West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 5: Palmer1

Warwickshire (and Solihull) – the Medieval Period

Nicholas Palmer

Introduction
  • This review of fieldwork and research on medieval sites and landscapes in Warwickshire and Solihull covers the period since 1990. Based on work reported in TBWAS, West Midlands Archaeology and Medieval Archaeology. May be weak on buildings archaeology.
  • Effect of PPG16 on nature of evidence recovered since 1990. More projects done but with no academic aims, fewer large scale excavations and many projects finding nothing of significance. With more varied contractors onus on Planning/County Archaeologists to encourage consistent approaches and ?EH to support development of regional artefact type series and periodic site/settlement/area syntheses.
  • Need for basic surveys to map detailed evidence onto GIS SMRs – rural parish/township/field system/settlement/woodland/park boundaries and urban property boundaries/topographical units/defences/churches/ buildings etc. This really needs to be done before high level surveys, like Landscape Characterisation or Open Field Projects.
  • Sites reported to Medieval Archaeology between 1990 and 2001 – representing projects with some significant result – ran at about between seven and seventeen per year, except for 1992 when there were none (Fig 1). These can be broken down into Castles/moated sites, Monastic sites, Churches, Major urban (ie Warwick), Minor urban/Small towns, Rural settlements/villages, and Other (bridges, industrial).
Castles/moated sites
  • Warwick Castle series of surveys and recording in advance of redisplay enables us to trace detail of the rebuilding of the castle by the Beauchamps through the 14th century.
  • At Kenilworth Castle there has been only small scale excavation and recording of service trenches, along with work in advance of redisplay of Leicester’s Gatehouse, and of proposals for flood alleviation and reflooding Mere.
  • At Boteler’s Castle excavations in associated settlement did not cover castle, but produced good evidence for place of castle in landscape. Only minor work on later castles at Baginton and Maxstoke. Time Team has investigated Beaudesert – report awaited.
  • Work on moated sites has included excavations by Solihull Archaeological Group at Old Knowle Hall, and very recent work at Burton’s Farm (Kingshurst), stripped entire platform revealing possible medieval stone building, although there were few finds. Other smaller scale work has taken place at Coughton Court, Baddesley Clinton, Lower Woodcote (Leek Wootton), and Chilvers Coton Manor.
  • BUFAU have an ongoing moated sites research project for student training and have carried out geophysical survey and documentary research on Hurley Hall and Old Berry Hall.
  • All these are Arden sites (Fig 2) – the only Feldon moat excavated recently is at Cawston where the work was limited (earlier work at Hunningham is unpublished).
Monastic sites
  • Warwickshire monastic sites remain relatively poorly researched. The major recent projects have been at the Cistercian houses of Stoneleigh and Combe, both in relation to conversion of the successor houses. At Stoneleigh extensive salvage excavations have added details of church and cloister and outer court buildings, but without extensive excavation. At Combe further evidence produced for plan of claustral buildings and some remains of the 15th century cloister were recorded. Neither produced significant finds assemblages or other evidence except for unstratified floor tiles from Stoneleigh.
  • At Kenilworth Abbey (Augustinian) 1989 excavation of ancillary buildings south of river published, but new work confined to a resistivity survey, and scattered observations of fragments of outer court buildings.
  • At Polesworth (Benedictine nunnery) where even plan of claustral buildings is uncertain, there has been small scale work in the cloister, and survey of the Vicarage suggests its cellar belonged to a medieval range. At Nuneaton Priory (Fontevrautine) quite a lot of small scale work within the precinct has revealed numerous wall fragments east of the church, across the cloister area, and in the outer court at Manor Court House and Manor Hospital. At Warwick Priory (Augustinian) recent work has found little medieval structure and reexamination of unpublished 1971 work has questioned previous interpretation of plan.
  • Studley Priory (Augustinian) has seen a resistivity survey and observation has recorded an isolated wall fragment, and Maxstoke Priory (Augustinian) and Alcester Abbey (Benedictine) have been surveyed by the former RCHME.
  • No useful work on urban monasteries. Scattered observation on the site of Atherstone Friary has revealed only demolition rubble, and Warwick Blackfriars is represented only by occasional burials.

Churches

  • Quite a lot of small scale developments have been observed but little of significance revealed. At Wootton Wawen part of the north porticus was recorded, and early foundations seen at Merevale and Temple Balsall. Only at Chadshunt has good evidence for the development of the church been recovered. Occasional datable medieval burials have been located but no reasonable sized skeletal groups have been available for study.

