Castle Rushen, Castletown, Isle of Man

A series of shallow, machine-cut trenches in the area formerly occupied by the moat at Castle Rushen, designed to assess the nature of the stratigraphy below the topsoil, have revealed widespread deposits of demolition rubble. This was not excavated, but appeared to be of late nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century date. The apparant utility of the moat for the disposal of demlition debris suggests that there will be a number of layers of earlier, similar material. The positioning of eighteenth-century buildings at a level higher than the presumed original base of the moat lends weight to this interpretation.