a lead shot from Abbey House in Colchester

Trust archaeologist Don Shimmin is currently finishing his report on the Trust’s very long-running watching brief at the historic Abbey House overlooking St John’s Green in Colchester, which we completed in 2015 (CAT Report 892). The watching brief was conducted during groundworks on residential redevelopment in the grounds of Abbey House. Abbey House is a fine, large detached house which was built in the early 19th century near St John’s abbey gate, with a commanding view over St John’s Green and the town centre. In 1860, the War Department bought the land of St John’s farm and the Abbey gardens, probably including Abbey House, which became the home of the garrison’s commanding officer. The MoD sold Abbey House when the old garrison was sold for redevelopment after 2000.

Finds recovered during the watching brief consisted of a quantity of medieval pottery fragments relating to St John’s abbey, and a fascinating small find – a very small find! This is a single lead shot which was retrieved from a spoil heap. However, we think that it is associated with the Siege of Colchester in 1648. This took place during the English Civil War of 1642-1651, when the Royalist and the Parliamentarian factions, and armies, fought to determine the government of the country. The Siege of Colchester lasted from the 12th June to the 28th August 1648, when the walled town centre was held by a Royalist force and besieged by a Parliamentarian force, with a surrounding laager and forts, although St John’s abbey precinct was a Royalist outpost. During the Siege, there was an action at St John’s abbey gate (on the 15th July), when the gatehouse was bombarded and taken by Parliamentarian soldiers (see War in England 1642-1649 by Barbara Donagan, 2008: page 326). This small lead shot represents the archaeology of serious history and the violent conflict of the Civil War, here in Colchester.

Six lead shot are catalogued in Colchester Archaeological Report 5: The post-Roman small finds from excavations in Colchester, 1971-85. The Trust excavated five of these on our Balkerne Lane site and one at St Giles’ church. Four of these are musket balls (17 or 18 mm in diameter) and two are smaller and probably carbine balls. All six include mould lines. The lead shot from St Giles’ church, which is also near St John’s abbey gate, derived from a context which was associated with damage to the church during the Siege. The lead shot from Balkerne Lane probably relate to the Siege.

The lead shot from Abbey House is a round ball and 17-18 mm in diameter, so it must have been a musket ball. The lead shot would have been wrapped in a paper cartridge with gunpowder to form a bullet. In the mid 17th century, musket barrels would have been three feet long. We have examined the shot using Guidance on recording lead bullets from early modern battlefields by Glenn Foard (2009) at www.heritagescience.ac.uk/Research_Projects/Conservation_of_Battlefield_Archaeology_project_report – Appendix_3 . I think that two of the gouges on the shot, one with striations, were caused by the use of ‘nippers’ to remove the sprue. The shot is distorted: it is slightly elongated and with one flattened plane, which suggests that it was fired. No mould line is visible, which suggests that it had been transported to the site rather than made here (although it doesn’t seem to show any evidence of ‘bumping’). It also seems to show no teeth marks (where a soldier held it in his mouth prior to loading and firing). A third gouge may represent damage caused to the shot by impact, but not too hard an impact, perhaps caused by being fired into the ground. It is a fascinating object.

The Trust has excavated other evidence of the Siege of Colchester, for example, of a Parliamentarian fort on the Asda supermarket site in 1997, the floors of a house in Osborne Street which was destroyed by fire and which we excavated in 1989, as well as at St Giles’ church in 1975. A magnetometer survey in 1998 revealed the site of a small fort at Sheepen. In 2004-5, we also excavated a post-medieval ditch within the old garrison which may represent part of the Parliamentarian laager. Interestingly, although the infantry of the British army claims to pre-date the English Civil War and to have originated in a regiment raised on behalf of king Charles I, the origin of the British Army is considered to be Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian ‘New Model Army’ which was created to fight the Royalist army in the Civil War. From the 1850s until after 2000, of course, the old Colchester garrison – including Abbey House and St John’s abbey gate – was owned by the War Department, later the MoD, as a garrison of the British Army…

The watching brief was funded by Lexden Restoration & Development.

The image shows four views of the lead shot and the 17th-century map of the Siege of Colchester from the Trust’s ‘Siege of Colchester 1648′ leaflet, which we published for the 250th anniversary of the Siege in 1998 (original held by the British Library, no 2390(1)). The map was printed in London in ?1650 in a pamphlet. You can see St John’s abbey gateway and St Giles’ church on the map, to the south of the walled town centre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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