Major Urban - Warwick

  • The only major urban centre is Warwick, an Ethelfledan burh founded in 914, although there may have been earlier settlement. Its original plan and the line of its earliest defences are uncertain, and the subject of debate, and no Anglo-Saxon structural remains have been found in excavation.
  • The general line of the post-Conquest defences is clearer (except across Castle Park) and work at Bowling Green Steet, Lord Leycester’s Hospital and King’s High School has provided good evidence of them.
  • There have been no recent area excavations within defences to match those of the 1960s and early 1970s, although even these did not recover building plans. Recent developments have been smaller and not affected main frontages. Most significant recent work has been at the Woolpack on Market Place where small sample excavations to the rear found some 11th century occupation. Medieval stratigraphy does exist as work in Castle Park and along High Street has shown.
  • The suburbs of Warwick have also seen considerable small scale work but generally with little result. Only in Bridge End to the south have there been larger scale projects. At Park House in Castle Park an area was excavated, adjacent to 1983 MSC funded excavations, but the top only was cleared and foundation pits excavated. This produced finds assemblage, but no real understanding of structural development, unlike previous work. On the southern edge of the suburb a 13th/14th century enclosure fronting the London Road contained two stone lined pits and a well with waterlogged remains. In the eastern suburb work at 28-30 Smith Street has produced stratigraphy and medieval remains at 6-11 Coventry Road have enlarged the recorded extent of the suburb.
  • An evaluation adjacent to Leper Hospital and within its boundary revealed no medieval remains and the Hospital of St John to the east of the town has been represented only by occasional skeletons.
  • Considerable research on medieval tenement histories has been done by Steven Wallsgrove and Christine Hodgetts over many years. This is generously made available but suitable publication of the material should be supported.

Minor Urban/Small towns

  • Between the later 12th and early 14th centuries a network of towns and smaller market centres grew up across Warwickshire (Fig 3). However it has to be said that the contribution of archaeology to their study has lagged way behind that of documentary research where there has been quite a lot of activity by Terry Slater, Chris Dyer, Keith Lilley, Steven Wallsgrove and others. The problem in small market towns, and not just those of Warwickshire is in finding surviving stratigraphy. A lower density of settlement produces less build up and it is more vulnerable to 19th and 20th century development.
  • In Henley-in-Arden a number of evaluations, including two on High Street frontage sites have produced only a few isolated pits (although building recording at Henley Heritage Centre revealed a standing 14th century structure). At Polesworth where the Abbey promoted a new town, trial trenching and observation within medieval properties has revealed absolutely nothing. At Alcester, where the medieval period is what you machine off to get to the Romans, Solihull and Nuneaton only occasional medieval features are found. Similarly at Atherstone, although there an excavation in the market place produced 14th/15th century surfaces and timber settings. Again at Rugby, virtually nothing has been found, although a long-proposed development on Drury Lane, the probable original market place frontage, abandoned as a result of later encroachment, offers considerable potential. Evaluation has shown scattered survival of medieval features.
  • Stratford, the largest of Warwickshire’s small towns, has perhaps produced the most surviving remains in the past, but no recent work has found even partial buildings. Few recent developments have covered frontages, so results are confined to occasional rear of property features. These have included possible medieval tanning pits behind 8/9 Henley Street, down from the Birthplace. Shakespeares’s father was a glover and ‘Shakespeare’s Stratford’ is proposed as a World Heritage site. What implications does this have for archaeology in Stratford? Should archaeological response to planning applications be ratcheted up – eg excavation where normally salvage recording would do? Excavation behind the Birthplace produced a typical sequence involving a single late 15th/early 16th century pit, a post-medieval cellar, cut by a probable 18th century cess pit along with residual 13th century pottery.
  • At the bottom of the urban hierarchy the excavations at Burton Dassett where there was a market, and possibly also Oversley (Boteler’s Castle) where there might have been, do contribute to study of failed towns.

