Bridging the Gaps: A week of research at Raglan Castle

Recently, I have been involved in a fascinating project at Raglan Castle, home of the Somerset family until 1646, and a key location for the early patronage and protection of the recusant community.

The bowling green and moat walk at Raglan Castle

The project, entitled ‘Bowling Balls or Hidden Halls?’, has been funded by the Bridging the Gaps [BTG] initiative at Swansea University, a collaborative programme that supports projects and activities which foster and develop interdisciplinary research (more information can be found at www.swansea.ac.uk/btg)

Our project, led by Professor Maurice Whitehead, was an interdisciplinary collaboration between the History and Classics Department and the Geography Department at Swansea University to combine historical knowledge with geophysical surveying techniques to learn more about the construction of the castle, particularly during the time of Edward Somerset (1550-1628), fourth earl of Worcester, who was responsible for landscaping the extensive Italian-influenced gardens and developing the moat walk and bowling green.

The team consisted of Professor Maurice Whitehead (History) and Dr Bernd Kulessa (Geography), Hannah Thomas (PhD student in History), Donna Carless (PhD student in Geography) and Dr Adam Booth (Imperial College, London):

Donna Carless                             Maurice Whitehead

Hannah Thomas             Adam Booth

The main aim of the week was to try and establish how the bowling green and terraces had evolved during their construction, and if either had been built over any existing structures that had since remained hidden. Both the bowling green and the terraces have remarkably thin retaining walls that have supported the enormous volume of both structures through nearly four centuries of Welsh rain, without showing the least sign of giving way or leakage, and it is this phenomenon that we hope to gain a better understanding of, using geophysical methods.

We used two non-invasive methods to analyse the bowling green and terraces at Raglan Castle. The first was ground penetrating radar: a sort of X-ray for the ground, which works by transmitting radio waves through the ground to be reflected by hidden features. The reflections highlight contrasts in the soil (for example, a large stone buried in a wet soil will create a contrast) and enable an outline of any buried features to be constructed. The radar is pulled along on a type of sled over a carefully measured out grid, in vertical lines, which can be viewed on the monitor attached to the radar as the data is being gathered. All of the lines will then be placed next to each other during processing and analysis to enable a picture of the whole area to be constructed:

ground penetrating radar 

the radar in action!

  

The second method that we used was resistivity tomography: a method that sends an electrical current through the ground. The readings are then analysed to establish how conductive or resistive any buried features are, which enables us to establish what they might be constructed of (for example, the conductivity of air vs. that of water is quite different, and allows them to be identified beneath the surface). Similarly to the radar, the data is collected in lines within carefully measured grids, and is processed and analysed to allow a picture of the whole area to be established:

Donna with the resistivity equipment

 Detailed analysis of our findings is currently taking place, and a paper will be presented on the research during Swansea University's Interdisciplinary Research Week in February 2013. The week offered a chance to learn about a whole new discipline, and all members of the team thoroughly enjoyed learning about the 'other', despite the terrible weather and torrential rain that were an unfortunately predominant feature of the whole week! Members of the public and visitors to the castle were also very interested in what we were doing and the methods we were using, and many of them left infected with enthusiasm for uncovering the hidden secrets of Raglan Castle 

Catalogues, Castles and Jesuit Colleges

The last few weeks have been extremely busy in the Cwm Project. The main focus of my work at Hereford Cathedral Library has been trying to establish exactly what arrived at Hereford from the Cwm in 1678/9, when this was first treated as a distinct collection, and what (if any) records survive of catalogues, or lists, or any other notes of the books and papers within the collection. 


Currently, after many hours of sifting through boxes of notes, drafts, works in progress and lists compiled by several previous librarians at the Cathedral, still no list of what came from the Cwm to the Cathedral seems to have been made prior to Geraint Bowen's article 'The Jesuit Library in Hereford Cathedral' published in Bulletin of the Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries, Vol 20 (1965) and Vol 21 (1965), pp.13-34 and pp.17-27 respectively.


I have been focusing on the work of three librarians in particular, who all made an enormous difference to the way the library at Hereford was organised, looked after and enabled the survival of many of the precious items within the library that would otherwise have been lost. Francis Tebbs Havergal (1830-1890) who was appointed Deputy Librarian in 1854, F C Morgan (1878-1978) who started voluntarily working at the Cathedral Library after his retirement in 1945 and his daughter Penelope E Morgan (1916-1990) who began helping her father with his work at the Cathedral Library after her retirement in 1953: both were appointed Honorary Librarian in recognition of their work. All three worked tirelessly to catalogue and list the many books (in several locations before the lovely current building was extended and opened in 1996) and to reorganise the whole function of the library as a working research repository. Penelope Morgan in particular has been of the most relevant value to my work, especially her Retrospective Accession Register (compiled c.1985) which details sources and donors of books where known, and lists all the books in the chronological order that they were received into the library.

However, as I still have not been able to locate a list or a catalogue of the Cwm collection in any of these papers, the next stage of this part of my research is to pick a few sample books that we now know are definitely from the Cwm and follow them through the several catalogues of the library to try and piece together the story of the Cwm books during their time at Hereford Cathedral. Existing catalogues are:

1. Donors Book, compiled from 1611 
2. c.1718 catalogue
3. 1745 catalogue
4. 1749 catalogue
5. 1780 catalogue
6. 1857 catalogue
7. Card catalogue, started c.1880
8. Slip catalogues, started c.1950
9. Online catalogue

I  have also been able to go and visit several key locations to the project in the last few weeks. I was invited to join Professor Maurice Whitehead and his third year undergraduate students from Swansea University on their visit to Raglan Castle and the Cwm as part of their work for the module entitled 'From Fear to Freedom: Catholics and the State, 1559-1829' at Swansea University:

The day's adventures began in Raglan Castle, originally held by the Herbert family until the marriage of Elizabeth Herbert and Charles Somerset (1st Earl of Worcester) in 1492, when it passed into the Somerset family, where it remained until the castle's surrender on 19th August 1646, during the Civil War. The Somerset family were staunch supporters of the recusant community after the Reformation, and used their enormous wealth and power to ensure the survival of the recusant community, and indeed, the Catholic faith, in the Monnow Valley and surrounding areas.


Several members of the Somerset family were of particular importance to the recusant cause, and supported and maintained the local recusant community from their base at Raglan. Key members of the family were Sir Edward Somerset (1550-1628), fourth Earl of Worcester; his daughter Lady Frances Somerset (d.c.1632) and her husband William Morgan of Llantarnam (d.c.1633), as well as their son Sir Edward Morgan (d.1653), first Baronet Llantarnam. The vast network of recusant connections and support from both the Somerset and the Morgan family continued to foster the survival of the Catholic community in the Marches for many generations and above all secure financial assistance in the form of an annual income that allowed the College of St Francis Xavier to be officially set up by 1622.

Our field trip was rounded up by a visit to the Cwm itself, now privately owned by a very welcoming couple who were all too eager to show us around. We timed the visit very well in terms of the weather, and were lucky enough to be able to eat our lunch in their lovely garden, looking at the amazing view and admiring the Jesuits choice of location in the Monnow Valley!