TREE-RING ANALYSIS OF TIMBERS FROM PRUDHOE CASTLE GATES, PRUDHOE, NORTHUMBERLAND
Author(s): Alison Arnold, R R Laxton, Cliff Litton
Thirteen samples were obtained from the structure of these gates; three of these were discarded prior to analysis due to their short ring-width sequences. The analysis carried out on the remaining ten cores resulted in the production of a single site sequence. Site sequence PRUASQ01 is of 127 rings and contains ten samples. It was successfully matched at a first-ring date of AD 1318 and a last-ring date of AD 1444. Of these samples only one, PRU-A04, has the heartwood/sapwood boundary ring, which suggests a felling date for the timber represented to within the range AD 1459-84. Although an estimated felling date range cannot be calculated for any of the other samples, they all have last ring dates earlier than that of PRU-A04. The earliest any of the trees represented by these samples could have been felled is AD 1425 (PRU-A08), and they all could have been felled at the same time as PRU-A04, especially as they are likely to have come from the same tree, or trees grown in the same locality, as PRU-A04. The date previously suggested for these gates, on the basis of the carpentry used in their construction and on stylistic grounds, was mid-fourteenth century. Tree-ring analysis has dated the felling of one of the trees used in its manufacture to AD 1459-84, with it being highly probable that most of the other samples have a similar felling date. Construction of these gates is likely to have been at or shortly after the felling date, in the second half of the fifteenth century, over 100 years later than previously thought.
- Report Number:
- 37/2002
- Series:
- CfA Reports
- Pages:
- 15
- Keywords:
- Dendrochronology Standing Building