Rural settlements/Villages

  • The major recent advances have been in investigation of rural settlement sites (Fig 4). Before 1980 virtually no complete building plans had been recovered from a village site. This changed at Burton Dassett Southend where excavations from 1986-91 covered a series of properties either side of a street called Newland associated with the promotion of a market and occupied from the mid-13th century to 1497. Plans of 20 houses, largely stone built, and 10 outbuildings, more of timber, were recovered, the excavated buildings including a smithy.
  • More recently Northamptonshire Archaeology have excavated virtually the whole of Coton on the Wolds. Here occupation began in the 10th/11th century; the site was replanned in the late 12th century, before abandonment in the late 13th/early 14th. Over 20 scrappy post-built buildings were recorded. At Boteler’s Castle, Oversley, a settlement associated with a motte and bailey castle was occupied from the 12th to the early 13th century. Excavations in 1993 revealed three timber buildings, two post-built one with a stone footing.
  • Other medium scale excavations have taken place at Ettington, Goldicote, Loxley, Burton Dassett Country Park, Fenny Compton, Ufton, Bascote; and small scale excavations at Compton Verney and Admington have been enhanced by wider parish surveys; and Flecknoe has seen a number of small scale excavations.
  • These sites have produced mainly partial building plans in a variety of forms. Compton Verney and Long Itchington had 12th century post-built buildings succeeded by others with stone footings and walls. At Burton Dassett Country Park, Fenny Compton and Goldicote the buildings were probably of stone, while those at Loxley were probably timber framed on stone footings
  • Dyer’s 1996 review of rural settlement identified a problem with the origins of villages with a relative lack of sites with 10th and 11th century activity when open fields and nucleated settlements should be developing. Whether because the sites excavated were peripheral, the period being relatively aceramic or dating uncertain. More sites with 10th and 11th century material have been found (Pillerton Priors, Goldicote, Loxley, Flecknoe and Ettington) and at Coton enclosures and buildings of this period have been found.
  • Coton also underwent a replanning in the late 12th century. Only the larger excavations reveal good evidence of village planning. At Burton Dassett and Coton the process can be traced; but elsewhere the evidence needs enhancement with speculation.
  • On the question of shrinkage and desertion the excavated sites present a complex pattern, with the relatively short lived sites at Oversley (deserted in the early 13th century), early desertion/eviction at Coton (late 13th/early 14th century) and mid and late 14th century shrinkage at Spernall and Loxley, contrasting with the standard pattern of mid-late 15th century shrinkage and desertions at Goldicote, Compton Verney and Ettington, and Burton Dassett where progressive desertion over the 15th century against a background of increased affluence for the remaining tenants before the final evictions of 1497.
  • Most of these sites lie in a band across the Feldon – Cawston lies in the Dunsmore sub-region and Coton in the Wolds. Very little work has taken place on settlements in the Arden. Trial trenching at Spernall revealed 13th to early/mid 14th century occupation and a partial post-built building, and recent work on the M6 Toll has revealed only a hollow way and 12th-13th century pits at Hawkeswell and medieval pits at Wishaw (where there was also a 13th/14th century building associated with fishponds). Clearly investigation of a settlement in the Arden is a major priority.
  • A few detailed earthwork surveys of individual settlements have taken place at Baginton, Hunningham, Westcote in Tysoe and a number of sites in and around Admington.

Other

Bridges

  • Warwickshire has many medieval bridges, about 40 are recorded before 1550 and there are about 15 medieval/early post-medieval Scheduled bridges surviving. EH has funded preliminary survey of all early road bridges. This has not developed as planned into more detailed research, but recording and analysis has taken place at Halford, Marton, Hunningham, and currently at Bidford. Stone by stone surveys enable a development sequence to be worked out, but in the absence of diagnostic architectural features or documentary evidence these are difficult to date absolutely.

Industrial

  • Probably the most notable medieval Warwickshire industry is the Chilvers Coton pottery industry investigated by Mayes and Scott. No further complete kilns have been excavated but observations have produced groups of waster material. A review of the Chilvers Coton pottery industry is needed in light of recent consumer assemblages. Other collections of pottery wasters have come from probable kilns in Warwick and Alcester. The Alcester kiln products which produced 97% of the Boteler’s Castle assemblage have been studied, but work should be carried out on the Warwick material.
  • Medieval smithies have been excavated on the village sites at Burton Dassett and Cawston, although the latter extended outside the excavation. No significant work has been carried out on any medieval mill site; minor work only at Whitnash Mill.
  • Evidence of quarrying for building stone and roofing material, local production of spindle whorls, mortars and metalworking moulds, coal mining and tile production has come almost exclusively from consumer sites.
  • At Wishaw fishponds with associated buildings in use from the mid-13th to early 14th century have been excavated recently. Other excavations of fishponds confined to small scale work on Combe Abbey ponds.

