Stories from Castle
A Tale of Castle Kittens
A number of our alumni will, by now, be aware that the first phase of restoring our beautiful 10th Century Norman Chapel has now been completed. But not everyone will know about the cats who have taken up residence in the trench created as part of the works.
The initial restoration work for the chapel, which concluded earlier this year, involved building a five-metre-deep trench around the outer wall of the chapel, to prevent the rapid deterioration of the 952-year-old stonework and inform how best to preserve the chapel in future. The trench is also crucial in allowing the structure to dry over the next five years.
As part of the restoration work, we made many interesting finds, including more information about a diet of people who lived in and around the Castle as well as a worn silver halfpenny. The discovery of animal remains in the trench can help us piece together stories of past environmental conditions, agricultural patterns and even historic pets. From a large amount of animal remains found at Durham Castle, we know that people enjoyed a rich and varied diet that included cattle, sheep and pigs. We also found a large number of fish bones and oyster shells – the latter being found in the Chapel’s walls during the archaeological work. Cheap and readily available, oysters were a common food for the working class, and once eaten they could be repurposed as building materials.
One of the things we did not expect was to find a mother cat and kittens living in a gap in the Castle wall, just above the Norman Chapel. As the mother cat was raising her kittens at the time, the workers installed a cat flap to ensure the cat family could come and go freely, until the kittens were old enough to go out on their own.
Earlier this year castle staff spotted a new litter of kittens around the North Terrace. In order to help kittens survive the winter, we employed a team of Castle staff volunteers to help re-home the cats. Over the course of a couple of weeks our volunteers be-friended kittens, took them in for veterinary checks and found them permanent homes.
“It’s not every day that you get to rescue a kitten” commented one of our volunteers.
It has now been a couple of months since the kittens have been rescued and they have settled into their new homes. We also plan to trap and neuter the adult cats to keep them healthy and help us control the number of kittens around the College.
University College becomes the first Durham College to go to space
Castle has made history by becoming the first college of a UK university to send an item – our beloved castle teddy – to space.
The project has been spearheaded by Benjamin Kolicic, a third-year mathematics student at University College, and involved a team of STEM and non-STEM students. The venture has been quite a logistical feat with students designing bespoke software which could be used to generate a launch location and figuring out where to source the necessary materials.
In the end the teddy bear (which was fitted with a GPS tracking system), was launched from Durham’s Observatory Hill. Although the teddy went slightly off track on it’s return from space, ending up in the North Yorkshire moors, Benjamin and Xander Spencer-Jones (a fellow Castle student) were able to retrieve it after receiving a call from a local farmer who spotted the bear on the edge of his field.
Full of unexpected twists and turns – the project has been a true story of perseverance. From the strong winds which are part and parcel of Durham’s near coastal location, to realising that the GPS system was broken the day before the planned launch – Castle Spaceflight team faced a number of challenges along the way. In fact, locating the teddy after it landed in the North Yorkshire moors cost Benjamin two pairs of shoes!
The moors are very hilly, lots of valleys, which made it hard to find – we thought we’d lost it, but later it turned out we were only about two kilometres off.
If it landed anywhere in the trees and forests, there’s no way we would have found it. We launched on a Thursday, and the farmer called us on the next Wednesday.
We were incredibly lucky, looking at the video.
The project received funding from College, as part of our “We Are Castle” initiative, and we are so proud of the whole team’s achievements. Benjamin and the Castle Spaceflight team are currently reviewing and editing the footage, which was retrieved together with the teddy, and they hope to edit it into a short documentary which will be shown in the Great Hall later this academic year.
You can view a teaser footage from the launch on University College Instagram and Facebook pages and by clicking on the image of the teddy below.
