Further south-west of the barn was a trench in which the team found a poured concrete building with a packed earth floor and rubble deposit. The team found a crack in slabs of stone nearby and, looking through it, saw water reflected back up. The slabs were lifted by the garden team to reveal a hole filled with standing water and a tunnel heading towards the barn.
After finding the tunnel, naturally, the team were keen to dig again and in September 2018 they dug another 4 trenches: one at the point where the tunnel was found, one in the knot garden, another by the wall of the undercroft and a fourth in the rear court – hoping to learn more about the original structure of the manor house.
The team weren’t successful in finding traces of the historic north wing of the house but did, in their words, successfully find where it isn’t! They also found, alongside the barn, another ‘tunnel’ this time much shorter and suspected to be a leat.
The tunnel
The tunnel is 43 metres long and 6 foot tall, it begins as masonry but soon changes to cut rock. It wouldn’t have been a quick or easy job to carve and, early attempts to date the tunnel suggest it is hand cut. After 43 metres the tunnel meets a ‘man-made’ blockage, it’s been blocked with intent and a Tudor brick as well as medieval mullion were included in the debris that fills the tunnel.
While the barn end of the tunnel had been filled with Tudor brick and historic masonry the other was filled with more recent rubble: a watering can, bottles of a 1950s soft drink and assorted scrap metal were used to fill the opening of the tunnel where metal fixings in the stone suggest a grate used to be.