- By David Knox
- BBC Scotland Selkirk
Archaeologists from around the world are taking part in a dig to identify a medieval palace in the Borders
An international effort is being made to identify a medieval palace in the Scottish Borders.
Archaeologists and students from Australia, the USA, Canada and the Netherlands have descended on a field outside the village of Ancrum.
Earlier digs have identified a “substantial” medieval building, without establishing its purpose.
Archaeologist Ian Hill said: “We are now trying to determine exactly what the building was.”
Documents show that the Bishop of Glasgow, William de Bondington, had a summer residence at Ancrum, near Jedburgh, from the 1230s until his death in 1258.
The palace entertained Scots royalty with at least three charters being signed there by Alexander II in 1236.
Work will continue on the Mantle Walls site for two weeks
Through the centuries, a substantial building on the Mantle Walls hillside was gradually lost, with stone being taken to build parts of the neighbouring village.
Local folklore continued to locate the bishop’s palace at the site, and ploughing of the land regularly threw up pieces of medieval and post-medieval pottery, as well as human bones.
In the 1990s Alistair Munro, who lives nearby, walked Mantle Walls several times with the dowsing rods he used for locating underground water sources.
His initial discovery of substantial areas of stonework beneath the harvested field…
