an archaeology of the east midlands. class 7 radcliffe autumn 2014

An Archaeology of the

East Midlands

Class 7: The East Midlands, 1500-1900

Tutor: Keith Challis

east-midlands-archaeology.blogspot.co.uk

Recap: Last Week

• Pre-Conquest Towns

– Towns Before the Vikings

– The Five Boroughs

– Reconquest Towns and Burhs in Mercia

• Post Conquest Towns

– Medieval Nottingham


Class Summary

• Transitions (Discussion)

• The Countryside

• Coffee Break

• Reading the Landscape, Fieldwork and

Documents in Medieval and Post Medieval

Landscape Archaeology


Section 1:Transitions

Post Medieval Archaeology

• The period of transition from the feudal to

the modern industrial world

• Birth of modern rural landscape

(enclosure)

• Industrialisation of countryside and town

• Rapid population growth (doubles

between 1540 and 1650)

• Increase in the landless poor

• For most growing standard of living – birth

of middle class artisan / yeoman farmer

• East Midlands a modern political

construct – not always a useful way of

looking at this period

• Mixture of rich agricultural land, wood-

pasture, upland and proto-industry


Post Medieval Archaeology

• Complexity of an often ignored

archaeological record

• “Recent disturbance” treated with the

contempt reserved for the familiar!

• New building techniques lead to

reduction in build up of stratified urban

deposits post c 1300

• Many surviving vernacular buildings

(often unrecognised)

• Physical remains in landscape

(superficially timeless, but constant

attrition)

• High quality documentary resource

including maps


Transitions

Discussion

• What changes overtook the East Midlands in the period 1600-1900?

Think about broad changes affecting towns and the countryside and in

particular how each are best evidenced (by archaeology or by

documentary history?)

Can you come up with one solid example of significant change

(enclosure/industrial growth/population movement, etc.) that is

evidenced best by archaeology?


Transitions

Urban Transitions

• Rising urban population leads to infilling

of spaces in Medieval towns – slum

creation

• Little study of urban poor

• Increasing industrialisation of towns

• No single town dominated EM

• Varying character – eg Nottingham

constrained by surrounding fields but x3

population between 1600 and 1739


Knob Yard, Narrow Marsh, Nottingham,

1914 by T.W. Hammond

Transitions

Industrial Innovation• EM at heart of industrial revolution

• Iron, coal, lead, textiles regionally

important

• Earliest industry part of a dual

economy mixing agriculture and

industry – small scale, rural based

• Growth in demand leads to

industrialisation, creation of mills and

factories

• Transition from Charcoal Iron to

Coke fired furnaces increased

exploitation of E Mids Coal field


Coalbrookdale by Night by Philip James de Loutherbourg

Transitions

Agricultural Change• Gradual change in agrarian

economy

• Regionalisation – experimentation

with new crops, drainage, water

meadows, enclosure – initially

through amalgamation of holdings

• Abandonments of rural

settlements 1450-85, 1504-09

• Growing social stratification and

landless poor

• Squatting

• Origins of mechanised agriculture


Transitions


Section 2: The Countryside

The Countryside


The Countryside

• .


The Countryside


The Countryside


Laxton


The Countryside

The Country House

• “Landscapes of display” – twin

elements of house and park

• Origins in opportunities created by

Dissolution and Sale of Royal Forest

for wealth landowners to acquire

large estates

• “Old gentry” built manor houses at

heart of manor, usually in villages

• “New” great houses built in isolation

on newly acquired rural estates

• Fashion for large parks and gardens

lead to forced relocation of villages


Wollaton Hall and Park by Jan Siberechts

The Countryside

The Country House• Both houses and parks not static but in

constant state of change

• Archaeological and architectural study

reveals their development

• In general evolution from Tudor houses

(superseding obsolete castles) either

manorial or on post-Dissolution estates

• Elizabethan designed houses (Hardwick,

Longleat, Wollaton, etc.)

• Inigo Jones Palladianism – venetian neo-

classical style with porticos and other

classical features

• 18th century Baroque and Neoclassical

• 19th century industrial wealth and

revivalist styles


The Countryside

The Country House• Garden designs change

from Tudor formal, regular

gardens to sweeping

landscape vistas and

pseudo naturalism of

Capability Brown

• All required land, huge

expenditure in time, effort

and money


Hardwick


Hardwick

• A rare largely intact 16th century

great house and 17th century

landscape park

• Estate origins lay in 400 acres of

land owned by John Hardwick (d

1507) around Hardwick

• James Hardwick (d 1581)

purchased land to enlarge the

estate and created the first park

between 1547 and 1570

• He died bankrupt in 1581 and

the estate went into receivership


G. Gardner. Hardwick from the East 1800

Hardwick

• James’s daughter, Elisabeth

(Bess) although of modest birth

acquired wealth (including

recovering the Hardwick estate)

and land through a series of

advantageous marriages

• Her final marriage to George

Talbot (Earl of Shrewsbury) was

difficult

• Bess developed Hardwick as an

insurance policy for her and her

sons given the precarious nature

of her marriage to George


Hardwick

• .


