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

Middle Ages: rural settlement and manors
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arable effort in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries was directed
towards the cultivation of oats
(Avena sp.). Such a fact is often (as
there) already known from the
documentary evidence, and what is
more exciting is the unique
opportunity such finds present of
assessing the quality of medieval
crops (Bell 1989).
Manor houses themselves have
been studied by archaeologists
through excavation, by architectural
historians who have looked at
standing examples, and by
historians using documents, usually
financial accounts of construction
Figure 14.5 Thirteenth-century terraced longhouses at Springwood Park,
Roxburghshire, each c.4 · 10 m.
Source: Drawing by Alan Braby
and repair. What these studies show is that, despite the huge variations in the details of manorial
complexes—regionally, over time, and in scale—the same elements tend to be ever present. At
the heart of the complex would be a hall, scene of communal eating, with the lord and his
retinue seated on a raised dais above socially inferior servants, tenants and guests, as well as
other functions such as weekly or monthly manorial courts. From the ‘high’ dais end of the
hall, there was usually direct access into the lord’s private accommodation, formed of various
chambers and usually including a solar or great chamber, a first-floor room over a cellar that
acted as the family’s main living room as well as serving in many cases as the lord’s bed chamber.
Grouped in a rough courtyard arrangement would be other buildings: perhaps a chapel; the
kitchen, generally a detached building in order to reduce the risk of fire; stables; barns; and
other farm buildings. On bigger manors, the farm buildings were usually grouped in a separate
court or courts, with gardens and orchards forming still further elements of the complex.
Especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a moat was often dug around the manorial
complex; excavation has shown that most were only shallow, but with a thorn hedge on the
inner bank this would have been enough to deter most would-be thieves. Crime was a serious
problem in medieval society, especially when times were hard: Norfolk had a murder rate that
exceeded that of modern New York.
Only a few common themes emerge from excavations of medieval rural houses. Most obvious
is the change in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from dwellings built wholly of wood to
ones where at least the lowest parts of the walls, even if only a course or two, were built of
stone. This can be seen, for instance, at Foxcotte, Hampshire, where a change from post-built
structures to ones raised off unmortared flint sleeper walls took place in the late thirteenth or
fourteenth century. At Goltho and Barton Blount, the change was almost resisted, although
even here padstones began to be put under the posts in the later Middle Ages. The adoption of
stone footings was definitely a fundamental technical advance that greatly lengthened the life
of the structure by preventing the lower parts of the structure, and especially the bases of the
main trusses or the sill beam, rotting through being in direct contact with the ground. Initially
this was seen as either a ‘natural’ progression (the Whig interpretation of archaeology) or a
response to the declining availablity of structural timber as fields were enlarged at the expense
of woods (Stamper 1988). Dyer, a historian, has argued rather that this change marks the
emergence, documented in the written record in about the thirteenth century, of professional