Monument record 1301/38 - Furnell's Manor, Phase III (The Western Manor, Medieval)

Part of wider Raunds Furnells excavation. At around 1200 a stone-built manor house and ancillary buildings were constructed (replacing earlier buildings; HER No 1301/37). The manor house and its ancillary buildings were demolished during the late 14th century. At least part of the manor sees to have been detroyed by fire.

{1} Around the end of the C12th the aisled hall complex was levelled and replaced by a stone-built medieval manor house comprising a central hall with service rooms to the north and a domestic chamber to the south. Further rooms and yards, poorly preserved, lay to the west. To the north, perhaps as later additions, there was a kitchen/bakehouse and a malting complex. With this rebuilding, and the rebuilding of the church, Furnells Manor reached its zenith as a small medieval manor house.

The hall was 9.0m long x 7.5m wide with a doorway at the northern end of the west wall. It appears that there was an opposing doorway along the east wall. Iron door-fittings were retrieved from deposits close to these entrances. Both east and west walls were also supported by buttresses. There was a central hearth 2.0m square consisting of pitched stone up to 2 courses deep. A stone base in the north-west corner of the hall may have supported a staircase to the upper floors above the service rooms to the north. It is suggested that the hall was of a single build with both the service wing and the southern wing abutted to it.

A detached kitchen/bakehouse range stood to the west of the south wing of the manor house. It was probably built c.1200 along with the manor house, and may have replaced an underlying kitchen range from the earlier manorial phase. Only the walls of the south-east corner survived, up to 5 courses high. The original length of the building is unknown, but was at least 5.0m but no more than 8.0m. In the south-west corner was a circular oven 1.4m in diameter. The 2 surviving courses of limestone were intensely burnt, along with the floor of the oven and the stokehole. To the east were probable remains of a flagstone floor, but no open hearth survived. Destruction debris suggests that the range went out of use during the second half of the C13th, possibly to be replaced by the larger range to the north-west of the manor house.

A north-west range comprised a bakehouse/brewhouse 13m long x 3.8m wide, though much lost to a modern sewer cutting through it. Unmortared limestone walls up to 5 courses deep survived, scorching suggesting that they had been re-used from elsewhere, possibly the south-west kitchen range. In the south-west corner was a circular baking oven 1.39m in diameter, with a sunken floor and heavily scorched stone lining. In the north-east corner was a sub-rectangular malting or drying oven with a chamber 1.5m long x 0.9m wide. It was more deeply sunken than the baking oven, with a longer stone-lined flue. Burning was confined to the oval hearth stone set at the mouth of the flue opening, indicating its use as a low-temperature drying oven. Pottery from the destruction debris suggests the range was abandoned during the C14th.

Another area was entirely devoted to malting. It comprised a square drying oven, a paved surface, a stone foundation and a stone-lined tank. There was no evidence to suggest that the complex was ever enclosed by one or more buildings, but the survival of only the sunken lining of the malting oven does indicate that the ground laid outer walls of the oven and perhaps other walls had been completely lost.

<1> Audouy M.; Chapman A., 2009, Raunds, The Origin and Growth of A Midland Village, AD 450-1500 (Excavations in North Raunds 1997-87), p.94-100 (part checked) (Report). SNN106414.

<2> CADMAN G.E., 1983, RAUNDS 1977-1983: AN EXCAVATION SUMMARY (Typescript Report). SNN76558.

<3> BODDINGTON A.; CADMAN G., 1981, Raunds: an interim report on excavations 1977-80 (Article). SNN75983.

Record last edited

Dec 2 2021 12:17PM