Hardwick Estate 1610

Hardwick

• Old Hall. Built 1587 – 91. Essentially a late medieval

great house, but with innovative architectural features and

impressive interior decoration. Parts (south and west

walls) pre-date Bess’s building work and may be part of an

earlier house


Hardwick

• New Hall, built following

the death of George (Bess

became very wealthy!)

• Designed by Robert

Smythson and built

between 1591 and 1597

• Its design symbolised

Bess’s wealth and status

• It was architecturally

innovative, for example

including unprecedented

sizes and numbers of

windowseast-midlands-archaeology.blogspot.co.uk

• After Bess’s death in 1608 her son Henry

inherited and after his death in 1616 William, who

was created First Earl of Devonshire in 1618

• By the mid 17th century Chatsworth had become

the principal residence of the Devonshires

although Hardwick was still used and extensive

works done on the Park

• The 4th Earl rebuilt Chatsworth and landscapes

the park there – after 1700 Hardwick was rarely

lived in although the house an park were kept up

and much of the park let for grazing

• The 6th Duke (d 1858) improved the house and

estate and the 7th Duke developed it as a hunting

and sporting estate

• After the death of the 9th Duke in 1938 Hardwick

was used as a Dower House for Evelyn, his

widow, who lived there until her death in 1960

Hardwick


• Coffee Break


Section 3: Reading the Landscape, Fieldwork

and Documents in Medieval and Post Medieval

Landscape Archaeology

• Earthworks

• Artefacts

• Field shapes and boundaries

• Vegetation

• Rivers and waterways

• Tracks, roads and routeways

• Settlement plans

• Standing buildings

• Place names……

Fieldwork

Evidence


Earthworks

• Earthworks are amongst the most commonly studied

sources of information for non-invasive fieldwork.

• Can provide a great deal of information on the past use

and development of the landscape.

• But, need care to differentiate between naturally created

landforms (e.g. glacial moraines), modern land use (e.g.

road quarry pits) and cultural archaeological earthworks.

• Also, differentiating between archaeological site types

based solely on earthwork remains can be risky – some

monuments will be evidenced by the same earthwork

appearance. For example, a circular mound could

plausibly relate to a prehistoric barrow, a medieval

defensive earthwork, a windmill mound, a post-medieval

viewing platform or a 20th century military gun

emplacement.


Earthworks• The identification and interpretation

of earthworks requires an understanding of all types of archaeological monuments, as well as those resulting from other non-archaeological practices.

• There are useful books to help in the interpretation (e.g. Aston 1985, Bowden 1999, Muir 2000, Ordnance Survey 1963…..).

• Another important consideration is that although areas of earthworks may appear homogenous on the ground today, they may in fact date from a range of periods and functions.

• ‘ The present view is like looking at the stars – in one view many ages are seen.’ (Aston 1985, 15).

After: Williamson 2002, p24


Earthworks• As well as interpretation of date and function

based on morphological description, it is

also sometimes possible to construct

relative chronologies by analysing the

stratigraphic relationship between different

features.

• Vertical stratigraphy relies on the clear and

accurate identification of discrete earthwork

features, as well as their chronological

interrelationships.

• Horizontal stratigraphy is often less clearly

perceptible, in that it relies on there being

well defined differences between, for

example, the core nucleus of a settlement

site and later adjacent elements of a

different form, scale or angle.

• Deciphering the detailed relationships

between earthworks in this manner often

requires the use of site survey or aerial

photography.After: Bowden 1999, fig 35


Field shapes and boundaries

• The shape of a field or property boundary

can be determined by a range of factors, for

example:

– Agricultural regime

– Topography

– Economy

– Soil quality

– Social hierarchy + control

• In many cases the shape of a field can lead

to a preliminary interpretation of date. For

example, complex coaxial networks are

often prehistoric, small irregular fields were

often created through the piecemeal

assarting of woodland or intake of common

land…

• Other forms of enclosures should be

considered – e.g. park boundaries.

