Martin Papworth - Archaeologist
Rob Woodside - Territory Archaeologist
DORSET
Uvedales House, Corfe Castle
In preparation for a change of tenancy and to evaluate the significance of the building, the National Trust commissioned a historic building survey, documentary research and dendrochronological analysis.
Uvedales House is named after the Uvedale family who owned the building in the 16th century. It was probably built on a medieval site as it lies near the church and market square on the main route into Corfe from Wareham. Hutchins (1774, 182) described decorated window glass in the mullioned windows fronting the street.
The glass, which had been removed by the 19th century, included the arms of the Uvedale family and the initials JV and HV referring to John and Henry Uvedale. The window also included the date 1575. John Uvedale became mayor of Corfe in 1582 (RCHM 1970, 85). In 1598, the Okeden family acquired the building.
By 1723, the building had become the Kings Arms and was owned by William Okeden (DRO PE/COC OV3). After the death of William it was bought by John Bankes c.1747 and became part of the Corfe Castle Estate. A licence survives for 1760 describing the Kings Arms as a common inn or alehouse (DRO PE/COC MI 24).
In 1796 the building was divided up and rented by the Overseers of the Poor. The census returns list 8 heads of household in 1841 in the “Old Workhouse” and 11 heads of household in 1861 in “Poor House Yard”. The number of dwellings had been reduced to 7 by 1901 and to 6 by the 1960s 11-21 East Street. There are now 4 dwellings after the amalgamation of 11 and 13 East Street and 17 and 19 East Street.
The building analysis gave clearer understanding of the phasing of the building complex and revealed that the original ground plan may have been quite different, being T-shaped rather than the present L-shape. The ground floor, roadside range, contains 17-19 East Street and includes the original hall of the sixteenth-century building. Removing boarding from the east wall of one ground floor room in 15 East Street revealed a timber-framed screen with two blocked doorways and deep chamfers.
These doorways, the fireplace and small blocked doorway in the south-west corner of the room were all thought to be contemporary but tree-ring samples taken from these structures failed to date them. The most likely interpretation is that this was the sixteenth-century service range with kitchen and doors giving access to a pantry and buttery to the east and the blocked door giving access to the hall to the south west.
The roof structure was drawn in detail. The oldest part of the roof lay immediately west of the central chimney stack and consisted of three oak trusses contemporary with the tie beams and joists forming the attic floor. Tree ring dates were obtained from the principal rafters and revealed a felling date of spring 1656.
The date was later than expected because there were wind braces linking the trusses and purlins of the roof and these are usually thought to be an earlier architectural feature. However, following the damage caused to Corfe during the Civil War sieges it is likely the house would need to be repaired at this time.
The roof trusses above the east-west range and the north range were similar and of pine. Although they could not be tree-ring dated their style indicates an eighteenth and nineteenth-century re-roofing of the building, perhaps during the change of use from the Kings Arms Inn to the Corfe Poor House.
The detailed historic building analysis was carried out by Philip Brebner whose report is held at National Trust Wessex Regional Office, Warminster. Martin Bridge and Dan Miles, Oxford
Dendrochronology Laboratory carried out the tree-ring dating.
References
Hutchins J., 1774, The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset 1st Edn. Westminster
RCHM, 1970, Dorset, Vol II pt1, HMSO
Dorset County Record Office (DCRO)
Corfe Castle Overseers Accounts PE/COC
Okeden Family Archive D545/L3
Bankes of Kingston Lacy Family Archive D/BKL
GLOUCESTERSHIRE
Ebworth, Woodchester & Newark
Did Gloucestershire see a revival in the creation of deer parks in the late 16th and early 17th centuries? Recent historic landscape surveys undertaken by Cotswold Archaeology of Ebworth, Woodchester and Newark Park revealed each had been laid out as deer parks at a time when others were going into decline.
Although hunting remained very popular amongst the higher social circles, encouraged in particular Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, it was mostly undertaken in deer parks that had been established many years earlier in the 13th century. Sir Nicholas Poyntz of Acton Court near Bristol had reason to show off his wealth and status in the court of Henry VIII and chose to build his hunting lodge on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment in around 1550. Whilst previous histories have stated that the current park was not laid out until the 1790s, archaeological evidence revealed by the survey suggests that the hunting ground was surrounded by a stone wall contemporary to the lodge itself.
Similarly at Ebworth, the excavation of the ruins of Ebworth House in 2002 showed that it began life as a small but architecturally well proportioned building, most likely a hunting lodge. A bit more documentary detective work suggested it was built by the then owner Robert Wood of Brockhurst near Gloucester in 1608. Archaeological evidence also showed that the surrounding deer park wall, previously thought to belong to the 1730s, was again contemporary with the hunting lodge.
Only at Woodchester did we previously know that the landscape was emparked by Robert Huntley in 1610, but here no evidence of the hunting lodge survives, presumably lying below the existing Victorian mansion. His deer park would have been huge, far in extent of the existing National Trust property.
All three deer parks have something in common apart from their age; they were all laid out on marginal land at the edge of the parish boundary. The parks at Newark and Ebworth were defined by the way the parish boundary curved around the edge of the escarpment, whist at Woodchester the park encompassed marginal land in a steep sided valley where three parish boundaries meet.
This no doubt reflects changing patterns or ownership and land use following the Reformation – Newark for sure once belonged to the Abbey of Kingswood, and some of its stones found their way into the hunting lodge. Similarly, the owners of Ebworth and Woodchester were new men of the Jacobean age, ready to spend their wealth on indulgent sports and pleasure grounds, much like Ralph Dutton with his deer course at Lodge Park.
However, although new, these three parks were essentially old fashioned, modelled on the medieval deer park and a far cry from the deer parks of the eighteenth-century landscape designers. The three historic landscape surveys have been invaluable in piecing together the social and physical histories of these beautiful landscapes, and which will help conserve and revive these properties for the future.
Hidcote Manor Gardens
What’s archaeology got to do with the restoration of a twentieth-century garden? The restoration of the plant shelter at Hidcote Manor Gardens called on more evidence than was provided by the documentary evidence, so in 2002 Cotswold Archaeology were brought in to excavate the site so as to inform the architect’s designs.
The earliest record of this structure is the 1923 Ordnance Survey map, but it is certainly earlier than that date. It was photographed for Country Life in 1930 and described as a ‘great, moderately heated glasshouse, of which the whole front, including the pipes on this side, are removable for the summer season’.
The building appears a fairly lightweight, cheap construction with thin section timbers except for the massive front main beams. The solid back wall comprised twin walls of wooden board filled with sawdust for insulation. The building was demolished in 1954 and the gardens were remodelled; by 2002 nothing could be seen of the plant shelter amongst the herbaceous borders.
The 2002 excavation confirmed the location of the structure by inserting four trenches across the border. The trenches revealed the line of the footings, but it was clear that the garden had been changed so much that the plant shelter could not occupy its original setting without either compromising the design or the current visitor access.
The excavation revealed the structure was built in at least two phases, with the second phase being the bit that now lay across the path. The architect was therefore able to plan a structure that echoed both the historical design and dimensions of the first phase of building, based as closely on the archaeological evidence as possible. The new plant shelter was completed in May 2004.
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