1 The most substantial discussion of Weeting in print is by Baggs, A. P., ‘Weeting Castle’, Archaeological Journal, 137 (1980), pp. 356–57Google Scholar. For categorizations of medieval domestic plan types see for example Faulkner, P. A., ‘Domestic Planning from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries’, Archaeological Journal, 115 (1958), pp. 150-83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, (pp. 163-83 for ‘The End Hall House’); Brunskill, R. W., Houses and Cottages of Britain: Origins and Development of Traditional Building (London, 1997), pp. 34–40 Google Scholar on ‘The Double-Ended Hall’.

2 For example Knight, Jeremy, ‘Weeting Castle’, Medieval Archaeology, 9 (1965), pp. 190-91Google Scholar (p. 191), ‘when the chamber block was added to the originally free-standing hall, the hall was demolished and rebuilt from foundation level’; Renn, Derek, Norman Castles in Britain (London, 1968), p. 341 Google Scholar, identifies at Weeting ‘a barrel vaulted hall rebuilt with a solar at the south end’; or Thompson, M. W., The Medieval Hall (Aldershot, 1995), P. 114 Google Scholar, ‘A number of surviving Norman first-floor “halls” … are so small to have raised doubts about their status as halls. It is suggested they are stone solars and the accompanying wooden hall has disappeared. This may be reading back from thirteenth-century conditions into the twelfth, for none have [sic] convincing signs of an attached building (clearly later at Weeting castle, Norfolk).’ Pevsner, N. and Wilson, Bill, Norfolk 2: North-West and South, 2nd edition (London, 1999), p. 756 Google Scholar, ‘The main range, probably of c.1180 consisted of an aisled hall with two flanking additions.’

3 Thompson, Medieval Hall, for Faulkner’s plan of Lincoln (fig. 55) and Willis’s cross-section of the destroyed barn at Ely (fig. 69). Horn, W. and Born, E., The Plan of St Gall, 3 vols (Berkeley, 1979), 11, pp. 216-19Google Scholar discuss the barn at Little Wymondley, Herts, with ‘nave’ 23 feet and aisles 7 feet 6 inches, close to Weeting’s dimensions. It perhaps reinforces the likelihood both that the proportions of the hall at Weeting derived from earlier aisled wooden structures and that the internal arcade of the hall at Weeting was of wood within a stone shell.

4 Blair, John, ‘The Twelfth-Century Bishop’s Palace at Hereford’, Medieval Archaeology, 31 (1987), pp. 59–72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Radford, C. A. Ralegh, Jope, E. M. and Tonkin, J. W., ‘The Great Hall of the Bishop’s Palace at Hereford’, Medieval Archaeology, 17 (1973), pp. 78–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The reconstruction of Jeremy Knight’s excavations by Christine McGee and Joanne Perkins clearly shows the substantial ditch which was uncovered in this position.

6 There is no doubt about earlier occupation of the site, as the Thetford-ware pottery and silted-up ditches beneath the present building make clear. However such traces as exist of possible earlier buildings lie outside the boundaries ofthat under consideration here. The alignments of the earlier ditches and post holes suggest the previous settlement was very differently disposed. It is to be hoped that a detailed publication of the archaeology of the site will help resolve these problems.

7 At the east end of the party wall there are two short vertical fissures within its thickness (starting at about 3 m and 7 m above ground). They require further assessment, but in so far as they can be seen from ground level they are not compatible with one building being constructed up against another.

8 Coad, J. G. and Streeten, A. D. F., ‘Excavations at Castle Acre Castle, Norfolk, 1972-77’, Archaeological Journal, 139 (1982), pp. 138–301 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 181-87, figs 17 and 18, pl. XX). Their view that these were ‘two passages leading through the side walls [of the gateway] to chambers beyond’ seems only to be true of secondary usage, the original niches being broken through at the back when the chambers were added.

9 I owe this idea to discussion on site with Tracy Fussell whose experience of flint-rubble building in Norfolk has been invaluable in my coming to terms with Weeting.

10 At first-floor level, the east wall of the service room is thinned down to under 0.8 m, and this may have happened to north and west at this level also. The arrangement of the north end being proposed here agrees with the schematic reconstruction published by Rigold, S. E., ‘Structures within English Moated Sites’, in Medieval Moated Sites, ed. Aberg, F. A., CBA Research Report no. 17 (London, 1978), pp. 29–36 Google Scholar, fig. 12. It is perhaps worth indicating at this juncture two areas of difference between us. In Rigold’s drawing the chamber block is given a keep-like form, the hall abutting a cuboid with horizontal parapet on four sides. However, as the walls of the upper storey are little over 0.6 m thick in places, they are surely too thin to support rooftimbers and then rise an additional 6 m to an enclosing parapet. A wall walk would have been out of the question, which raises questions about guttering and maintenance. Rigold also places the first-floor entrance at the south end of the block adjacent to the latrine annexe. As noted above, recesses flanking the doorway are in the west wall.