After: Muir 2002, map 3.7 east-midlands-archaeology.blogspot.co.uk

Hedges and Walls

• As well as the shape of the fields themselves, the

form, composition and construction of their boundaries

can provide important information.

• The availability of resources and suitability of the soils

dictates a considerable amount of the regional

variation in the distribution, although lots of other

contributing factors.

• Hedges are able to not only act as barriers in the

landscape but also to provide a regular supply of

wood.

• Drystone walling can be established in areas where

hedges would not survive due to poor soils and

exposure to wind.

• Should also consider boundary features can be aimed

at defining a border rather than an enclosure, for

example Offa’s Dyke or Hadrian’s Wall.



• The ecologist Max Hooper suggested in the 1960s that the character and plant diversity of a hedge could be used to provide information on the date of the boundary.

• He came up with a simplified equation that claimed that the age could be calculated by counting the number of species within a 30-yard length of a hedge and multiplying this figure by 100 (e.g. 5 species = 500 years old) (the ‘Hooper hypothesis’).

• Based on assumption that hedges acquire new species over time at a gradual but fairly constant rate.

• But, the technique only provides a margin of error of 200 years either way (therefore the example above could date from 1300-1700 AD).

• And there are a number of significant problems with the theory behind the approach itself. For example, records show that many hedges were planted as multi-species boundaries at the outset. Also, species can be lost from hedges over time – for example Elms can displace existing species and even eventually create a single species hedge.

• But not completely useless – can look at species composition to understand past landscapes (‘indicator species’ can show woodland edge hedges). Need to consider regional/local context.

Dating

Hedges?



Dating

Walls?

‘Wall-to-Wall History’

Richard Hodges

examination of Roystone

Grange in Derbyshire

included the creation of a

typology of drystone

walling, checked through

construction method,

association with other

cultural features or

excavation.

1 2

3 4 5

Ecology and

Vegetation• ‘Plants and animals do not enter into the

story merely as part of the environment, as scenery in the theatre of landscape. They are actors in the play; each has its own character, which needs to be understood.’ (Rackham, 2000).

• As this quote from Rackham suggests, a thorough understanding of ecology allows a deep understanding of the nature and development of a landscape.

• Factors to consider are the distribution, nature and species composition of: woodland/wood-pasture, indicators of tree management, fields and their boundaries, grassland, heathland, moors and water bodies.

• An excellent reference for understanding historical ecology is Oliver Rackham’s ‘History of the Countryside’.

After: Rackham 2000east-midlands-archaeology.blogspot.co.uk

• Calculating the age of ancient trees is

problematic, especially since they are

often hollow so the oldest wood is not

available for dendrochronology or C-14

dating.

• A crude formula for calculating age is that

free-standing timber trees (especially

oaks) gain approximately 2cm of

circumference each year of growth.

• But also have to take account of a wide

range of factors, such as competition with

other plants, species, climate and effects

of management strategies such as

pollarding (reduces growth rate).

Ecology and Vegetation

After: Muir 2001


Vegetation

changes as

archaeological

indicators


Structures and Buildings

• Standing buildings / structures

• Partially extant structures (e.g.

foundations)

• Footprints and earthworks (e.g.

hut platforms)


Surface finds• On ploughed arable land there is often a good chance of

finding artefacts. Pasture is obviously not usually suited.

• The distribution of the finds can then be used to give an

impression of the subsurface archaeology. Isolated artefacts

likely to result from domestic refuse material scattered as

manure, dense concentrations suggest potential

occupation?

• The ideal conditions are following rainfall and in winter when

the vegetation/crop is low and have not started growing.

• Factors to consider include:

– Method of collection (systematic or random)?

– Positioning of artefacts?

– What type of artefacts are likely to survive local soil

conditions?

– Crop type and growth.

– Depth of ploughing and time since ploughing

– Colour of soil

– Degree of movement from original location (i.e. not in

situ finds but by how much?)

• It is important to remember that the presence of artefacts

within topsoil or on the ground surface almost certainly

means that the archaeology is being eroded.


Further Study

Assignment

Take a look at Marilyn Palmer’s paper on

the Leicester Framework Knitters.

Can you summarise the developments in

this industry from the 18th to 19th centuries

How did the industry change over this

period? What drove the changes? What is

the nature of the evidence?


an archaeology of the east midlands. class 7 radcliffe autumn 2014

Education

post medieval landscape

east midlandsclass

boroughsreconquest towns

rural basedgrowth

rural settlements

x3 population

modern political construct

new crops