Papp László: Rékavár és 1963. évi felderítő ásatása. Pécs, 1967. (A Janus Pannonius Múzeum Füzetei 12. Pécs, 1967)

TEST-EXCAVATION AT RÉKAVÁR on the alleged birthlace of Saint Margaret of Scotland. Near the village of Mecseknádasd (by its mediaeval name Nádasd) in the county of Baranya, the rises a steep hill, the Várhegy (the »Casele Hill«). On its top, hidden under the trees and bushes of a dense forest and almost level with the ground, lie the crumbling remains of old walls. There are the ruins of an ancient fortress known to us by its more recent name Rékavár. The greatest part of the ruins was carried away as building material by the German immigrants who in the XVIII. century resettled the depopulated village after the devastations of the Turkish occupation. The opinions concerning the origin of the castle and the time of its destruction differ greatly. A land-grant, issued by King Andreas II. of Hugary in 1235, describes a perambulation of the land surronding the chastle without, however, mentioning the castle itself, and calls this region »Terra Britanorum«. According to some Hungarian scholars given by Saint Stephen, king of Hungary as a residence to those two thethe castle stood on the hill-top already in the XI. century and was English princes, Edward and Edgar, who fleeing the murderous intentions of king Kamit of Denmark, took, refuge in Hungary. When they grew up prince Edward married princess Ágota daughter of Saint Stephen of Hungary and of this marriage princess Margaret is supposed to have been born in the castle of Nádasd. The family eventually returned to England, princess Margaret was married to king Malcolm III. of Scotland and after an exemplary godly life was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. The origin of princess Margaret of Scotland is still an enigma and a great number of English and German publications is deveted to this subject; Hungarian historians take also an active part in this investigation, to which was added lately the equally unsolved problem of princess Margarets birthplace. In the present work author wishes to contribute to he elucidation of the past of the castle of Nádasd by summarizing the data of the available documents and by giving a brief account of the results of the test-excavation carried out by him during some weeks in 1963. He states that the existence of the castle from the XIII. to the XVI century can be proved by archelogic and documentary evidences, that it was destroyed by fire probably during the devastating wars of the Turkish occupation fallowing the battle of Mohács (1526) and that it was abandoned since then. The test-excavation did not produce any earlies archéologie documents i. e. documents of the XI. century, of the time of Saint Stephen of Hungary and of Saint Margaret of Scotland. As a result of the excavation the ruins of the walls (3 m thick and 415 m in compass) and parts of some buildings of a mediaeval castle were exposed. The excavations shall be resumed later.