Excavations at Kilpeck, July 2006

Excavations were carried out at Kilpeck as part of a Herefordshire Archaeology project looking at Medieval Marcher lordship. In July 2006, the focus was upon an enclosure outside the Scheduled area that had been surveyed by the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments in 1930 and that had been levelled by bulldozing in the 1950s to extend the arable area locally. Suprisingly, much stratigraphy survived beneath the bulldozing along the line of the defences. Excavation demonstrated considerable complexity of activity at the site between c.1200 and c.1650 AD. The enclosure had formed part of the high Medieval fortifications of Kilpeck Castle, but had subsequently been converted either into a park feature or a Civil War redoubt – or both.