The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 254 • Paul Stamper
Figure 14.4 The village of West Whelpington, with terraced rows facing on to the green, as it may have
been in the early fifteenth century.
Source: Drawing by Howard Mason
and Barton Blount, Derbyshire, here the material being raised around a timber framework to
create houses of two or three rooms. Outside, cattle were over-wintered in crewyards enclosed
by the house, barn, and any other agricultural buildings. Late medieval courtyard farms around
crewyards have also been found in excavations at Wawne, Humberside, and can be recognized
elsewhere as earthworks (at Towthorpe, for instance, another village in Wharram Percy parish),
with the crewyards, lowered by successive annual scourings out of the winter’s accumulated manure,
appearing as distinct hollows.
Archaeology has also identified other aspects of farming regimes. On the Cotswolds, Dyer
has recently recognized the distinctive earthwork remains of sheepcotes, long sheds in which
sheep were housed during bad weather and during lambing (Dyer 1995). All manner of animal
sheds and pens, although difficult to identify with certainty, have been claimed by excavators
(Astill 1988, 58), such as the 1.5 · 1 m animal cot found abutting a wall at Cosmeston, Glamorgan.
Drains and sumps show the need to keep yards dry, to maintain water holes (some originating as
quarry pits) and wells, and to collect and retain water, especially when stock was kept in. Graindrying
ovens, such as those found at Hound Tor, are common discoveries, if varying widely in
form and capacity. Stack stands and rick ditches attest to the need to keep stored crops dry, as do
structures interpreted as granaries (e.g. Burton Dassett). Astill has suggested that the average size
of corn barns on peasant holdings may have risen in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
evidence of increasing prosperity and perhaps even of the retention of corn until the market
price rose. Excavation has also begun to produce good samples, usually charred, of corn, peas
and beans, which in some cases have allowed the agricultural regimes on individual sites to be
characterized. At Cefn Graeanog, Gwynned, for instance, charred macrofossils indicate that the