Monument record 1682/3/8 - Prospect Mound, Kirby Hall

A small, manmade mound probably created at some point in the 17th century as part of the garden scheme at the hall

{1} A small, man-made hillock lies just beyond the south wall of the Great Garden in the area now known as the South Terrace. It comprises the remains of what is variously called a 'mount' or 'prospect mound' and such landscaped features are known in a variety of garden settings elsewhere. However, the Kirby example was not, as in many other cases, created by mounding up vast quantities of soil, but rather it was sculpted out of the existing landscape. Its original form was almost certainly rectangular, although subsequent remodelling has left its bulk with a low, rounded conical appearance. In the 1930s George Chettle's investigations took in the Mount with a series of archaeological trial trenches which, during their re-excavation, were seen to have adopted almost the same pattern as those in the recent fieldwork.
Initially a rectangular base of c. 20 x 17m was cut out of the surroundings which were quarried away. A stepped platform was created halfway up with the result that the top of the Mount originally stood at least c. 26m above the surface of the south terrace and c. 15m above the bottom of the West Terrace.
The silting at the angle of the platform step created primary deposits dated by finds to no earlier than the seventeenth-century but any further silting or detritus was completely obliterated by susequent remodelling in the nineteenth century or later. This involved dumping large quantities of spoil against the sides and over the top and additionally may have entailed smoothing off the edges of the stepped platform.
The creation of the Mount was entirely dependant upon the destruction of the village church, which the Treswell surveys show to have existed hereabout, and its remains still lie beneath the summit.

John bridges related that 'where the mount now is, a cart load of bones was dug up about twenty years since', by implication during garden landscaping. As Bridges himself died in 1724, this would allow the latest possible date for the creation of the Mount to be around the beginning of the century. It is as likely, however, that his reference alludes to the alterations which accompanied the remodelling of the Great Garden and the removal of the adjacent southern wall, in which case the Mount may have been in existence for a long time.

Mounts were favoured from Tudor times, with an apogee of popularity in the early seventeenth century, and while their importance took a long time to wane, new mounts became fewer as the century progressed. The creation of the mount at Kirby is unlikely to be of a later date, given the adherence to fashion and percieved good taste by successive owners in employing the best craftsmen.
Unfortunately the archaeological evidence adds little weight to one argument or another, with the finds capping the redeposited the redeposited bone in the disused culvert dating only generally after c. 1660. A clay tobacco-pipe bowl of Oswald type 4 (c. 1600-40) might denote the first half of the century, but there always remains the potential residuality of such finds.
The archaeological evidence for the creation of the Mount confirms that it took place at sometime in the seventeenth century at the latest. Among the several periods of opportunity which existed then, the construction of the Great garden itself would seem the most likely. There are similarities of groundworks, with both necessitating the same localized quarrying, and the finished effect would be complementary, providing a prospect over the walled enclosure towards the house.

<1> Dix B.; Soden I.; Hylton T., 1995, Kirby Hall and Its Gardens: Excavations in 1987-1994, p.341 (unchecked) (Report). SNN74020.

Record last edited

Mar 25 2019 2:26PM