22-Feb-2016

We found a centuries old vault!

While opning the archives´ floor our concrete labourers found below the concrete floor from 1920 a heavily damaged tile floor like in the parapet walks and the larder. These tiles probably stem from the beginning of the 17th century and have been laid in sandy surface. Below this they found a duct 30 x 40cm wide.
Letting in a handy for taking pictures they found below the sand a vault made from sandstone. The manufacturers calibrated its measurements into the site map of the castle.
Next day the very slim Lothar Baumbauer squeezed through the duct to take exakt pictures of the vault.
One can see properly how orderly the basis stones are hewn so that the duct touches the buildings as flat as possible.

Obviously this vault has been built before the archive and was located on the outside of the parapet walk. It was perfectly clean and closed so hermetically over the centuries that not a single cobweb could be found in it.
Probably it had a bigger opening at its westwall through which one got entrance in former times.
There in front of the later archive either the ground niveau should have been much deeper or a staircase descended there, and this on the outside of the parapet?
Possibly it was an very ancient latrine, a contrary indication however is that very near to this vault there was at least in later times a toilette oriel and elsewhre existed a duct with staves on the ground (as well a toilette).
While renovating the floor of the archive the duct stays open. It´ll only be closed with a transparent lid, illumination and a mirror will be built into the vault -naturally without damaging it- so that possible visitors or scientists can look into the past.