Upton's Castle?

With thanks to Roly Alcock for providing the picture, and to Betty Williams for a copy of the page from an old edition of the Upton News and for contacting Peter Price for permission to publish it here.

Did Upton once have a castle? An aerial photograph, taken in 1929, shows part of a large circular ditch in the corner of the Hanley Road car park. Was this a ditch round a motte or tump? Today the toilet block is in the centre of the site. The Norman invasion led to the rapid building of wooden castles on earth mounds, called mottes or tumps, all over the country. There were hundreds of them, though most have been flattened and built over. They were the bases for the mobile bands of cavalry with archers, the normal unit of the Norman army. The motte was usually a flat-topped mound surrounded by a ditch. The top of the motte was ringed by a stout palisade, with a platform on the inner side. Wooden steps led up one side from a gatehouse. Outside the ditch was a bailey where horses and the army lived. This could be any shape or size though, as it had to be defended, it was usually not very large. On the aerial photograph the line of the ditch shows up well in what was then a field, but is now mostly covered by asphalt. (A) In the field at the back of the garage a resistivity survey showed it to continue round to the wall. (B) It was a massive ditch 8 to 10 yards across; it may or may not have held water. The earth excavated would have been thrown up to form a mound some 20 to 30 feet high.

The site was important as it could overlook the river crossing, which in those days was a ford 200 yards downstream, near the Swan Inn. Over the years the river has been slowly changing its course. The outside of the bend has worn away whilst the inside is being gradually built up. It would seem to move over at about 13 feet in 100 years. Before the weirs were built in 1856 the level of the water was 5 feet below what it is today, and the river was much wider. It is thought that the bank was over 40 feet further out than it is today, leaving plenty of room between the motte and the river. How long the castle lasted can only be guessed. Some wooden castles were replaced with stone ones which continued long enough to get recorded. Others survived less than 100 years. To see the full picture, which shows most of Upton, click here.The picture is large, 116K and about 970x650 pixels.

Comment December 2005 from Bill Walkey

'It was always my understanding when I lived in Upton, that the mound with the ditch around it and its postioning was actually a Roman fortification to guard the Worcester road and monitor the river traffic. The remnants so typically mirror other such fortifications left by the Romans. I knew the owner of the garage there at the time and used to "investigate" the area quite well.' Barry Rawlings agrees: 'I'm sure Bill Walkey is right, it was a Roman fortification of some sort. The only castle proper was at Hanley Castle, just up the road.'