11 The interpretation of the enclosed room(s) within the latrine block presents some difficulty, since there is no indication how they could have been cleaned out if they too were latrines. However Oliver Gilkes has drawn my attention to the comparable case of John de Tytyng’s house at Winchester, Scobie, G. D., Zant, J. M. and Whinney, Richard, The Brooks, Winchester, a preliminary report on the excavations, 10.87-88, Winchester Museums Service, Archaeology Report 1 (Winchester, 1991), pp. 43, 47–48 Google Scholar. We would thus have at Weeting two distinct types: a pair with enclosed pits, and another suspended over an open arch at the southern end of the block. What the social or functional distinction may have been is unclear.

12 Heslop, T. A., Norwich Castle Keep (Norwich, 1994), esp. pp. 20–22 Google Scholar for the dimensions of Norwich.

13 Colvin, H. M. et al., The History of the King’s Works. The Middle Ages, 3 vols (London, 1963), 11, p. 911 Google Scholar.

14 There was probably an equivalent drawbar hole in the western stub of the north wall of the hall, but the area where evidence would be seen is missing. See e.g. Faulkner, ‘Domestic Planning’, figs 19 (Oakham), 20 (Ashby de la Zouche), and 23 (Wenlock) for comparable examples from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There was presumably no central entrance as well (as at Clarendon and Lincoln) since it would have cut through the axial support for the blind arcading and a sleeper wall on axis to the north implies a central partition in the service wing.

15 The unpublished report by Christine McGee and Joanne Perkins (unpaginated) mentions a spiral stair in the north-east corner, but the evidence for it is not visible on site or in the excavation plans they include.

16 Haddon-Reece, D., Miles, D. H. and Munby, J. T., ‘Tree-Ring Dates from the Ancient Monuments Laboratory’, Vernacular Architecture, 20 (1989), pp. 46–47 Google Scholar. I am indebted to John Walker for this reference.

17 At Weeting, the external buttress containing the chimney apparently extended across the middle of the south wall, while the fireplace has to be placed off centre to the west within it to maintain the internal composition of paired niches around the fireplace: clear indications of the power of symmetry in the architectural aesthetics of the period, as noted below.

18 Wood, Margaret, The English Medieval House (London, 1965), pp. 17–19 Google Scholar and fig. 5.

19 Domesday Book: Norfolk, ed. Brown, Philippa, 2 vols (Chichester, 1984), 1 Google Scholar, 8.44, but see also the king’s holding, 1, 1.210. Hugh de Plais gave the church of Weeting to the Augustinian Priory of St Mary at Huntingdon before 1147, when the gift is mentioned in a papal confirmation: Holtzmann, W., Papsturkunden in England, 3 vols (Berlin, 1930-52), 1 Google Scholar, no. 41. De Plais support for the Augustinians culminated in the founding of Bromehill Priory some mile and a quarter to the south-east of Weeting Castle in the early thirteenth century. For the family see C[okayne], G. E., The Complete Peerage, revised edition vol. X, by Doubleday, H. A., White, Geoffrey H. and Walden, Lord Howard de (London, 1945), pp. 535-43Google Scholar.

20 Coad and Streeten, ‘Castle Acre Castle’, for the phasing and dating of work on the mound and a plan (Fig. 3) showing, in appropriately shadowy outline, the hall complex in the outer ward.

21 Hamelin and Ralph de Plais appear together witnessing a charter of William de Mortemer for the Warenne foundation at Lewes, , The Norfolk Portion of the Chartulary of the Priory of St Paneras at Lewes, ed. Bullock, J. H., Norfolk Record Society, 12 (1939), no. 2 Google Scholar. The Ralph de Plais who was witnessing charters before T148 (ibid., no. 3) was still alive in 1185. Many links between Warenne and de Plais are evident in the documents published in Early Yorkshire Charters VIII, The Honour of Warenne, ed. Clay, Charles, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, extra series 6 (1949)Google Scholar.

22 Johnson, Stephen, Conisbrough Castle, South Yorkshire, English Heritage (London, 1984), pp. 11–16 Google Scholar.

23 Davison, B. K., ‘Excavations at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire’, Archaeological Journal, 134 (1977), pp. 105-14Google Scholar.

24 Beresford, Guy, Goltho, the development of an early medieval manor, c. 850-1150 (London, 1984), figs 75–84 and pp. 71–79 Google Scholar for discussion of the Period 5 hall and bower.

25 Rigold, ‘Structures within moated sites’, fig. 12 and p. 35 shows Weeting within its moat and the likely directions of access to the enclosure.