Landscape

  • The medieval period is the first for which it is realistically possible to attempt to map the entire landscape. The progression of SMRs to GIS based systems offers possibilities which are only beginning to be tapped.
  • Much basic mapping is still necessary. Even of settlements. Systematic air survey of villages in early 1990s showed that it is still possible to find unrecorded, mainly shrunken, settlement earthworks in Feldon. In Arden unrecorded dispersed settlements are even easier to find and their mapping has hardly begun (notwithstanding Della Hooke’s Arrow Valley work). Settlement sites are being added to the SMR GIS, but further air photography necessary.
  • Detailed mapping of ridge and furrow open field systems for groups of parishes representing the regions and sub regions of Warwickshire (Arden, Feldon, Dunsmore, Wolds, Avon Valley) was carried out in early 1990s. Aim was to map complete systems, as nearly furrow by furrow as possible, using mainly 1940s air photographs (About 93 out of 260 parishes eventually done). A problem is that field systems relate to townships rather than (modern) parishes and township boundaries have not been systematically recorded. Some research on this has been done by Della Hooke but more is necessary and the results need digitising
  • More recently David Hall’s Midlands Open Fields project has mapped the best surviving ridge and furrow over the Feldon (mapping subsequently extended to cover the whole county). This project has identified a series of parishes with the best surviving field systems in the region with a view to ensuring their preservation. In Warwickshire they include Tysoe, Radway, Arlescote in Warmington, Ladbroke, Napton-on-the-Hill, Lower and Upper Shuckburgh and Little Lawford. Lack of knowledge of township boundaries is a problem here as well, making statistics unrelaible, as was lack of research into the original extent of the field systems.
  • Mapping field systems is one thing – much more work is necessary on understanding what they represent.
  • Other mappable landscape elements are woodland, parks, commons. Work on this has been done by Sarah Wager and Della Hooke, but again the results need digitising.
  • Few recent fieldwalking projects have revealed much of significance for the medieval period, but notable parish-based survey projects have been carried out by Chris Dyer in Admington and Compton Verney.

Material culture and economy

  • A Warwickshire medieval and post medieval pottery type series was produced in 1998 by Iain Soden and Stephanie Ratkai. Some work needs to be done for this to be more widely distributed and some updating is necessary to incorporate the results of recent work. The largest recent pottery assemblages have come from Burton Dassett (37,750 sherds), Coton (9507), Boteler’s Castle (5271), Goldicote (c.3000), Fenny Compton (810), Bascote (*), Warwick, Park House 1999 (*), Warwick, Woolpack (170 + c.8000 wasters).
  • Apart from Burton Dassett most of the recent excavation projects have produced relatively small collections of metalwork and other artefacts. At Coton this perhaps reflects the period of occupation and a real relative poverty. Later sites do produce a wider range of objects and some chronological trends are beginning to emerge. Note Chris Dyer’s study of the distribution of medieval coins using SMR records.
  • Recent work has given some idea of the regional distribution of stone artefacts – many Norwegian ragstone and some purple phyllite hones with a national distribution; most querns/millstones divided between Old Red Sandstone from the forest of Dean/Penallt and Derbyshire Millstone Grit with occasional German lava; Occasional mortars in Purbeck marble, others in local Lias limestone and Marlstone Rock Bed limestone.

Faunal and environmental remains

  • The collection of meaningful animal bone assemblages is difficult in Warwickshire given the general slight acidity of the soils across the county. From recent excavations significant groups have come only from Village sites Coton, Burton Dassett Southend and the Boteler’s Castle settlement. More groups are needed, particularly urban ones (and castle/moated and monastic).
  • Environmental evidence in the form of charred remains is easier to collect, although there can be problems of extraction from Lower Lias clay soils. Significant recent assemblages have come only from the rural settlements at Coton, Burton Dassett, Oversley and Goldicote. Medieval waterlogged plant and insect assemblages are also rare, being limited to those from the suburban fringe of Bridge End in Warwick Castle Park and the Cawston DMV.

Publication

  • Relatively few of these projects have reached final publication in TBWAS or elsewhere. However, many of the projects do have available completed project reports (Warwick Castle surveys, Combe Abbey, Coton, Bascote, Fenny Compton, Warwick Castle Park, Coughton Court, Alcester Abbey survey, Maxstoke Priory surveys), and others have reports that are complete but unedited (Loxley, Burton Dassett Country Park, Ufton). Other more recent projects are still in the throes of post excavation programmes (Old Knowle Hall, Cawston, Goldicote, Hawkeswell, Wishaw fishponds, Ettington)
  • The main site for which there is not currently an available text is Burton Dassett. There are also backlogs of Warwick Castle recording and Warwick town defences sites.
  • There are also a number of pre-1990 sites that would merit publication, notably Warwick Priory, Hunningham Moat, Warwick Market Street and Warwick College and Stratford Rother Street.

Conclusions

  • There is no type of medieval period site in Warwickshire which would not benefit from further research. No opportunities to excavate/survey/record should be passed up, particularly if there is a possibility that complete building plans, well preserved stratigraphy, waterlogged or charred plant deposits, large assemblages of animal bone, pottery, metalwork or other finds might be found. Large scale excavations do produce a wider range of evidence.
  • Within this the most obvious gaps in current coverage are:

-Rural settlements in the Arden area, other than moats. These need identifying and mapping probably on a parish by parish basis, along with the excavation of sample sites.