Report of the Archaeological Investigations of the New Castle Court ...

NEW CASTLE COURT HOUSE PLAZA
NEW CASTLE, DELAWARE
5.0 INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
Based on the written record and long-standing tradition the location of the 1672-75 blockhouse at
New Castle has always been considered to be situated beneath the Immanuel Church. These
sources of information are independently supported by the results of the archeological
investigations undertaken in the mid-1980s as part of the restoration and renovation efforts at
Immanuel Church. At the Church the archeologists uncovered linear features tentatively
interpreted as a wall trench (Feature 28) and a drip line (Feature 27) dating to the period prior to
the construction of the church when a fortification was reported to occupy the site (JMA
1984:177; Roberts 1987). The trench profile is remarkably similar to the palisade trench
uncovered at the neighboring Court House site.
The second blockhouse (the stone foundation located beneath the Court House) was constructed
circa 1675 and garrisoned within the year. The prison or dungeon was built circa 1676-77, and the
court room fitted out about the same time. The southern edge of the Market Green was perfectly
sited for a fortification. Not only does this area correspond to the most prominent landform within
the downtown area, but would have provided an ideal vantage with which to overlook Deakyne
Swamp and the extensive marshlands to the Delaware River located south and east (Heite and
Heite 1989b:23 and 42). The pollen analysis, although largely disappointing, did yield spores of
sedge pollen and fern from the nearby marshland, south of the project area, at the time of the
townsite’s early occupation.
The historical record indicates that the blockhouse was surrounded by a palisade wall and it was
gated; this information comes from the complaints against the garrison commander, Christopher
Billop, during the winter of 1677-78 when he reportedly did not allow the court to sit, kept hogs
within the palisade walls, stabled his horses on the ground floor of the blockhouse, and stored hay
and fodder in the second floor court chamber (Scharf 1888).
Billop was relieved of command of the New Castle blockhouse in August of 1678 and command
was given to Peter Alrichs. In the inventory prepared by Alrichs in September 1678 were eight
iron cannon, as well as muskets and firelocks, bullets, cannon balls, and ammunition (Scharf
1888). After Alrichs took command the blockhouse seems to have served less as a garrison and
more as a court house. In 1679 Jasper Danckaerts described the blockhouse building as “good”,
located in the middle of the town, and noted that there were some small cannons. He commented
that the blockhouse was “sufficient to resist the Indians or incursions of Christians, but it could
not hold out long” (James and Jameson 1913). Notably, Danckaerts did not mention a palisade
wall or enclosure around the building.
Five years later in 1684, William Penn described the blockhouse as an “old timber house” with a
jail on the first floor and a court room on the second. He noted that there seven unmounted small
iron cannons, all the property of New York, strewn about the yard and that there were no soldiers.
Penn recommended that the people of New Castle may want to construct a paling, or fence,
around the prison, underscoring Danckaerts’ earlier observation and indicating that a palisade
wall was no longer extant around the blockhouse-courthouse-prison structure (Hull 1935:383-
384).
The archeology of the plaza confirms the presence of a palisade line. The palisade was situated
about 30 feet from the blockhouse, thus enclosing a space of perhaps 80 feet on a side. The
archeological features present suggest that the northwest corner of the palisade may have been
composed of a bastion or flanker (as evidenced by a slight flaring of the trench line) while on the
southeast corner no flanker was apparent, although considerable damage due to erosion was
recorded. The palisade wall was apparently short-lived; no clear evidence of rotted posts in situ
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