are thought to represent the only known surviving examples of wooden stakes from an English Civil War abatis.
Discovered during investigations that form part of Sheffield City Council’s Transforming Castlegate project (see CA 414), the four worked timbers each measure around 1m in length, with one end sharpened to a point. These would have formed part of a chaotic arrangement of stakes called an abatis, driven into the ground in front of the medieval gatehouse, to pose formidable defences against attackers. The stakes would have been designed to slow down Parliamentarian soldiers, so that they could more easily be picked off by Royalist defenders using long-range weaponry from their vantage point on the castle walls.
The Royalist defence proved unsuccessful, and the castle was slighted as a symbol of Parliamentarian victory and the change in power structure there. As part of the slighting, the moat was filled in, burying the timbers in waterlogged surroundings that ensured their survival.
‘The discovery of these pieces of wood is exceptional,’ said Ashley Tuck, who is leading the project for Wessex Archaeology. ‘The timbers uncovered at Sheffield Castle are the first wooden stakes from a Civil War abatis to have been recovered, and they are a direct connection with the very people who felled the trees and trusted their lives to these mere pieces of wood set in the base of the moat.’
The stakes have been carefully recovered and are currently in York, awaiting radiocarbon dating and preservation using polyethylene glycol (PEG), a chemical used to preserve waterlogged wood, such as the timbers of the Mary Rose (see CA 272).
Meanwhile, excavations (which recently won Current Archaeology’s Rescue Project of the Year Award for 2025) continue at the Castle. See http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/sheffield-castle for the latest updates.
Text: Rebecca Preedy / Image: © Wessex Archaeology
