We start this year off with the exciting news that a doorway has now been cut into the concrete chamber housing remains of the Castle gatehouse and a video, taken by committee member Steve Brownlow, can be found above.

This shows the remains of the curving western bastion tower to the left and the gatehouse abutment on the right.  Hard to believe that these remains were cut into to install the concrete, and as you are aware, outside the chamber further remains of the west tower and gatehouse have been uncovered during the recent excavations allowing us to visualise better, this significant area of the Castle.

You will all be aware of the famous image from the late 1950’s of the workmen digging out these remains and its thanks to local amateur archaeologist’s, Leslie Armstrong, Joseph Himsworth in the 1930’s, Leslie Butcher 1950’s and the Hunter Archaeological Society  that we are now able to see these remains for the first time in person for nearly 70 years.

The next stage is for the roof of the chamber to be removed and a ‘crash deck’ has now been installed to protect the remains as this work is carried out. You will see from the video that the sides of the remains have been mortared into the concrete walls. This all needs careful assessment before the walls can carefully be removed or reduced in size as we wouldn’t want any damage to the stonework.

Here’s the latest picture from the chamber which shows the scaffolding around the remains but also with water now pumped out of the chamber, new stonework has been revealed at the lower level which can be seen mortared into the bedrock.