Building record MAB35082 - ROYAL HOTEL, 23 - 33 CASTLE STREET, FORFAR

Former hotel.

Former hotel. Dating from circa 1840, it is a plain 3-storey 5-window building of ashlar, with architraves at the first floor, and part painted. Annexe is 2-window painted ashlar with margins and segmental pend arch. Trial work was undertaken by SUAT in 1994, in advance of an extension being built at the rear of the Royal Hotel. Four trenches were machine excavated. These revealed that below the car-park surface were the remains and demolition debris of a late 18th-century or early 19th-century building, probably the stable block attached to the hotel. The remains sealed a garden or cultivation soil about 0.40 m thick, which contained medieval pottery. The excavations demonstrated that a medieval horizon of substantial thickness, which elsewhere may contain more tangible remains, still survives on this site. A watching brief carried out by Alder Archaeology in March 2013 on excavation of a cable trench in the pend leading from Castle Street to the rear of the hotel revealed deposits below recent surfacing containing finds of modern pottery, cobbles, ceramic pipe fragments and one residual sherd of medieval pottery. Excavation on the pavement of castle street for the service T-joint revealed a medieval ditch feature aligned east-west from which fragments of burnt bone and one medieval pottery sherd were recovered.

CACHART, R, 1994, DES. ROYAL HOTEL, CASTLE STREET, 82 (Bibliographic reference). SAB2388.

ALDER ARCHAEOLOGY, 2013, ARCHAEOLOGICAL WACTHING BRIEF, ROYAL HOTEL, 29-33 CASTLE STREET, FORFAR, WB report (Bibliographic reference). SAB3648.

ARCHAEOLOGY SCOTLAND, 2014, DISCOVERY AND EXCAVATION IN SCOTLAND, NEW SERIES, VOLUME 14, 2013, p.35-36 (Bibliographic reference). SAB5483.

Record last edited

Oct 28 2022 11:07AM