Medieval palace discovered underground in Wiltshire

Archaeologists in Wiltshire have discovered what is believed to be one of the largest medieval royal palaces ever found underground in Britain.

Ground-penetrating x-ray technology is being used to map a long-vanished Norman city that has remained under a field for more than 700 years inside the huge earthwork defences of an Iron Age hill fort at Old Sarum in Wiltshire.

During the geophysical survey, archaeologists from the University of Southampton discovered a 170m-long, 65m-wide complex, arranged around a large courtyard. It is believed to have had a 60m-long great hall, as well as a substantial tower and multi-story buildings with upper floors.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"The location, design and size of the courtyarded complex strongly suggests that it was a palace, probably a royal one," says Dr Edward Impey, director-general of the Royal Armouries and an expert on high status medieval buildings. "The prime candidate for constructing it is perhaps Henry I sometime in the early 12th century."

Professor David Bates of the University of East Anglia, a historian and leading authority on Norman England, described it as a "discovery of immense importance" that reveals the "monumental scale of building work taking place in the earlier 12th century".

The medieval city of Old Sarum was largely founded by Henry I's father, William the Conqueror, around the same time that cathedrals were being built in Westminster, Winchester, Gloucester and York, says The Independent's archaeology correspondent David Keys.

But by the early 13th century Old Sarum was moved "lock, stock and barrel" to Salisbury, two and a half miles to the south, because it was too cramped and exposed to the elements.

"Even the masonry of the great Norman cathedral and other structures were transported and re-used to construct a new cathedral and other buildings in the newly established city of Salisbury," says Keys. "Only now is geophysical survey work beginning to re-discover the long-vanished city – and what appears to have been its truly massive royal palace."